Riding in Vince LaViolette’s Personal Shelby Development Mule…And Almost Crashing
The untold story of my first assignment in the field as an editor for HOT ROD.
It wasn’t my fault; I was riding passenger—but maybe my lack of emotion made Vince LaViolette, Vice President of Production and R&D at Shelby American, want to push his personal Shelby Super Snake development car beyond its limits. And I thought he was just messing with me.
Back in the early spring of 2021, when the world was just beginning to reopen, Shelby American sent out a press release teasing the never-done-by-Shelby-before Speedster tonneau cover. I had just been promoted from web production editor to staff editor at HOT ROD and was chomping at the bit to get out in the field as a real automotive journalist. The unveil of the new model from Shelby American was to take place at the recently renovated and renamed Radford Racing School in Chandler, Arizona, formerly Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving, possibly the best high-performance driving school in the world.
Seeing the unveil was great, getting special attention as the biggest media player there was even better, but when Vince and President of Shelby American Gary Patterson started taking the Team Shelby members (an 80,000+ member club of Shelby vehicle owners) around Radford’s all-new track for hot laps, guess who got the first go-round? This guy!
Quick aside about Shelby American-built Mustangs versus Ford-built Shelby Mustangs—the ones from Ford aren’t technically Shelby cars as they lack the Shelby American serial number. If you want a real-deal Shelby Mustang (or pickup truck) it must come from Shelby American in Las Vegas, otherwise it’s technically just a fancy Ford.
Riding shotgun in an 850 hp, fully adjustable Penske coil-over-equipped, ridiculously sticky-tired Shelby Super Snake wasn’t as dynamic as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, 0-100 acceleration (60 MPH went by too quickly to register) was kick-in-the-ass fun, the exhaust note was raucous and exhilarating, but Vince has those Shelby Mustangs so well-sorted they ride like any other Mustang—just a lot faster in every way.
Growing up with a dad who went to Skip Barber Racing School and threw his completely-stock 1987 Nissan Hardbody around turns like it was his old 1973 Porsche 911 probably had a tempering effect on my reaction to vigorous driving, too. Throw in my own love for extreme sports (I shall mention again I grew up riding motocross with dad) meant ripping around Radford with Vince felt like just another trip in a regular car. Vince LaViolette isn’t just a self-taught engineer, mind you, he’s also a successful race car driver and Shelby’s lead development driver; he knows how to put the hammer down.
Radford also isn’t a huge track, being designed to teach students how weight transfer affects handling more than, “look how fast we go on the front straight.” After the first couple laps of pulling well-over 1g in many of the turns and hitting a brisk 115 MPH on the longest straight, Vince must not have been getting the reaction he wanted, especially when this shit of a green-horn journalist is asking him questions like we were standing next to the car the whole time. So, Vince starts to get fancy, letting the rear end come out a little in turns. But the long track at Radford isn’t all new (Radford’s track can be reconfigured into multiple layouts with cones blocking alternate routes), it utilizes the return road of the drag strip at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park (where Radford is located) for one of the last turns before getting back onto the new portions of the track.
The drag strip’s return road was not new, by any means. It was sunbaked, cracked, and gravelly and every time we went through that section Vince complained about what it was doing to his tires and his car. That’s when the real fun happened; Vince had been drifting out of nearly every turn on our third lap together and when we hit the chewed-up return road and the rear end started to come out more than in any previous turn, I thought Shelby’s lead development driver was simply demonstrating that he had the skill to join the Formula Drift circuit…then he braced and yelled, “no No NOO!!” right before we 180’d and came to a screeching halt about nine-inches from the concrete barrier. I was laughing the whole time. Gary Patterson pulled up a moment later in his development Super Snake and asked, “did any poo come out!?” I swear my pants were clean!
I could not have asked for a better first experience in the field, but I don’t think Mr. LaViolette appreciated my mentioning the incident in a thank you email the following Monday. Gary laughed, though. Read more of my MotorTrend archives at MotorTrend.com/staff/Jordon-Scott and Stay Motivated!