The Ultimate Shelby Dodge

The Shelby CAN AM by Brian Bennett

My background is road racing, so I suppose my bias toward the car as the ultimate Shelby Dodge is understandable. Carroll Shelby was a road racer, carving out a place in history both with his skills as a driver and as a car builder. Sometime before 1990 (and the end of the “Whittier” era), Mr. Shelby ironed out plans of a joint venture with the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) to produce a “spec” car to run in both amateur “Club Racing” and, a bit later, a stand-alone PRO Series in a mega-horsepower version of the same car.

 

The Shelby CAN AM (SCA) was then designed and built to accommodate a 500 HP V-6 engine, and to run at speeds of up to 200 mph. The frame (which was designed by David Bruns), transaxle and brakes are all quite stout. This resulted in a large and relatively heavy race car, but since it was made to compete against only itself in a “spec” class, those concessions contributed towards driver safety. The wedge-shaped body was designed by the legendary Pete Brock, with extensive wind tunnel testing. The “Club Racing” version of the SCA was powered by a 3.3L (pushrod) 60 degree Dodge V-6, that developed 255HP at 6800 rpm.

 

It had a cast iron block with Shelby-tuned cast aluminum heads, Mahle forged pistons, Carrillo steel rods, manifold port throttle body fuel injection, a dry sump lubrication system and tuned headers. The 11:1CR engine was “sealed” with tamper-proof medallions and rebuilds were done only by Shelby . It was mated to a purpose-built Weismann 4-speed transaxle that was a stressed chassis member, supporting the rear suspension and wing. The suspension utilized upper & lower unequal length tubular steel A-arms, with adjustable hollow F&R anti-roll bars and aluminum uprights. The brakes were JFZ 4-wheel multi-piston calipers and ventilated 12.8” discs all around. The wheels are DuraLight 16X11 fronts and 16X12 rears wearing 23.5X10.5 and 25.0X13.0 Goodyear slicks, respectively. This package resulted in overall dimensions of 77.5” width, 41.0” height, 168.5” length (including rear wing) and an 1820lb. wet weight. This is one big beast of a car! 

The idea was to replicate the other rather successful SCCA “spec” car program (then known as Sports Renault----now as Spec Racer Ford), but move it up a notch so as to be the “vehicle” of advancement towards a PRO career for talented but often underfunded racers. Carroll Shelby was always looking out for the underdog ! The plan was to build 200 cars, each with it’s own numbered Shelby “dash plaque”. This would allow decent sized SCA Club racing fields, and still enable the Shelby PRO Series to run simultaneously, with the only alteration to the car being the swapping of a gnarly 500HP mill into the chassis and some aero tweaks. For various reasons, only 76 cars were ever made, and this surely had a crippling effect on the entire program.

Why so few? Some people cite the cost of the car as the primary reason. It came shipped to your door from Shelby on a pallet for the sum of $35,000. Then you had to spend 100+ hours or so putting the car together. Truth be told, cost alone does not really explain it because compared to the other types of cars available at that level of racing it was spot-on. It bugged Mr. Shelby no end but; racing is expensive!  This class was to at least provide a level playing field where driver talent ,not wallet size, carried the day. The effect was that those who bought the cars had a choice to make; run the car in SCCA Club (amateur) events and hope you do well and get noticed, or go to the PRO Series where the costs of racing weren’t much higher but the reward potential was greater. 

 

Also, the 500HP V-6 engine concept for the PRO Series was dropped, so they ran in either place as identical cars. This eliminated the largest possible barrier towards those trying to decide which path (amateur vs: PRO) to take, and with only 76 cars the Club racing program slowly dried up. >From their debut “exhibition” race at the 1990 SCCA Runoffs at Road Atlanta, the Club Series whimpered to a close at the 1996 SCCA Runoffs at Mid-Ohio with only 3 cars competing for their last amateur National Championship. 

 

Fortunately, the Shelby PRO Series was much more successful and had a good run with some very tight racing. When it ended, Shelby and the SCCA parted company and the cars became orphans. With the PRO Series gone, and the SCCA Club class dissolved for lack of participation the cars useful life had effectively been ended. Many just sat in the back of race shops and garages across the country. 

A gentleman named Wally Gerhardt purchased the inventory, rights and transporter. from Shelby with the hopes of keeping the cars alive and racing through his facility in Illinois called Shelby Racing Promotions. Currently, 29 of the cars have been shipped to South Africa to be raced in a series over there; rebodied to look like WSC cars and called Vodacom Sports Prototypes (VSP’s.) 

 

My wife Judi and I stumbled onto our car (chassis #37) through a friend who had seen it being stored under a tarp. The car had been crashed; the owner, Chris Winkler, had someone else driving it at the time, and partially repaired but was for sale. Judi and I did a quick “sanity check” and bought it anyway. That was March of 1998, and we have been slowly trying to learn as much as we can about how to set the bugger up for racing (many thanks to Ed Rawles), and going through it bolt-by-bolt. We purchased some extra sets of original bodywork from the individual that is exporting them to South Africa, and we’ve fit fresh panels to the car. 

 

The good news is that the SCCA has now classified the Shelby CAN AM in their C Sports Racer (CSR) category, so they are eligible to compete again on a Regional and National level. We have no ambitious plans, mostly just to have some fun at our local track Waterford Hills in Clarkston, Michigan Wish us luck!