[twobjshelbys]

Shelby American sourced fiberglass cars from Hi Tech in South Africa (the same manufacturer that builds the Cobras and other replicas for Superformance, plus some other contract manufacturing for current vehicles). Shelby also sourced fiberglass cars from HST International - HQ in San Diego, mfg in Tijuana Mexico). HST also built somewhere around 6 (maybe a few more) carbon fiber cars and the LA suffixed vehicles (mine was CSX4005LA, in addition to being a carbon fiber car).

A few of the Shelby dealers, when fiberglass cars were still available from both sources, stated a preference for the HST-built cars. The HST volumes were much lower and there was a feeling that there was a higher attention to detail in HST cars, ie, "rework" after delivery was less. The quality of the body and paint work on my car was nothing short of perfection. It might have been because the CF cars were truly hand built.

The HST Cobra business was a passion of the owner. Their primary business was the aftermarket conversion of vehicles into "armored" or "bullet proof" limos. I don't know why with the terrorism climate at the time that the primary business wasn't sustainable but HST closed down completely in 2009 or 2010.

The only down side of mine was that the LA cars were built as turn-key cars, and their power train installers totally messed up the Roush fuel injection and additionally they configured the car with a McLeod Hydraulic Throw Out Bearing (HTOB) instead of the more classic, and orders of magnitude easier to maintain, clutch master/slave arrangement.