Thrill-seeking lawyer tests NTCC Mustang in grueling 2,000-mile race through Mexico
Above Photo, crowds welcoming racers packed the streets of towns along the 2,000-mile route of the La Carrera Panamericana race.
From The East Texas Journal, October 2015
By Hudson Old, Publisher
It was a dark and stormy night.
Young auto shop owner Tony Whitworth was not counting sheep, but the thousands in cash he’d raked in for the ’68 KR Shelby Mustang that had just won People’s Choice at the Dallas Car show.
Suddenly, the phone rang again!
“Don’t hang up this time,” the caller pleaded, urgently. “Really – I work for Carroll Shelby. He saw your car and wants you to work on some retired racers for him.”
Far away in time and space, the laser current of lawyer Rob Miller’s thoughts swirled in fantasy. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself in the cockpit of a Shelby Mustang. Racing on the cutting edge of steel nerves, primal response hard-wired to the feel of the car, a sweep of his eyes read the course rushing into view. The pitch of the engine whined high as he downshifted, steering into the sweet spot of an upcoming curve where death waited a thousand feet below along either side of the narrow ridge called Devil’s Backbone, one of the most dangerous stretches of the most dangerous road course in racing.
Somewhere near Pittsburg, Texas on an exquisite afternoon at a table draped in white linen, Northeast Texas Community College President Brad Johnson was considering a selection from the flight of wines presented for tasting when he met Rob Miller.
Could it be that years after his work caught the imagination of racing and design legend Carroll Shelby, then going on to work for an Indy-winning A.J. Foyt team, Tony Whitworth would come to teach at the NTCC Carroll Shelby Automotive Technology College where Lawyer Miller would finance student re-construction of a 50-year-old, race-modified Mustang he would drive into his dream of competing in the 7-day, 2000-mile Carrea Pan Americana after learning of the school when he met the college pres at the Pittsburg wine tasting?
See how neatly all the pieces fall together?
It was 1950 when Mexico celebrated completion of the 2,178 mile length of the Pan American Highway with a race intended to showcase the road from the Central American border with Guatemala to El Paso. Drivers from around the world represented every motor sport from Formula One to dragsters and stock cars.
“There were 28 fatalities in the first five years,” Mr. Miller said. Among the most competitive and most dangerous rides were open cockpit cars Carroll Shelby drove for Aston Martin.
“The way the story goes, a Mexican hill family found him with a broken shoulder and a wrecked car where he’d gone off a mountain,” Mr. Miller said. “They gave him brandy and carried him back up to the road where he’d had plenty of time to drink before the ambulance got there.”
In 1954 the race “lived up to its bloody reputation,” Wikipedia says. “A total of seven people were killed that year: four competitors, two spectators and one team crew member.”
The race was canceled, then resurrected in 1988 to once again become auto racing’s most punishing test.
With an adrenaline-junky Dallas attorney at the wheel, the NTCC Mustang was one of just over half of this year’s 85 entrants to finish the race. Google up Carrea Pan Americana and hit images to find the refuse of those that didn’t finish.
“Students working at the direction of Tony Whitworth built as tough and high performing car as any in the class,” said Mr. Miller, who spent the first two days ‘taking it easy” through transitional legs of the race before beginning to air it out in the speed sections.
Running a four speed manual transmission and a four barrel 289 with computer electronics holding it back to a top speed of 145 miles an hour, with NTCC grad Will Horne riding shotgun as navigator by the close of day four they’d overtaken 15 of the 20 cars in their class.
It’s a race the law wouldn’t allow in the states – but this is Mexico and the estimated 3 million spectators packing the streets of the towns as they passed serve as witness to the sense of national pride.
“It’s crazy, racing through ancient Spanish towns through crowds packing the sidewalks – no barricades,” he said. “Between towns we saw a boy who’d made a tow strap braided of barbed wire to pull a car into a garage for repairs. Whatever town we stopped in for the day, we were met with bands and throngs of people wanting autographs like we were racing royalty.”
Back at NTCC, the $60,000 plus lawyer Miller bankrolled built more than a car in the course of the year Mr. Whitworth directed the students who transformed it from an $800 car found on Craig’s List to a high performance racer that placed 9th in its class in the most grueling road race on the planet.
“Knowing that a mistake could cost your driver his life changes the way you see your work,” Mr. Whitworth said. “There’s an understanding of mechanical workings and then there’s a finesse that comes into the craft when you can’t be satisfied until everything’s as close to perfection as you can get it. What I want to teach is an understanding of the ethics required by the work. I like getting these guys when they’re young and watching them absorb the sense of responsibility they accept whether they’re putting drivers on the track or on the street.”
