Shelby — Carroll Shelby's Company From the Cobra to Today

Shelby at a glance

Origins: Carroll Shelby and the Cobra

Carroll Shelby was born in Leesburg, Texas, on 11 January 1923 and had heart-valve trouble from about the age of seven. During the Second World War he trained as a pilot and served as a flight instructor and test pilot. After the war he tried a dump-truck business, oil-field work and a poultry farm that went bankrupt in 1952. The same year he began racing as an amateur. He drove in Formula One in 1958 and 1959 and won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans with Roy Salvadori in an Aston Martin DBR1. Heart problems ended his driving career in October 1960.

Shelby had already opened a sports-car dealership in Dallas with Dick Hall in 1957 and a driving school at Riverside in 1961. His big idea was to put an American V8 into a light European chassis. In September 1961 the British firm AC Cars agreed to fit a Ford engine into its Ace roadster, and Ford delivered two Windsor V8s that November. The first AC body arrived in February 1962 and the first Cobra, chassis CSX2000, was completed. In April 1962 Shelby leased a building in Venice, Los Angeles, and founded Shelby American.

The first 75 cars had the 4.3-litre Ford 260, the next 51 the 4.7-litre 289. The Mk II of 1963 added rack-and-pinion steering, and about 528 were built up to summer 1965. The Mk III, or Cobra 427, arrived on 1 January 1965 with a new chassis, coil springs all round and a 7.0-litre Ford 427 V8: 317 kW (425 hp) in standard form and 362 kW (485 hp) in the semi-competition S/C. In all, 998 AC Cobras were built between 1962 and 1967. Cobras dominated the SCCA United States Road Racing Championship in 1963. The car itself is covered in detail in the Shelby Cobra article.

The Daytona Coupé and the 1965 title

Pete Brock designed a closed coupé body for the Cobra chassis: the Daytona Coupé. Only six were built. In 1964 a Daytona driven by Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant won the GT class and finished fourth overall at Le Mans. In 1965 Shelby won the International Championship for GT Manufacturers with the Daytona, the first American constructor to win a title at the FIA world championships.

The bigger prize came with Ford. Shelby American also worked on Ford's GT40 programme, and in 1966 Shelby cars finished first and second at Le Mans, with Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon winning. Ken Miles was killed testing the J-car at Riverside on 17 August 1966. In 1967 Gurney and A. J. Foyt won Le Mans in the GT40 Mk IV. When new rules made the 7.0-litre engine ineligible, Shelby withdrew and John Wyer's team took over.

Shelby Mustangs: GT350 and GT500

The Ford Mustang appeared in 1964, and Ford executive Lee Iacocca hired Shelby American to build a racing version. The result was the GT350 of 1965, based on the Mustang fastback. Its 289 V8 was rated at 202 kW (271 hp), or about 228 kW (306 bhp) with the Holley carburettor fitted by Shelby. Only 562 were made in 1965, including 34 race-ready GT350Rs, and the GT350 won the SCCA B-Production class three years in a row. In 1966 Shelby built 2,378 cars, among them the GT350H for the Hertz rental fleet.

The GT500 of 1967 used the 7.0-litre 428 Police Interceptor V8 with 265 kW (355 bhp), and 2,048 were built. Sales rose six-fold from 1966 to 1967, but Ford was taking control. Production moved from California to Michigan in 1968, Ford designed the 1969 cars largely in-house, and Shelby ended the agreement in 1969. No 1970 cars were built; 789 unsold 1969 models were given 1970 serial numbers. In January 1970 Carroll Shelby announced his retirement from the car business. The Mustang itself is covered in the Ford Mustang story.

The Dodge years and the Series 1

In the 1980s Shelby worked with Chrysler at Iacocca's request. Shelby helped develop the Dodge Shelby Charger of 1983 and the Omni GLH of 1984, and his company Shelby Automobiles opened in Whittier, California, in 1985. It built small-run models such as the GLHS of 1986, the 1987 Charger GLHS, the Shelby Lancer, the Shelby CSX and the Shelby Dakota pickup of 1989. When it closed in 1990, 6,050 vehicles had been made. Shelby also acted as a performance consultant on the Dodge Viper. In 1990 he received a heart transplant.

A new Shelby American was founded in Las Vegas in 1995 to build the Shelby Series 1, a modern open two-seater designed by Carroll Shelby as a new take on the Cobra. It had an aluminium chassis, carbon-fibre and glass-fibre body panels and a 4.0-litre Oldsmobile Aurora V8 tuned to 239 kW (324 PS). Prototypes were shown in 1997, a 75% stake was sold to Venture Corporation in 1998, and deliveries started in summer 1999, with poor early build quality. Only 249 production cars were made, all as 1999 models, instead of the 500 announced. After Venture Holdings went bankrupt in 2003, Carroll Shelby formed the holding company Carroll Shelby International, and in 2004 Shelby Automobiles bought Shelby American and the Series 1 assets.

Back with Ford: Shelby American today

Shelby and Ford returned for the 2007 model year with the GT500, built by Ford's SVT team at Flat Rock, Michigan, at roughly 10,000 a year for three years. Its supercharged 5.4-litre V8 made 373 kW (500 hp). Later Ford-built cars carried the name further: the 2015 GT350 with a 392 kW (526 bhp) 5.2-litre "Voodoo" V8, and the 2020 GT500 with a supercharged 5.2-litre "Predator" engine and 567 kW (760 hp).

Carroll Shelby died in Dallas on 10 May 2012, aged 89. Shelby American, a subsidiary of Carroll Shelby International, is based in the Las Vegas area, where the Shelby Heritage Center stands. It builds Mustang-based Shelby GT and Super Snake models, Shelby trucks, and continuation Cobras and Daytona Coupés in numbered CSX series such as CSX4000, CSX7000, CSX8000 and CSX9000. Authorised partners convert cars in Europe (since 2016), South Africa (2017), New Zealand (2019), Australia and Canada. Models in the catalogue are listed under Shelby; the base cars are in the Ford catalogue. Other American performance cars of the era are collected in the muscle cars section.

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