Shelby Focus BY DAVID E. DAVIS, JR. Bill Neale’s illustration of his own replica Shelby Mustang GT350 is reproduced on this page, in a color close to the Terlingua Racing Team hue Carroll Shelby used to call “Godawful Yellow.” Bill’s paintings and illustrations have made him famous, and I’m proud that he’s been willing to call me his friend through countless adventures going back to the earliest Sixties. The reference above to “antique military aircraft” was lifted from one of his mailers for the Terlingua Chili Cook-Off. That may have been the chili cook-off where I was introduced to somebody’s cousins by marriage who were pulling a smallish Airstream trailer with a new Pontiac Catalina. They were good ol’ boys, and I was delighted to have a bed where strange drunks couldn’t barf on me. Late that night, they were told of a house of ill repute across the border in nearby Ojinaga, Mexico. As I slept in the Airstream, they unhooked the Pontiac and disappeared into the night. I awoke the next morning with a plane to catch. Since they were nowhere to be found, I started hitchhiking toward Midland, Texas. Bill Neale's Illustration of his replica GT350. I met Bill Neale through Carroll Shelby. We have hunted and camped together everywhere from the Texas Big Bend Country to Ontario’s duck flyways ever since. Cars and Carroll Shelby and Carroll’s adventures with organ transplants and marriages are the glue that holds our friendship together. Now there’s a rumor skittering around the corridors at the Ford Motor Company, to wit: The latest Ford Focus and Fiesta are turning out to be paragons of automotive virtue, and management has expressed interest in a pocket rocket based on the next Focus or Fiesta platform. There’s a growing belief that the startling performance that is standard equipment in any Shelby Mustang is also lurking in a properly breathed-upon Shelby Focus. The potential for Shelby to create a latter-day GLH (“Goes Like Hell”) based on his experience doing a similar car for Chrysler in 1982 is a given. I love the idea, and I can’t wait to drive the prototype. I hope they do one in Terlingua livery. Link to Car and Driver
