Carroll Shelby was born in Leesburg, Texas, in 1923, and after flying for the Army Air Forces in the war he tried several businesses. The chicken farm failed when disease killed his flock. He took up racing in his early thirties and famously drove in his striped farm overalls.
He was good. In 1959 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Roy Salvadori in an Aston Martin DBR1. By then he was racing with a heart condition, slipping nitroglycerine tablets under his tongue during races, and the next year he had to stop.
So he built cars instead. In 1962 he took a light British sports car, the AC Ace, and fitted it with a Ford V8. The result was the Shelby Cobra, and in its later 427 form it became one of the fastest and most feared cars on the road. His Daytona Coupé version won the world GT championship for manufacturers in 1965.
Ford then asked him to rescue its programme to beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Shelby American ran the GT40s that finished first, second and third in 1966 and won again in 1967. He also turned the Mustang into the GT350, a name Ford still uses.
He had a heart transplant in 1990, founded a charity for children who needed transplants, co-founded the Terlingua chili cook-off, and kept working almost until he died in 2012, at eighty-nine. Four of the cars in this catalogue carry his work — two Cobras, the Le Mans GT40 and a modern Shelby Mustang.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
