SCG's Baja 1000 Victory Sold a Ton of Street-Legal Boots

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The recent success earned by Jim Glickenhaus and his specialist automobile manufacturing firm at the Baja 1000 off-road race has given the Connecticut-based outfit a nice boost to its bottom line. A modern recreation of Steve McQueen’s famous "Baja Boot" off-road racer, the Glickenhaus model humbled the Blue Oval in November when it was pitted against the only other vehicle entered in the Class 2 category: an equally-new factory Bronco R campaigned by Ford. The success of the race model, powered by a 450-hp LT4 V-8 from General Motors, made demand for the 650hp road-going Boot skyrocket, Glickenhaus said. "When we beat Ford at the Baja 1000, the next day we sold 50 percent of our 2020 productive capacity for those Glickenhaus Boots," he told Road & Track.

Along with the range of supercars offered under the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus banner, the company’s expanded production facility in Danbury, CT, will be busy filling orders for road and race cars in the new year. "We now have a situation where a small US-based manufacturer is growing to the point where we may sell 200 or 300 cars a year," Glickenhaus adds. "Which is not insignificant. But it's certainly a lot different than the major manufacturers. But, we have alliances. For example, we have a wonderful alliance with General Motors, who provided the engines for our Glickenhaus Boot, and they are providing the engines that we have in our reasonably priced sports car, our [SCG] 004, which will be a GT3, a GT2, and a lower price sports car that you can buy. It's a three seater, center driver, similar to the old McLaren F1." Glickenhaus credits the powertrain contract struck with GM for expediting his ability to become a significant player in the low-production-volume auto manufacturing market. "Because of the alliances that we have with them, we don't have to spend enormous amounts of money to develop and build our own engines," he said. "And also, in this regulatory environment that we're in, it's a lot easier for us to install an emissions-compliant engine from General Motors into our vehicles, and prove that it is emissions compliant as installed, than it would be for us to start from ground zero, and design, engineer, and build engines." image SCG The Boot's remarkable result in Baja will resonate as one of the brand's finest achievements—until Glickenhaus can watch his first SCG 007 LMP racer turn laps next year in the FIA World Endurance Championship's new Hypercar class. "This was a very emotional experience," he admitted. "I mean, owning Steve McQueen's original Baja Boot and driving it in the Baja on the race course, and just thinking about that—that vehicle raced from 1967 to 1984, and it won the Baja 500, and it was the muse for Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He was sent by Sports Illustrated magazine to cover the Mint 400 and the Boot was in it. And he wrote about it, and when Sports Illustrated got the manuscript, which was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I'm not sure they really thought it was coverage of the race. Because in the middle of the book he says, 'Who won? Maybe nobody.' "But they still published it. But, to me all of that history came streaming back and the work of Vic Hikey who signed the Lunar Rover and the Boot, and the Hummer H1, and all of the drivers who had done it.... The great thing is we were able to use some of that original engineering, make it a little bit more modern, but we could still stand and deliver, in a vehicle that we drove from LA down to the Baja. The road version, we tested and put on 2500 miles on the race course, [and] drove it home. It was just a very memorable thing. And that's what we do at Glickenhaus. And that's what our customers like."