I started this set of pages several years ago on suggestions from my mother, Donna of DonaBee Web Productions. I've owned my Shelby Cobra Mustang GT 350 for over 15 years. During those years, in my restoration process, I had collected not only a large amount of information on the Shelby cars but also a fascination with Carroll Shelby, his cars and the people involved with his projects.

Along the path, I met Nicky Wright, international photographer. Nicky was looking for some Mustangs to shoot for a book project he had gotten from a publisher. Nicky had many other car books under his belt, now his project was Ford Mustangs. I'm not too sure he knew very much about them at the time. Anyway, he happened to be at the ACD Museum in Auburn, Indiana asking for some suggestions. As it would happen, the current President of The Old Fort Mustangers, the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Mustang club lived across the street from the Museum. And the people at the ACD Museum knew Billy Pogue. The club provided Nicky with all the Mustangs he needed, plus some. The point of all this is to say, Nicky became a good friend. One day in a conversation, I proposed to him that he do a book on the cars of Carroll Shelby. I had plenty of information and history. I knew people with cars. He agreed and said he would propose it to his publishers. I started writing the book. But he didn't get a publisher for the book. Too small of a market they said. I had most of the book written. Much of it ended up on the pages of the club newsletter, Ponytalk. Which is why you see it referred to on some of the pages. My buddy, Biff Hitzeman, also wrote about the Shelby cars for Ponytalk and some of his material is also included here.

Some years later, Donabee and I had gotten involved with web pages. We built hicksvilleusa.com, for my home town. Every small town needs a web page, right. That was three years ago. I'm not sure to this day if the rest of that town agrees yet or even understands the significance. Anyway, one day she said I should put my Shelby book on the net. Sounded like a good idea to me. I bought the domain name, thecarsource.com. That wasn't my first choice of names. It was somewhere near the bottom of the list. Actually its a combination of several names that were already taken. So thecarsource.com was born.

In the beginning I had aspirations of having a site that had to do with all kinds of cars and car stuff. I would start with the Shelby cars. As the weeks went by and I realized what an effort this was, I narrowed the focus to performance cars. I was going to have Ferraris, Porsches, Mustangs, Camaro & Firebirds, GTOs, AMXs, etc. I like them all. Now years down the road, I'm still working on the Shelby Cars. I have decided to expand it beyond the Shelby cars to include all performance Fords. With a real strong Shelby section. That doesn't mean if you have a site or the ambition and skill to build a web site for Camaros that you can't be included on this site. I would welcome that. It means I am going to spend my time on cars powered by Ford.

One of the things I've learned it even though it is pretty inexpensive to get started, except for the time required, it costs money to have people look at your pages. The bandwidth for all those pictures started to mount up. Price of success. So this hobby has begun to cost me more and more out of my pocket. So the game plan is changing. The carsource.com will still be a Ford powered site, but it will get better and better. We are getting much better at building web pages. Build 100's of them and you figure out things. Plus I have a number of clients in that business who are good resources to me. We have a great ISP, saa.net, to work with. In addition to watching what is going on in the industry and trying to stay close to up with it, we added a new relationship. Nicky knows a lot of people and one of his contacts is a key person at NATMUS, The National Automobile and Truck Museum of the United States. Nicky has his US headquarters there now. (Nicky is English.) And Donabee Web Productions is doing their web site. We are going to establish a joint "Car Stuff" e-commerce site. That is in process as we speak. The "For Sale and Wanted" section of the carsource.com will be expanded. If you've looked at it recently, there have been major changes in it. It will get better and better. I looking for a better way to do that. I am talking to vendors now to make it self administered. I may change a small fee to post ads there. It won't be much and it will be secure. I need some revenue to maintain this site. It has all been out of my pocket so far. I am looking at a line of TheCarSource.com clothing. The first jackets turned out real nice. Except the best car image the shop had in their computer embroidery machine was a 'Vette. They are nice jackets. The price is right. Need Ford images, though. Working on that. It was a small shop in Hicksville, Ohio. What can I say. I want to be able to offer a jacket with TheCarSource.com across the back with the car of your choice under that. Your name on the front. Want to offer t-shirts, shirts & hats, too. Bigger, better, more services, more cars, more pictures, new products.

Earlier this last week in January, 2000, I got some bad news. My long time friend, Nicky Wright, died while visiting his family in England.  Nicky's death is more than a than just bad news.  We had a lot of great things planned. It leaves some questions as to the future of his work. The CarSource.com team and NATMUS group are discussing how to carry on his work. He left behind some minor children. Nicky also left behind over 100,000, that's the right number of 0's, images of cars and people. We intend to further his plans to keep him famous and help his children. Watch his web site and this one for details. If you are doing a book on cars, or an auto calendar or need pictures for a project you are publishing, contact either me or Donabee. All images are professional taken by Nicky over the years and are available for lease.

July 2002

CarMemories.com is now a real popular site. It has over 4000 car pics in it. We continue to develop it to make it a car community. We can host club car galleries as well as members cars and stories. Check it out if you haven't.