Bondurant tribute cars
 

Shelby American announces the Bondurant Tribute series.

Not one, but three versions to honor Bobs role played in Shelby winning the GT world championship for Shelby American. All to be shown at the 2018 Scottsdale Barrett Jackson.
Bob will be at the Schools booth personally to chat to.
Plenty on line, but here is one link.

Shelby Salutes Bob Bondurant With Special Continuation Cobra

Kudos Ross!

Done years before the 50th anniversary run, almost couldn't get him out of the car, lol!

Nice job Ross! You guys really did an awesome job again! Bob and Pat will be ecstatic with this one!
Larry

Double post

You have done it again Ross, amazing looking cars to honor a truly amazing race car driver.

Best Regards,
Byron

The article is wrong. These are certainly Shelby American cars, here is their press release (from 1-Jan)

Shelby.com

As is current practice the fiberglass cars will likely be sourced from HiTech (not Superformance) and the alloy cars from Kirkham...

Ross,

Another compliment to your vast skill in contributing to the development of these cars. Truly amazing:3DSMILE:

Cannot wait to get back on the track with you this year and to see how your car is progressing. See you once the weather clears.

Jim

meanwhile I am a bit confused about the relationship of all the companys involved in the recent CSX Continuation Series

Shelby
Shelby Legendary Cars (only a new marketing portal maybe)
SPF
Hillbank
HiTech
McCluskey
David Kirkham
Tom Kirkham

what I think to know maybe is:

Lance Stander owns Hillbank and SPF

SPF and not Shelby offers and promotes the actual Shelby Continuation Cars on their Website
not only the Fiberglass Version but also the Aluminium Versions (what about Kirkham?)
http://www.superformance.com/factory-models/shelby

Shelby offers still some older looking (Mexico?) Glass Versions on their Website
Shelby.com

McCluskey did the assembly of the recent Shelby CSX Sebring tribute Cars for Shelby/Hillbank/SPF, even the Glass Cars

David Kirkham made the 50th Shelby Daytonas, one is still offered by Shelby (CSX 9950) http://info.shelbyamerican.com/Downl...Collection.pdf

Tom Kirkham lengthened a 3rd Party Aluminium Daytona Body for Hillbank promoted as the secret Shelby Weapon equipped with CSX 2605 Number
For Sale 2017 Shelby 427 Daytona Secret Weapon CSX2605 Coupe | Hillbank Motor Corporation

what I don't know:

who assembles the Shelby Aluminium Cars: Shelby?, Kirkham?, SPF? McCluskey?

who assembles the Shelby Glass Cars: Shelby?, HiTech? SPF? McCluskey?

are the SPF Glass Cars still beeing produced in South Africa at HiTech or do they have an own production Line in the US?

what VIN will the Bondurant Tribute Cars get?

and who is making the development and marketing for the Shelby continuation cars in the first place?

Oops, I see I did attach the incorrect article. Thanks Tony.
For the record these tribute cars, celebrating Bobs achievements, are most definitely SHELBYS and carry the coveted CSX numbers that only Shelby can issue. They were developed and are all built by Hi Tech in South Africa, who without none of this would have happened.
Thanks to all for the "likes". Appreciated. Most grateful to all that were willing to help in
making sure the details were correct, starting with the owner of 2345, Steve Volk.
Bob, we all raise our glasses to you. Well done ,Sir. Enjoy.

Ross,

Fantastic job, as always! Can’t wait to see them in person this week!

Best- Jeff

even the Aluminium cars?

I finally made it to the museum in Boulder and spent a lot of time with CSX2345. Steve Volk was there and gave me a personal and up close look. Looking at the 2 press release photos of the FIA tribute car it appears they went to great lengths to capture the details from when it was last raced, rather than how it was originally configured. That's pretty cool. Note the modified roll bar that a previous racer had removed the front bracing from, the mis-matched painted/natural wheels, the steering wheel, etc.

One thing that jumps out at me with all the Hi-Tech built FIA cars as of late is the front of the rear fender flares. In the photos I have seen they make a very sharp contour line and my ERA is a bit more "relaxed" in this area, which I prefer. Still, these cars were all different back in the 60s and banged up here and there. I like the concept of building a car based on a specified period in time. The only thing it needs is race patina (:

Troy,

My FIA has already gained some race patina and I imagine that it will gain a lot more this coming race season. I will take some pictures after a race this year and post them showing some after race rubber patina. The car is covered in rubber that has peeled off of cars onto the track and then thrown back up into the air. Luckily I have found to that WD-40 does a great job of removing rubber from paint without damaging the paint.

Jim

I can tell you that once the HiTech built fiberglass version of the Continuation Cobras are delivered to Hilbank they send them out to a subcontractor to have the Cobras built out to "roller" specification using SAI spec parts. Ask me how I know this.

Not to get off the topic, but 1795, 66gtk, are spot on about (even vintage) race patina. A perfect example of this is Pete Lovely's Ferrari TR, the car was brought back to a 100% Concours cond. Pete then vintage raced it for years, he never touched-up a rock chip, because it was done in the heat of the battle. The car then won it class at Pebble Beach, and no points were taken off because of the that fact. I did the same thing with my Alfa GTV, but at the end of the season (10-14 races) I did re-paint the nose, and start over for the next year.

I've known Volk for a good many years, both inside the Shelby museum and as related to his storage ventures (I'm an old storage guy). The Boulder museum is THE PLACE TO GO. You'll need multiple times (because they are only open 10-4 Sat) and don't overlook all of the pieces and parts behind the cars and hanging on the walls. There are lots of stories there!

Unwinding the Shelby American/SPF/HiTech/Hillbank is easiest to think of HiTech as a manufacturer of components used to build Superformance and Shelby Cobras. They have few if any interchangeable components, mostly screws, and no body parts! Hillbank serves as the primary distributor for both Superformance and Shelby American cars.

The Kirkham brothers (Tom is no longer there) build aluminum cars under their own name as well as (in recent years) supplying aluminum body cars to Shelby American. At one point they were different but now the difference is primarily what VIN number is assigned. The argument over whether the Kirkham cars became more Shelby-ish or vice versa is a religious argument not to be had here again.

Mike McClusky is not related to either set. He is independent Cobra restorer. He built some "Shelby Cobras" along with Carroll that are much storied and that story isn't, again, worth going into here. His relationship to the new CSX "resumption" cars (that get CSX3xxx serial numbers) is also party with Drew Serb. Alloy cars in that series came from both Serb/McClusky and Kirkhams with both being the assembly/manufacturing for DenBeste.

The "Mexico" connection was HST International and HST went out of business 5+ years ago. They were a second source of fiberglass cars and built somewhere between one and two handfuls of carbon fiber cars before they went out of business (my CSX4005LA was a HST cf car, it was beautiful and had I kept it would have gotten a repaint to Guardsman blue eventually).

But the reality is that every question you asked has 1000% more detail here already - just use SEARCH.

The VIN assignment sequence for the Bondurant cars is in the press release.

Shelby not offering CSX cars on their web site couldn't be farther from the truth.

And the answer to your last question is Shelby American for the CSX continuation cars (CSX4xxx, CSX6xxx, CSX7xxx, CSX8xxx, CSX9xxx(coupes). They still own the brand and own the CSX continuation business. The Shelby Foundation is responsible for the "resumption" cars, ie, those getting newly assigned CSX3xxx VINs (and they are not street legal since they come with an engine installed) The Bondurant cars press release says Shelby American so these CSX2xxx resumption cars appear to be Shelby American (and are rollers so street legal).

Tony, much appreciate your answer, but I am already aware of the points you mentioned,
for me there is still some actual confusion, you described the facts everyone knows but these facts doesn't correlate completely with the actual perception of things

who is assembling the Alu Cars NOW?
what is McCluskys part NOW (he assembled the actual Sebring Tribute Cars)
who is responsible for the development of the Tribute Cars (HiTech as Ross mentioned or Shelby as obvious assumption)?

Kirkham currently makes Shelby CSX alloy cars. This has been discussed many times here.

Is your assertion of McClusky's involvement first hand knowledge? It's not published widely who is involved in the processes. Shelby is the official source, who they use as subcontractors for final assembly isn't published (David's post on the CSX3xxx foundation cars was considered a no-no and the flow went quiet very suddenly. Those cars were from DenBeste and I heard from a usually reliable source that he wasn't pleased with the disclosure. There was two sources and who built any particular one wasn't a major consideration in the manufacturing, although I certainly would have had a preference had I bought one.) It was stated during the CSX3xxx "resumption" car period that McClusky had sold his interest to Serb so his involvement was thought to be more of a consulting role than an actual participant. Maybe you know more.

HiTech is a manufacturer. They will build anything for a profit (they manufacture vehicles for others besides Shelby and Superformance). Without Shelby saying specifically, it doesn't make any business sense for anyone to have initiated the Shelby Bondurant Tribute cars except for Shelby American and this would be right on schedule for them. They have initiated all of the previous tributes and are sold under their brand. In otherwords, it was a Pull rather than a Push. Things do sometimes seem to get fuzzy because of the hydra-headed involvement of Hillbank. Did Lance nudge Gary Patterson that it was time? Who knows. Gary's pretty on top of things though so I doubt it.

I do know that HiTech will build alloy cars, but they are considered special one-offs. I "missed it by that much" (like Maxwell Smart used to say) in getting the first new CSX9000 alloy car. It was built in SA totally by hand for a customer that backed out and surrendered a sizeable deposit and Lance offered it to me finished with engine for 200K. I asked him at SEMA if they would still do one and the answer was affirmative for 500K plus or minus. He did say they had done two (the one I almost got and one other.) Instead I got the Ford GT as the boss didn't like the coupe - just thought it was Cobra with a hard top.

thanks Tony, the McCluskey Information came from one of the Hillbank guys who wrote it on FB...