Brad Sokoly counted down from five as more than 90 people reached for their ignition keys and put their right foot to the floor. And when he yelled "Start your engines!" more than 90 V8s lit up at once as a shiver shot down his spine. 

 

Screaming at the top of piston-driven lungs, these Shelby Mustangs and rare supercars such as the Ford GT and Shelby Super Snake fired up a tribute to a man many have grown to obsess about.

 

Shelby lovers united by the hundreds last Saturday, Feb. 23, drawn together by the love of wide-open exhaust pipes and rip-your-head-off acceleration, the perfect proportion of which they swear only their Shelbys can provide.

 

Sokoly's dream of gathering the largest group of rare Shelby cars ever had come true. And it all happened right here in the Black Hammock, a few turns out of Oviedo, down a road more gravel than asphalt, in the middle of a horse farm.

 

"It's just like how Carroll Shelby started," Sokoly said, recalling the legend of the racecar privateer turned automaker, who got his start dropping oven-sized Ford engines with two cylinders too many into tiny British roadsters, and doing it all on his farm.

 

Now his company is pumping out a new generation of heavily reconstructed Mustangs, ranging from 319-horsepower street cars to 725-horsepower drag-race monsters. That new blood, brought to life for the first time with 2007-model-year cars, was brought into existence by Team Shelby and Shelby himself to reignite the iconic car of the 1960s. Most of the cars at Saturday's show were less than two years old. The first car Shelby sold is about to turn 50. 

 

Shelby himself was conspicuously absent from the largest gathering of his cars ever put together. Fewer Shelby cars were present for Shelby's 85th birthday party on Jan. 11 in Las Vegas than there were darkening the grass of Sokoly's front yard last Saturday. 

 

The revelers made a cake for Shelby anyway, eating it in his absence next to a semi truck full of catered food.

 

"We're hoping he'll be here next year," event organizer Don Donelson said. In his place came the two leaders of Team Shelby, the brand's official car club. 

 

Robert Lane and Sharon Elliot traveled from Dearborn, Mich., for the event, but they didn't get the award for longest distance traveled. That went to a Shelby owner who drove his car all the way from Texas. 

 

Just a few feet away from a pasture fence, the whine of a supercharger shot up to level 10 as Mike Pigford's GT500 spun the rollers of a mobile dynamometer to the tune of 520 horsepower churning from the back tires. All he could do was smile. 

 

"When I thought how I'd want to build my ideal Mustang, and then I saw this, I knew I had to have it," he said. "It's everything I'd want. I'll keep it forever."