These days, if champion athletes invest wisely and control their spending, they can lead long post-career lives of privilege and luxury. Race-winning cars, on the other hand, don’t get to decide how to live out the rest of their days, no matter how many checkered flags they’ve had waved at them.
For instance, look at Ford GT40 chassis number P/1046. It defeated Ferrari to win the Le Mans endurance race in 1966. Instead of being lovingly preserved in a museum somewhere to be worshipped by racing fans, it was subsequently used as a transmission test mule, wrecked at Daytona, and turned into a street car.
Luckily, RK Motors in Charlotte, North Carolina has a more honorable retirement plan in mind for this motorsports legend. Since early last year, it’s been repairing, replacing, or refinishing every fiberglass body panel and every nut and bolt of P/1046 in an effort to ready it for showing at the 2016 Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance. It’s been stripped down to its monocoque chassis, which has received a fresh coat of period-correct green zinc chromate primer. All new parts are being checked against photos of the hardware in the GT40 back in 1966. They’re even being copied from original pieces to keep thicknesses and weights accurate.
Let’s hope that, if the next Ford GT racecar wins Le Mans, it will lead an easier life than P/1046 once did after its racing career is over.
Derek Shiekhi's father raised him on cars. As a boy, Derek accompanied his dad as he bought classics such as post-WWII GM trucks and early Ford Mustang convertibles.
After loving cars for years and getting a bachelor's degree in Business Management, Derek decided to get an associate degree in journalism. His networking put him in contact with the editor of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper, who hired him to write freelance about automotive culture and events in Austin, Texas in 2013. One particular story led to him getting a certificate for learning the foundations of road racing.
While watching TV with his parents one fateful evening, he saw a commercial that changed his life. In it, Jeep touted the Wrangler as the Texas Auto Writers Association's "SUV of Texas." Derek knew he had to join the organization if he was going to advance as an automotive writer. He joined the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) in 2014 and was fortunate to meet several nice people who connected him to the representatives of several automakers and the people who could give him access to press vehicles (the first one he ever got the keys to was a Lexus LX 570). He's now a regular at TAWA's two main events: the Texas Auto Roundup in the spring and the Texas Truck Rodeo in the fall.
Over the past several years, Derek has learned how to drive off-road in various four-wheel-drive SUVs (he even camped out for two nights in a Land Rover), and driven around various tracks in hot hatches, muscle cars, and exotics. Several of his pieces, including his article about the 2015 Ford F-150 being crowned TAWA's 2014 "Truck of Texas" and his review of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, have won awards in TAWA's annual Excellence in Craft Competition. Last year, his JK Forum profile of Wagonmaster, a business that restores Jeep Wagoneers, won prizes in TAWA’s signature writing contest and its pickup- and SUV-focused Texas Truck Invitational.
