Re: Yellow Race Cars - I Got a Bunch of B&W Photos!?
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I like 1025 that is in the Allen book, but don't know much about the car as far as track/race use and there are few photos of it. Any info that people have would be helpful.
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1025, 1030, 1035, and 1036 are an odd set of cars. They were completed by FAV in December 1965 as rolling chassis and then sent to Shelby in the US. After some period of time they went back to England, still rolling chassis. There are various theories about why Shelby never completed them (mechanical problems, issues with getting caught playing games with chassis numbers by customs, or my favorite theory, they were sent to the US as rolling spares for Sebring and Daytona)
In the summer of 1967, Shell approached Ford to borrow three GT40s for an advertising campaign. Ford said how about four? Ford agreed to complete the cars and loan them to Shell, if Shell would pay the road tax. The cars were fitted with 289 HiPo/TransAm engines and painted light blue. When they arrived in Italy, Shell decided that it didn't want four identical cars and repainted three of them yellow (1025), red (1030), and green (1035). The cars painted solid colors, no stripes or rondels. As part of the ad, each car waw fitted with parachute that "SHELL" written on it in large letters. As far as I know the ad was never actually used. My guess is that by the time the ad was finished, GT40s and Gulf were linked in everyone's mind. (if anyone has a copy of the ad, I'd love to see it).
Afterwards the four cars were sold to a dealer in London who sold them to private individuals. The cars were used in local races. It wasn't until they were restored that they got the stripes and rondels.
If you want to see what they looked like originally take the pictures at the back of the Ronnie Spain book, or take a look at the only b&w picture in the Allen book (The Legend Lives On).