[onewhippedpuppy]

I was at the Double Tree in Charlotte last night, having a beer at the bar when an older English gentleman walked in that was obviously well known by the staff. He was wearing a well worn Ford Racing jacket and carried a Ford Motor Company handbag. The bar tender asked if he had driven any of his cars, to which he replied that the weather wasn’t nice enough. I struck up a conversation for obvious reasons, what a cool dude. He was a fabricator for Shelby on the GT40 program, part of the team that built the car and supported their efforts at Le Mans and elsewhere. He did amateur rally racing in Europe in the 1960s, worked for Holoman-Moody, worked for Ford Racing, worked for Shelby, and did freelance work for a host of others. He knew all of the iconic racing drivers and had been to just about every famous track. He owns a Ferrari 330 rebodied as a 250 GTO cabriolet, a Bugeye Healy, a Ford Cortina, a Ford Falcon rally car that won its class in Monte Carlo, and a host of other cool stuff. He showed me pictures of the original 289 Cobra that he regretted selling. I spoke with him for at least an hour, just a friendly and unassuming gentleman who apparently splits time between Charlotte and England.