classic car

A month or two ago, an article showed up in the local paper about a Mustang restoration place in Howard, which is a town in my area. At first I thought "It's probably just a sales place with cheap frame-on restorations available", but as I read on, it said that this place, just 3.5 miles from my home, is the most coveted, premiere Shelby and Boss restoration place in the world! To think, in a small, unremarkable warehouse in little, 13,000 population Howard, WI, there could be a place like this was just amazing for me.
But for a while I just forgot about it; with searching for a project and maintaining blog updates I was pretty much taken up. I finally remembered the place yesterday afternoon, and ventured there today. The place, called Shelby Parts and Restoration, is situated on a small road that has all one-story auto shops and small outposts of other mechanical companies and would be utterly unremarkable to look at had it not been for a worn sign and a rusted hulk in the parking lot. But it was the right address and had the right name, so we parked and got out.
At first I thought I was going to be disappointed. The rusty 'Stang in the parking lot looked like a regular Ford Mustang and wasn't even a fastback. But the moment we stepped into the warehouse, I was in heaven. Sitting right in front of me was the reason this place is known as the best Shelby restorer on Earth. A completely perfect, 100-point GT500 was on the car lift, with its underside just as utterly perfect as the rest of the car. On the driver-side sun visor there was a signature in silver marker. I didn't have to read it to know whose autograph it was. Carroll Shelby. In another corner of the shop there was an extremely rare Boss 429, which can and will go for much more than a 302 at auction any day. You have no idea what it was like to be in the presence of cars so legendary and so perfect, so like a desert cobra ready to strike. There were a couple of other rare Mustangs in the middle of restoration and under covers for the moment, though on one the rear of the car, with the word SHELBY across it, was visible and made my heart beat even a little faster, if that was even possible by that point.
We spoke to the guy, by the name of Jesse, who was working there that day, and he told us about the place and the cars as we walked around and stared at them. He told us about some of his customers, such as Carroll Shelby himself when he wanted to sell his '69 GT500 Convertible at auction. It was amazing the amount of history in cars, parts, and papers there was there. I would've taken a million photos for you guys, if it hadn't have been for me (very stupidly, I'll admit) forgetting my camera at home. But this place is absolutely amazing, and to think it was right by my home all this time without me ever knowing is even more amazing. The photo is of a 1970 Shelby GT350 restored by them, found at www.carcollectorclassifieds.com, and does not at all do any justice to the absolute quality in these completely perfect cars. It's mind blowing. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have used so many superlatives two sentences ago (sorry, random point there).