I took some time off as a magazine writer when CS asked me to come work for him in the Shelby Dakota production and early Viper development era.
Several of those cars in the photos I have driven. The white Dakota with the unique stripes had a hot rodded 360 V8 that we built for development of a 360 (versus the 318 that made it to production.) It was later beefed some more as a magazine test car. Fun machine. I remember a Car Craft drag test/shootout of factory "toy box" vehicles in 1989.
In that era, Shelby Automobiles also was working on a twin-turbo 318 Dakota that was painted red. Wonder what happened to it.
A Pantera that CS drove had a Lotus-head Chrysler 2.2 turbo in it, when I was there. Not sure if this is the same car in the photo.
The Series 1 performance numbers referred to in the Yahoo article are for a one-off supercharged version that Shelby built for a Motor Trend shootout, when I was at that magazine. (I don't know if that was S/N 001 or not, although I also drove the very early Series 1 engineering cars.) The supercharged car was one of Gary Patterson's early "get 'er done" projects for the guys in the Shelby shop. Gary was the only one crazy enough to drive it in the top speed tests. That car could be a bit...er...treacherous. No way that a stock naturally-aspirated Series 1 could do 0-60 in 3.2 sec, or 175 mph top speed. The little Aurora engine needed to be breathed on.
Fun times. Will be interesting to see what the auction pulls.