Automotive icon Carroll Shelby passed away last week, leaving a legacy of great cars we all love – from the Cobra’s that beat Ferrari at LeMans to the 2013 Ford Shelby GT500 Mustang. He was a member of the Ford family for the better part of 60 years, producing stunning performance vehicles from concepts to production models.
Shelby built the legendary Cobras and Shelby Mustangs of the 1960s. He was heavily involved in the design and engineering of the Ford Shelby Cobra Concept car unveiled in 2004, and was a key member of the dream team that built the 2005 Ford GT.
Carroll Shelby may have gotten a late start, but he was a winner from the beginning. Just two years into his driving career, Aston Martin racing manager John Wyer recruited him to co-drive a DB3 at Sebring. Within months, the chicken farmer from Texas was bumping elbows and trading paint with the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio, Phil Hill and Paul Frère. Driving an Aston Martin DBR1 with Roy Salvadori, he won Europe’s prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959.
Early in 1962 Shelby drove his second Ford-powered race car. It was the first mockup for the Cobra, Shelby’s now-legendary marriage of a lightweight British roadster body with a small-block Ford V8. By January 1963 he had homologated the car under the FIA’s GT Group III class, and that month a Cobra won its first race, beating a field of Corvette Stingrays at Riverside in California.
In January 1965 Ford hired Shelby to lend his expertise to the GT40 campaign. Three cars had run the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans, but none finished. Shelby began installing the more reliable 7-liter stock car engine in what would come to be known as the GT40 Mark II. It proved considerably faster than the Mark I, and in just two seasons became a strong contender.In 1966 the GT40 began a domination of endurance car racing that would last for four years.
While Ford and Shelby took on Ferrari at Le Mans, at home they fought Corvette. The first effort was the legendary Shelby Cobra, a Ford-powered, Shelby-engineered derivative of the AC Ace. The car had a one-ton weight advantage over the Corvette.
In August 1964 Ford had asked Carroll Shelby to develop a street-legal, high-performance Mustang to compete against Corvette in SCCA B-production road racing.
The 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350 was a fastback production model with a functional scoop in its fiberglass hood and 306 horsepower from its 289-cubic-inch V8 – an increase of 35 horsepower over the stock engine.
But most important in 1967 was the new GT500, a big-block with 355 horsepower. More than 2,000 of those 428-cubic-inch Mustangs were delivered that first model year.
1968 was when the name “Cobra” was first officially used on a Shelby Mustang. Although the Shelby Cobra GT350 was essentially unchanged, later GT500s were powered by the new Cobra Jet 428 engine and thus became GT500KR – for King of the Road.
In 1970, with sales slowing, the final Shelby Mustangs built for 1969 were updated to 1970 spec and sold. The famed run had come to an end.
It would be more than 30 years before Ford and Shelby worked together again, and in March 2001 they reunited, with Shelby coming on board to consult on a new GT40 Concept.
Carroll Shelby’s last collaboration with Ford was on the 2013 Ford Shelby GT500, which produces 662 horsepower and 631 lb.-ft. of torque, making it the most powerful production V8 engine in the world. In January, Shelby’s one-of-one racetrack durability car was auctioned at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Ariz., for $350,000.
