....and here is why its important.
I was poking around the Petersen Publishing online archive and found a series of pictures of 1969 Shelbys taken in October 1968. Well there weren't many cars around at that time. I was able to identify the location from the photos. They were taken at Orange County International Raceway. The event was the west coast unveiling of the 1969 Shelby.
The Gulfstream Aqua car in this picture has the same license plate (sorry its cut off) in this picture as the cars on the Peterson site. This indicated to me the picture was likely taken at the same time.
Even better I was able to identify all the cars present in the photos. Turns out they were preproduction cars! Most did not even have Shelby serial numbers!