That depends entirely upon the roller. Who did what to whom changed dramatically over the years.
The roller that is pictured currently on Shelby's website for the 50th Anniversary 427
Shelby American Inc. - 50th Anniversary 427 Cobra
was built almost entirely by Kirkham. We even made the Shelby badged hub caps, steering emblem, brake pedal arm, and clutch pedal arm. Other than the logo, all parts are essentially the same as what we make on our current rollers.
We have been working a long, long time with Shelby as of late. Joe Conway, the CEO of Shelby, has been great to work with and is deeply committed to improving Shelby quality and delivery. I wish Joe had taken over long ago. Joe has Keith Belair, CFO, running day to day right now. Keith is also deeply committed to improving quality and delivery. Bill DenBeste, Shelby dealer, is deeply committed to improving quality and delivery. Whenever we have offered them a choice of parts they always go for top-shelf items.
We have not sent an aluminum frame and body to South Africa for many years. That said, Jimmy Price has always been very nice to deal with.
Currently, Shelby has bought several rollers from us. The latest Shelby's from us all have our suspension (and just about everything else). The above 427 50th has our latest billet suspension.
All motor mounts in our cars have always been in the same place. We do not make different frames for Shelby (or anyone else)--unless it is a very specific, custom chassis. We have had customers request V-12 set ups and all sorts of things over the years.
Chris is one of my twin sons (who both work here). They both did indeed work on that roller. I am extremely proud of both of them. They are working on becoming programmers. They jumped straight into our latest project of programming our new 8 axis robot with a laser. It is state-of-the-art.
Hmmm...this is tricky to answer. Many Kirkham and Shelby parts (mostly suspension) of the past SHOULD be interchangeable in theory. In practice they have sometimes fallen short. In the past Shelby used George Petrus parts (George was a very nice man and unfortunately, he is now in the big race track in the sky). George was very liberal in his view of originality (among other things) and his original parts were/are a difficult interchange with original parts.
Yes, we still do for those customers who want them. In the past, those customers have almost exclusively been Shelby. But, as I said above, Joe Conway of Shelby is deeply committed to using as high a quality of parts as he can find and they made the switch to the Kirkham billet suspension with us a bit ago.
Happy to answer questions,
David
