Not all restoration enthusiasts know who the name “Carroll Shelby” refers to when they hear it in conjunction with Shelby Cobras or Shelby Mustangs, so here’s a little background about one of America’s greatest car designers, who passed away in May 2012.
Born in 1923, Carroll Shelby was one of America’s success stories: championship-winning racecar driver, “flying sergeant” wartime pilot, philanthropist, entrepreneur, car manufacturer and racing team owner. He embodied the ingenuity, tenacity and grit to overcome any obstacle. He is perhaps the only person to have worked at a visible level with all three major American automobile manufacturers.
His career started as an amateur race car driver, racing a friend’s MG TC. He soon became a driver for the Cad-Allard, Aston Martin, and Maserati teams during the 1950s. Driving for Donald Healey, in a streamlined and supercharged, specially-modified, Austin-Healey 100S, he set 16 U.S. and international speed records. He was the Sports Illustrated Driver of the Year in 1956 and 1957, and he competed in Formula One from 1958 to 1959, participating in a total of eight World Championship races and several non-championship races. The highlight of his race driving career came in 1959, when he co-drove an Aston-Martin DBR1 (with Englishman Roy Salvadori) to victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
After retiring from driving in October 1959 for health reasons, he opened a high-performance driving school and started the Shelby-American company. He obtained a license to import the AC Cobra (known in the USA as the Shelby Cobra), a successful British sports racing car manufactured by AC Motors of England, which AC had designed at Shelby’s request by fitting a Ford V8 to their popular AC Ace sports car in place of its standard Ford Zephyr engine. Shelby continued to be influential with Ford cars, including the Daytona Coupe, GT40, the Mustang-based Shelby GT350 and Shelby GT500. After parting with Ford, Shelby moved on to help develop performance cars with divisions of the two other Big 3 American companies, Dodge and Oldsmobile. The most memorable of these cars was the Dodge Viper.
Shelby was brought into Dodge at the request of Chrysler Corporation chairman, Lee Iacocca, who originally brought him in to work on the Ford Mustang. After almost a decade of tuning work, Shelby was brought on board as the “Performance Consultant” on the Dodge Viper Technical Policy Committee. Shelby used his wealth of experience to make the Viper as light and powerful as possible.
Shelby was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992.
For more information about the life of Carroll Shelby, click here.