He wore striped farm overalls to races, spoke slowly with a heavy Texan drawl, and when doctors told him his heart could not take it, he put nitroglycerin pills under his tongue and kept racing. Carroll Shelby was one of the most unlikely people ever to pass through the car world. And he left behind a name that still sells cars today.
From chickens to race tracks
Shelby was born in 1923 in Leesburg, Texas. In the Second World War he was a flight instructor. After the war he tried many jobs, including chicken farming. The business went badly when a disease killed all the birds.
He started racing in 1952, almost by accident, in a friend’s car. One day he came straight from the farm and raced in his work overalls. From then on the overalls became his trademark. Within a few years he was one of the best American drivers and was racing in Europe for teams like Aston Martin.
Photo: C5813 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Le Mans 1959 and a heart that couldn’t cope
In 1959 Shelby and the British driver Roy Salvadori won the Le Mans 24 Hours in an Aston Martin DBR1. It was the greatest moment of his driving career. What few people knew was that Shelby had a serious heart condition, angina, and took medication even inside the car. In 1960 his doctors made him stop. He was only 37.
The idea of the Cobra
Shelby could not stay away from cars. He had an idea: take a light European sports car and give it a big American V8. He found the AC Ace, a beautiful British roadster that had been left without an engine, and persuaded Ford to give him its new, lightweight V8s. In 1962 the first Cobra was born, CSX2000.
The result was one of the wildest cars ever built for the road. Light as a feather, with the power of a truck. The 1965 Cobra 427, with its huge 7-litre V8, is still one of the most copied cars in the world. The closed Cobra Daytona Coupe gave Shelby and America the world GT championship in 1965, beating Ferrari at its own game.
Ford, the GT40 and the Mustang
Ford, which wanted to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, gave Shelby the GT40 programme. With his team he won the 24 Hours in 1966 and 1967. In the same period Shelby took the new Ford Mustang, which many saw as a pretty but “soft” car, and turned it into a racer. The 1965 Shelby GT350 and the 1967 GT500 are now among the most desirable American cars.
A man who never stopped
Shelby lived a life full of stories. He set up a chili cook-off in Terlingua, Texas, which became an institution. He had a heart transplant in 1990 and a kidney transplant in 1996, and then started a foundation to help children who needed transplants. He kept working with Ford and other companies well into old age.
He died in 2012, at 89. The heart that doctors said would not last kept him going, with a little help, longer than anyone would have bet. And his name, Shelby, still goes on the back of the fastest Mustangs. Not bad for a kid from Texas who started out with chickens.
P.Kefalas