To Handle - Automobile Association Philippines

ROAD SAVVY
An American automotive
icon passes away
Aida Sevilla Mendoza
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
IF you are a car enthusiast who saw 12
years ago the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds,”
chances are that for you, the star of the show
was not actor Nicolas Cage or Angelina Jolie,
but Eleanor, the 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby
GT500 fastback. Eleanor, driven by Cage,
outraced police cars in the longest car chase
in motion picture history with Long Beach,
California as the backdrop.
Eleanor became so famous that nowadays, licensed
replicas are selling for $139,000 to $189,000 in the
United States. In fact, any car with the name “Shelby”
attached commands a premium price. In 2007, an
800 horsepower model of the 1966 Cobra, once auto
racer and car builder Carroll Shelby’s personal ride,
was sold at an auction in Scottsdale, Arizona for $5.5
million, a record for an American car
Carroll Shelby, who died in Dallas, Texas last May
10 at the age of 89, is recognized as the creator of
the American muscle car that dominated the world
of racing in the 1960s. The charismatic Shelby led a
colorful life: he was a rural Texan (born in Leesburg,
Texas in 1923), a U.S. Army Air Corps flight instructor
during World War II and a chicken farmer who
reportedly turned to racing when all his chickens died.
From 1970 to 1977 he ran a safari tour business in
Africa and later, back in Texas, a chili cook-off diner.
He had a heart transplant from a Las Vegas gambler
in 1990 and a kidney
transplant from a son
in 1996. He created a
foundation in 1991 to
assist children needing
acute coronary and
kidney care and surgery.
He was married seven
times.
Shelby first gained
international attention in
1954 at a Kimberly Cup
race in Argentina when
he drove an Allard with
Dave Duncan. When
the engine erupted into
flames, he told Duncan
to douse the fire by
urinating on it. With the fire extinguished, Shelby
finished tenth, first among the amateur teams.
That same year, Shelby was seriously injured
while competing in the Carrera Pan American Mexico,
flipping his Austin Healey four times after T-boning a
rock. His injuries did not stop him from racing a few
months later at Sebring, Florida, co-driving a 3.0-liter
Monza Ferrari with Phil Hill with his broken elbow in
a fiberglass cast and his hand taped to the steering
wheel. Hill and Shelby placed second in the 12-hour
race.
In 1959, driving an Aston Martin with teammate
Ray Salvadori, he won France’s grueling 24 Hours at
Le Mans race, thus helping Aston Martin clinch the
world manufacturing championship. Throughout the
1950s he won dozens of races in various classes,
twice earning the Sports Illustrated Driver of the
Year title, the second time in 1957 after winning 19
consecutive races. He set a number of endurance
records driving an Austin-Healey at the Bonneville Salt
Flats in Utah.
In 1960, while trying to fend off an anticipated
heart attack, Shelby drove a 2,000-mile race at
Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California with
nitroglycerin pills beneath his tongue. He finished
third but said that if he hadn’t slowed down each time
he popped one of the pills, he might have won.
A diagnosis of angina ended his racing career
in 1960, part of a lifelong battle with heart disease.
Shelby announced his retirement as a driver after
winning the U.S. Road Racing Championship Series at
Riverside International Raceway. He then focused on
building an American sports car that would beat the
best European models.
In 1961, when AC Sports Cars in England lost
Bristol, its engine supplier, Shelby offered to use
the Ace’s lightweight chassis to build a V8-powered
sports car. After getting AC’s approval, Shelby bought
small-block, 200 cubic-inch V8 engines from Ford by
persuading Lee Iacocca, then a Ford executive, that
he could build a car that would “blow the Corvette
into the weeds.” Shelby then acquired fellow racer
Lance Reventlow’s race car building enterprise which
had fallen on hard times, and renamed it Shelby
American.
The first yellow CSX 2000 Shelby Cobra was
Caroll Shelby
4 AQ MAGAZINE