CARROLL SHELBY CARROLL SHELBY - Legends of Riverside IV

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to getting publicity for the car he called the Cobra. He began lending the car to auto magazines for road tests. By repainting the same car each time it was loaned, it appeared as if the prototype was actually in production. This also allowed all the magazines to put the car on their covers because each was able to have a different color layout. In April, the car was shown at the New York Auto Show (in yellow) and a large number of dealer orders allowed Shelby to make the commitments necessary to begin production. The company was moved and took over Lance Reventlow’s Scarab workshop on Princeton Drive in Venice in June. Shel also began assembling a group of talented mechanics and fabricators, many with years of racing experience. In May, the first production Cobra was shipped from England to dealer Ed Hugus in Pittsburgh and the second to Shelby who had it prepared for racing. In October, the Cobra entered its first race, at Riverside, where it proved to be streets ahead of its target in production car racing, the Corvette, although it failed to finish. But Shel was after bigger game and talked Ford into minimal bankrolling of entries at Daytona and Sebring in 1963, where he could take on the reigning Grand Touring champion, the Ferrari GTO. This was the beginning of a three-season battle between Shelby and Ferrari that provided spectacular racing and engendered newfound respect in Europe for American cars and drivers. 1963 was a development year but Dan Gurney’s Cobra did win the last Federation Internationale de l’Automobile GT championship event of the year at Bridgehampton, admittedly against meager Ferrari opposition. Still it was the first FIA win by an American driver in an American car and also Ford’s first FIA win. The Cobra was now on the international motorsports map. In 1964 the international GT battle was almost equal between Cobra and Ferrari. Ferrari won four of the first five events and Cobra rebounded, winning four of the second five, including the GT class at Le Mans. Then, the Americans learned about the wiles of the old world where there is more to racing than what takes place on the track. Ferrari used his considerable political power within racing to prevail upon the Italian Automobile Club to cancel the Italian round of the championship, held on the fast Monza circuit, which would favor the Cobras. Ferrari then won the penultimate event, the Tour de France, giving him an insurmountable point lead and keeping the championship in Italy. The Shelby American team had to be content with the U.S. GT championship, but the sour taste of the race cancellation made the team even more determined to bring the GT championship to America. After the Ford GT-40 prototype program failed miserably in 1964, Shelby was pressed into service to fix it. Unfortunately, this didn’t allow him to contest the 1965 GT championship, which was handled by the British Alan Mann team that used Cobras and a nucleus of Shelby technicians and drivers. On July 4th 1965, Bob Bondurant and Jo Schlesser won the GT class in the Reims 12 Hours, scoring enough points to assure Cobra of the 1965 GT championship. The win was especially gratifying, coming on America’s Independence Day. Shel’s Cobras had finally “kicked Ferrari’s ass” as he had promised and brought home the first international championship won by an American car. Shelby was preoccupied with Ford’s prototype program and was not present for all the 1965 GT victories, but it was his spirit that had achieved what earlier American constructors like Briggs Cunningham and Lance Reventlow hadn’t. Shel had conceived a car and put together a team that had beaten the Europeans on their own ground. Another achievement was that he established America and American companies like Ford and Goodyear as major international motorsports players. In 1965 Shel cut through Ford’s corporate confusion in short order to shape up the GT-40 program. The cars won the first time out under Shelby’s direction, at the Daytona 2000 Kilometers. Le Mans again eluded the Fords in 1965 but Shelbyentered Ford prototypes won significant victories there in 1966 and 1967, the first of which contributed to Ford winning the Prototype World Championship in 1966. After the 1966 championship, Ford’s sole goal for 1967 was Le Mans. When they won there for the second time in 1967, they had achieved their corporate objectives, despite losing the championship to Ferrari, and the big prototype wars were over. Ford’s international sports car racing was left to private entrants. Shelby had vanquished Ferrari in both the GT and prototype classes. Shelby American had also won the SCCA Trans Am championship in 1967 with a Mustang and that program continued for another two seasons. Shelby fielded his last race car entry in the October 1969 Riverside Trans Am and announced his company’s withdrawal from racing. Shortly after that he disbanded the Shelby Automobile Racing Company. In retrospect, it is amazing that while traveling all over the world to lead his race teams to the successes they achieved, Shelby was building a business empire. In the period between 1962 and 1970 Shelby American built more than 1,000 Cobras, almost 3,000 of the original 350 GT Mustangs and approximately 11,500 of the later GT 350s, GT 500s and 500KRs, as well as advising Rootes on their Sunbeam Tiger program. His business interests extended far and wide. Carroll Shelby was not only a racer, but a deal maker. When the time was right, he shed his bib overalls and went to meetings looking like a British gentleman. Photo: Sharon Shelby Collection.
Carroll Carroll Shelby Shelby gets an assist assist backing backing up the Tipo 61 Maserati Maserati “Birdcage”. “Birdcage”. This is Laguna Laguna Seca, Seca, October October 1960, 1960, Shelby’s Shelby’s last race in which which during during the race he was taking taking nitroglycerin nitroglycerin pills to ease his chest chest pains. pains. Shelby Shelby led much much of the race and later finished finished second second to Bill Krause, Krause, earning earning enough enough points points for Shelby Shelby to clinch clinch the USAC USAC Sports Sports Car Championship Championship for 1960. 1960. Photo Photo by Edward Edward Matsuishi Matsuishi Like any red-blooded Texan, Shelby had a taste for properly prepared chili. After starting a series of chili cook-offs in remote Terlingua, Texas, in 1967, where corporate jets were as plentiful as cars, he started to market his own chili mix two years later, ultimately selling out to Kraft. And he and Al Dowd, his long-time general manager, started the Shelby-Dowd wheel company in 1973 and captured significant market share during that decade’s craze for mag wheels. While Shelby was minding his growing business interests, Lee Iacocca had taken over the troubled Chrysler Corporation. Working with meager resources, he was trying to give Chrysler a performance image. He remembered how Shelby had put Cobras on the covers of automotive magazines all over the world when Iacocca was at Ford. The result was that Shelby contracted with Chrysler in late 1982 to create performance cars based on Dodge products. This led to a decade-long relationship where Shelby ran a skunk works in Santa Fe Springs called the Chrysler-Shelby Performance Center. Working with a talented group of Chrysler engineers including Scott Harvey, a former U.S. Rally champion, Shelby created a series of cars based on Chrysler’s bulletproof 2.2-liter, four-cylinder engine that offered more performance for the dollar than anything else on the market. Some of these were made at Shelby Automobiles in Whittier. His influence was felt across the entire Chrysler range and his input on the Viper was invaluable. He even came up with the Shelby Dakota, a V-8 high-performance pickup, and also designed a Dodge V-6-engined spec racer for the SCCA, in an abortive attempt to revive the Can Am series. The latter cars still have their own series in South Africa. Carroll Shelby has never spent much time looking in the rearview mirror. Despite some significant health problems—he had a heart transplant in June 1990 and a kidney transplant from his son, Michael, in 1996— Shel still runs at full throttle, as one would expect from a properly executed ground-up restoration. Thankful for the medical help he received, Shelby founded the Shelby Heart Fund and the Shelby Children’s Foundation in 1991 for the benefit of young transplant recipients. Over the years he has allowed the use of his name and spent a great deal of his time raising money for this worthy cause. Only a year after his transplant, Shelby was driving the Viper pace car at the 1992 Indianapolis 500. That fall he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. The Shelby American Collection, a museum commemorating Shelby’s contributions to racing history, created by Steve and Lisa Volk, opened in Boulder, Colo., in December 1996. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century, Shelby and Ford were back together again, first with the Ford Shelby Cobra, a concept twoseater and the GR-1 Coupe. This has led to many Shelby-modified variations of the current Mustang platform including the 2006 GTH and new GT 350 and GT 500 models. The present top of the heap is the 2011 GT 500 with its 550 horsepower, aluminumblock supercharged V-8. Shel has commented that, “All we wanted to do was have some fun and beat the Corvettes and Ferraris. All this hoopla amazes me.” But the hoopla continues, as do projects from the old racer’s agile mind and honors from the industry and racing community. So treasure your time with Carroll Shelby at this Riverside Reunion. You’ll be in good company. World Champion drivers and rookies, captains of industry, movie stars and even a few heads of state have all paid their respects to Carroll Shelby, failed chicken farmer, industrialist, chili guru, philanthropist, all-around good guy, creator of exceptionally exciting cars for both rich and poor, and most of all, a racer to the core. He won the second race ever held at Riverside, an SCCA National, in John Edgar’s 450S Maserati, as well and driving his penultimate race there in a Camoradi Maserati Birdcage. That drive contributed points toward his 1960 USAC Sports Car Championship. We obviously couldn’t find a person more qualified to receive the Legend of Riverside Award. Michael T. Lynch is an internationally-published automotive historian specializing in racing, high performance and luxury automobiles and the personalities connected with them. He also acts as an announcer for events and has been an expert commentator on both radio and TV. When not researching or writing, he consults to collectors and automotive events. He, and his wife, Vicki, are based in Carmel-by-the-Sea. He switched his allegiance as a fan while at a race in Dodge City, Kansas in 1956, when Carroll Shelby beat Lynch’s neighbor, Masten Gregory. Both were in Ferrari Monzas.
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CARROLL SHELBY CARROLL SHELBY - Legends of Riverside IV

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