Okay to summarize so far, we were able to get the dates from Petersen Publishing along with the item numbers of the shots. The photographer was Eric Dahlquist.
Along with a memo in the SAAC archives we figured out this was the west coast introduction of the 1969 Shelby. The pictures revealed the location as Orange County International Raceway.
After sorting all the pictures it was found three of the four cars had California license plates ;
One of the GT500 fastbacks is "VSA-346"
The GT500 convertible is "XTX-387"
The GT350 convertible is "XRJ-441"
The other GT500 did not have a California plate, but rather a generic "1969" plate. In another photo shoot, it is shown with a California manufacturer's plate "6J-014".
This was important because that car had been previously suspected of being a pre-production (no Shelby number) car.
Eric Dahlquist was senior editor of Motor Trend in '69-ish. He later became editor, then was fired a couple of years after that for awarding the horrible Citroen SM as Car of the Year.
He later got into automotive PR and opened the Vista Group agency in Sherman Oaks, CA. He was primarily responsible for getting Pontiacs, GMC trucks and Mercedes into movies and TV. He had tons of inside stories about the car and TV/movie businesses. Died a few years ago. Good guy.
Crossboss Scott: Didn't you mention that you knew him?
