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Me and my Shadow supercar

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For good or ill my young adulthood was heavily influenced by my first car.

We transformed one another.

It seems I qualified as a geek early on. An artistic geek, among other things. Who much affected by his peers and circumstances soon began brainstorming ways to change the looks of his car...and more...

| How Shadowfast looked prior to most of his supercar transformation |

| Sketches#1 | Sketches#2 | Sketches#3 | Sketches#4 | Sketches#5 |
| Interior-related concept sketches |
| RARE PHOTOS! |
| WALLPAPERS! |

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I re-designed and re-built him, much like the government did to Steve Austin, the bionic hero of the Six Million Dollar Man TV series.

Or at least I did what I could on a shoe-string budget. My personal fortune of the time was much closer to six dollars than six million.

I learned a LOT along the way. About cars, tools, junkstorming, and much much more.

Though I didn't realize it back then, I was basically building a tougher and better handling version of the Shelby GT-350s of the period. At least in terms of the core components and performance specs. So starting off with one of those would have made the job easier...

But I wasn't only aiming for a car with great performance on both straight and curvy roads. I also wanted a car with some neat tricks of its own in regards to frustrating particularly nasty or annoying pursuers. Stuff along the lines of the Batmobile or Bond cars of feature film fame-- but suitable for the Real World rather than mere fantasy indulgence.

What actual personal experiences could possibly have motivated me to incorporate such stuff into my car? To find out you can read The bothers of invention: The evolution of Shadow's gadgetry. And check out the stories from our earliest days together in The supercar driver logs.

In light of all these modifications and new capabilities (many of them unique to Shadow even to this day) I feel plenty justified to classify Shadowfast as a supercar of his era-- maybe even one of the top supercars of all time. Because he could do some things back then even million dollar cars bought by the rich today cannot. Sorry Jay Leno! And I probably never had more than a total of a few thousand dollars sunk into him altogether (this was in the 1970s).

I knew that no matter what I did to Shadow, a lot also depended on me the driver in regards to what he could or could not do. So I taught myself expert techniques in often used high speed maneuvers suitable for a front-engined, rear wheel drive auto like Shadow. Where'd my instruction come from? Car magazines of the time gave plenty of info on such things (if you were sufficiently brave (or foolhardy?) to try them). And there were plenty of places to practice the techniques around my home town. As well as plenty of competitors to pit myself against. Of course that's not to say I didn't make mistakes-- but keep in mind there can be a huge difference between a supercar owned by someone who doesn't know how to drive it, and one with an owner who does. Simply buying the most expensive Ferrari or whatever on the planet won't help you much in a real world contest with a home-grown supercar equipped with its own expert driver. And if that driver is also the designer and builder of their car, well, even Enzo Ferrari himself might have said give up while you can! Ha, ha.

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But nothing lasts forever. So eventually my partnership with Shadow came to an end. And I got out of the supercar building and driving business altogether. For further details relating to the story of Shadow's end and why I quit hot rodding, you can click here.

I created this page to serve as a handy index or portal to all my Shadow-related pages on-site. I hope you enjoy it!

Rare photo of a one-of-a-kind black Mustang super car from the 1970s
An extremely rare photograph of Shadow (left), parked next to a more conventionally equipped 1970 Mustang. Here Shadow's flexible lower air dam has been removed due to narrow streets and high curbs at my university campus.

Rare close up photo of a near-completed black Mustang supercar
A photo of Shadowfast, near three-quarter front view (sorry for the poor photo quality, but only three photos exist as of 2007!). This pic too shows Shadow without his lower air dam. Though taken maybe 150 miles from college, it may have been shot within weeks of the first photo time-wise.

Other notable supercars:


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