The way I understand it is this:
If Shelby has a financial arrangement with someone to make Cobra pedal cars or Chocolate Cobras for your Easter basket, and he says they are Shelby Cobras, then by god, they are, and they can go into the registry. It doesn't matter if they were made in Thames Ditton or Zanzibar.
That is not anything too difficult to understand--his name, his game. You pay, you play.
The really amazing thing is that, to many people, the fact that Shelby's name is on it, the simple fact that he has a bare financial relationship with whoever the manufacturer is, conveys a special quality on the product, such that the same product made by the same manufacturer on the same assembly line and using the same materials, but without having paid the monetary tribute to Shelby, has less intrinsic value. It's a fact-- demonstrated over and over in threads on this forum.
But it works for him. It's the gringo version of "la mordita." It makes you think that if all the replica makers had been willing to give Shelby the kind of cut he really wanted, wouldn't we all be driving genuine Shelbys right now, whether the manufacturer was Kirkham or Factory Five?
Evan would have to go back to counting rivets..... just kidding , big guy.
