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Carroll Shelby 1932-2012
It is with a very sad heart that I learned that Carroll Shelby has passed away at age 89. While there have been no official cause of death at this time, Carroll Shelby had been admitted to Baylor Hospital in Dallas to be treated for pneumonia. Before he died, Shelby had been one of the nations longest living heart transplant patients. He received his heart on June 1990, from a 34 year old man who had died from an aneurysm. Shelby also received a kidney transplant in 1996 from his son Michael.
Born in Leesburg, Texas in 1923, Shelby was an Aviator during World War 11. Following the war, Shelby was involved in several business ventures including being a chicken farmer until he went broke.
Even as a chicken farmer, Shelby loved racing and would compete in races wearing his bib overalls. His first race was in 1952 where he raced in a 1932 Ford. He caught the eye of professional racing teams and had a great but short lived career as a world class racer.
As a racer he won three National Sports Car Championships in the United States and is the only man to ever win the 24 hours of LeMans as a driver, a team owner, and as a manufacturer! He also raced at the Bonneville Salt Flats where he set land speed records on two occasions.
A heart condition forced him out as a driver in 1960 but his passion for racing continued as he would build his famous Shelby Cobra Racing team and once again dominate sports car racing.
Using powerful Ford V-8 engines in his light bodied AC cars, Shelby and his Cobra, which was introduced at the New York Auto Show in 1962, would go on to beat Corvettes, Ferraris, and every other car they faced on the track. So popular was the Cobra that a recording group called the Rip Chords produced a Top 5 Billboard Chart hit song in 1964 called "Hey Little Cobra."
After the Ford Mustang was introduced at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York it became an instant success. The popular car was considered cute and sporty but not really a potent race car that could challenge the mighty Chevrolet Corvette. Lee Iaccoca persuaded Shelby to create a racing version of the Mustang to give the car credibility and to convince the public that the Mustang was more than "a secretary's car." Shelby would later comment that taking on this project was the hardest thing he had ever done. He did succeed and created an icon in the automotive industry, the Shelby Mustangs. He created a racing version of the street car and successfully took on the Corvettes and beat them on the race tracks all over the country. He even produced Shelby GT-H cars for the Hertz Rental Car Company. For $17 a day and .17 cents per mile a Hertz customer could rent a Shelby GT. Today these cars are highly prized by collectors.
Classic Shelby Mustangs can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, while original Cobras can be worth in some cases millions of dollars. In 2007, a Shelby Cobra sold at a Barrett-Jackson Auction for $5.5 million. That car had been built for Carroll Shelby's personal use. It was identical to one that Shelby built for comedian Bill Cosby. Cosby, who loves sports cars and drives Ferraris, was so intimidated by the Shelby Cobra that he sold it back to Shelby!
Shelby also worked with Ford racing to develop the Ford GT 40 race car that eventually beat the Ferraris at LeMans. In the late sixty's and early 70's as gas prices rose, insurance rates rose, and powerful cars were being detuned to meet ever tougher emmisions requirements, Shelby went to Africa where he started a Safari Tour Guide business. He said that he needed a break from the pressures of racing and car building. Lee Iaccoca was gone from Ford and Shelby was upset that Ford had utilized many of his styling and performance ideas on their production Mustangs. He had a falling out with Ford and felt it was time to go and do something else.
In the 1980's Chrysler convinced Shelby to come back into the auto business by asking him to create performance versions of it's otherwise underwhelming products. Shelby took the econobox Dodge Omni and turned it into a sporty performance compact hatchback. Shelby himself said that this was one of his favorite cars. The car was called the Omni GLH, which allegedly stood for "Goes like hell!"
Shelby also worked on the development of the Dodge Viper, a truly high performance brutish sports car while at Chrysler. Shelby and his team worked on a Oldsmobile sports car too during this time. It was a really good looking car that was amazingly fast.
In 2005 Shelby and Ford restarted their relationship and Shelby felt like he had returned home to his roots. Ford had introduced the new retro styled Mustang and Shelby went back to work using this new body style to reintroduce the Shelby Mustang. He and his company were developing many new new high performance engines and suspensions and taking the Shelby to new levels of performance that continue to this day. The racing bug had never left Shelby and he continued to be active in the management of his companies and his charities. Despite his age he was always looking for more performance and he lived long enough to see one of his cars produce 1,000 horse power! Old Carroll was competitive to the end!
Carroll Shelby led a very interesting life. He was married seven times, was an accomplished race car driver, team owner, manufacturer, an African Safari and Tour Guide operator, and a man who supported many charities. He enjoyed life and lived it to it's fullest. May his memory be for a blessing.
Steve Tapper
Midnight Blue
MCOM Historian
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The Red Baron
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