Jacques Shelton

The Island Kid Who Chased His Dream And Caught It.

I met Jacques at the Amelia Cruizer’s Fall Car Show. At the time, he was maybe a third of the way into a once-in-a-lifetime sequence of events. I don’t think he could envision what was going to come his way, and it was all based on a childhood dream about a car that had once been a poster on his wall.

I was walking down Centre Street, the main display lineup of vehicles. It was the standard car show; many of the entries I had seen in previous years, other shows, or just around the island. As I was leaving, I turned down a side street, and there, about three cars back, was a white Lamborghini Countach. It was almost like an afterthought. The star of the show—a rarity—was hiding around the corner.

Jacques was there, proud owner, smiling and talking to one person after the next about the Lambo. People stopped in disbelief. He could hear the conversations as they walked up: “That’s a kit car. It can’t be the real thing, is it?” and as they got closer, “It is the real thing!” I took a few pictures while I waited for the crowd to clear a little so I could talk about the car, the story behind it, and the story behind him.

He is a true island kid. Born and raised on Amelia Island, it has been woven into the fabric of his life. He grew up on the south end of the island at a time when it was still acreage and horse ranches—more marsh than golf course. He rode horses on his neighbor’s property and tore around on his go-kart. “Regular kid stuff,” he told me.

By the age of nine he was surfing. Living on an island tends to make people either hate or love the water. He became the latter. His dad bought a longboard from an ad in the back of a magazine, and it was shipped across the country from Santa Cruz. As a kid, Jacques tried to surf on it with little luck. As an adult, he had the board repaired, waxed it up, and took it out into the surf. “It surfs horrifically bad; it’s heavy, it doesn’t turn,” he laughs now. “To the point where I thought it was just me when I was a kid. I didn’t have a reference, but I was like, This is a lot more difficult than I thought.”

How did he get into cars? “I think it was almost at birth,” he says. “I would look at cars while riding in the car. I remember at age five I’d just be enamored with wheel design or shapes—just anything that was cool and wasn’t a Honda Civic. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as it was unique. ’70s sports cars—great cars in the ’70s and ’80s. I love all of them, and of course supercars.”

Like a lot of kids, he made terrible financial decisions in the name of horsepower. Anytime he had a little money, he bought a different car. There was one car, though, that wasn’t just a car. It was the car.

The Lamborghini Countach.

The poster car.

He first found the Lamborghini poster, probably from a book fair around ’85 or ’87. White paint, white wheels, white interior—triple white. Wall Street white, Miami white. Everything a kid on a quiet island could only imagine. “I would stare at that poster for hours,” he says. “I was enamored with every bit of it.” He still has the poster. It stayed a fantasy for decades. Even as his career grew and real cars came and went, the Countach stayed in that unreachable category.

Then one day, the car from the wall showed up in front of him when he wasn’t expecting it. A triple-white 1987 Lamborghini Countach 5000S came up for auction on Bring a Trailer. He had just finished a long, respectable, distinguished career, including two years in the Army in Iraq.

“You’re at a point in life where you could make this happen,” he told himself. “You’d have to stretch. But you could do it.”

He watched the auction. On the last day, he made the decision: unless the bidding went completely insane, he was in. It got close enough to insane as you’d want to get. But he won. What came next wasn’t just a transaction; it was an adventure.

The Countach was in Chicago, tucked away in a private showroom. Ferraris worth more than most neighborhoods sat on either side of it. They had kept the Lambo under a cover, waiting. He flew up with a simple plan: if the car disappointed him, he would walk away. He hadn’t paid in full yet. Worst case, they would keep his deposit. No harm, no foul.

“On the plane I was honestly scared,” he says.

They led him into the showroom, over to the car, and let him pull off the cover.

“This was not one of those ‘don’t meet your heroes’ times,” he says, “It was everything I thought it would be and more.

”

Smaller than he imagined. Insanely wide. The online photos hadn’t oversold it; they’d undersold it, it was better.

“I couldn’t write the check fast enough. On the flight up, I’m thinking, If I hate it, I’m out. Five minutes later I’m like, Take my money, all of it.

”

Shortly after I met him at the car show, he entered the Lambo in the Amelia Concours almost on a whim, assuming the answer would be no. They accepted it immediately. Right out of the box, first year of ownership, he was on the lawn at Amelia with the poster car.

What happened next still feels unreal to him.

“I thought the judges had written me off,” he says. “They spent more time with other cars. They barely talked to me. I figured, Okay, they’ve made up their minds. I’m out.”

Midday rain drifted over the show field and everyone headed for cover. As it let up a little later, he walked back toward the class board, not expecting much.

There was a blue ribbon on his Countach. It had won best in class. The judges had spent so little time with him because they knew how special the car was, not because they weren’t interested.

“I’m going to be honest, I lost it.” he says now, laughing. “I had to walk around the corner and get myself together. I teared up.”

The dream wasn’t going to be a trailer queen. After the show, he drove the Lambo weekly—around the island, late-night runs down Heckscher Drive, outrunning the old halogen headlamps. Then, when the timing was right, he did something that separates leaders from followers: he sold the Countach at Pebble Beach.

“It was bittersweet,” he admits. “But I didn’t have any real regret. I had the experience. I pulled it off—kid’s dream for sure. I checked the box.”

Everything lined up that year. Bavarian Rennsport dialed the car in beforehand. The airport hangar show party—that will probably never happen again—provided the perfect backdrop. That exact car, that exact show, that exact moment. It was a sequence that won’t repeat. The hangar event is gone. The car is gone. That year exists now only in photos, ribbons, and the memories of everyone who saw that shock of white on white on white. It all proves that sometimes your hero is even better in person, and if you stare hard enough, that poster on your wall when you were a kid may one day become a reality.

I want to say thank you to Jacques for his generosity and having me as a passenger and a friend along for the ride.

Words and Photography by Robert Milici