Steed gets lucrative offers at least once a year from people who want to buy the car from him, but he says he's having too much fun with it to let it go.

The '65 Shelbys, according to the Madsens, are going for more than $300,000 at auction.

Steve Bowman lives in Edmonds, Wash., and bought his Bennett-Shelby in 1973. He said he was no expert on Shelbys when he saw the Shelby advertised in a local newspaper and even argued with the seller about the car's particulars. "I thought the first year for the Shelby was 1966." He does not know the pedigree of his car and is anxious to find anyone, perhaps someone visiting the Shelby event in Utah this weekend, who can help him piece together the history of his car.

He also doesn't remember giving a ride to a kid who was riding a motorcycle with a friend and flagged Bowman down one day.

That kid is Mark Hovander, who also earnestly sought a '65 Shelby and ran an ad in a car magazine looking for one. Utahn Jeff Smith, the second owner of one of the Utah Shelbys, saw the ad and called Hovander. "I think I have the car for you, but I don't know if I want to sell it," Hovander said Smith told him.

The two corresponded "not just about the car but about life in general" for 13 years before Smith decided to sell his Shelby to Hovander in 1998. By then it had been partially dismantled and in storage for many years with parts scattered among several of Smith's garages.

"I finally found all of the parts except the radiator and the drive shaft and decided to buy it," Hovander said.

Hovander's car has undergone a meticulous restoration. He still pushes the car on and off its transit trailer because the car's newly rebuilt engine hasn't completed its initial break-in process.

Hovander said he promised some time ago to fly Smith to Washington to see the car when the restoration was complete. Now that the car is back in Utah, he plans on giving Smith a showing this weekend.

Many of the Shelby owners in town for the weekend are staying at the Little America Hotel, which has a parking lot on the property the Bennett Ford dealership stood on. The Utah Shelbys are being parked there this weekend, which puts them back on the same lot where they were originally sold, Janice Madsen said.

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E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com