Who Was Carroll Shelby?

Any organization that is still thriving over 100 years after its founding is bound to have a number of important people come and go throughout its history, and this especially rings true for the Ford Motor Company. Many memorable people have come and gone over the years, but one of the most influential men in the history of Ford was never a full-time employee of the company.

That individual was Carroll Shelby.

From the early 1960s till his death in 2012, Carroll Shelby had a relationship with the Ford Motor Company, which, like the American automotive industry, had its share of peaks and valleys. A racer-turned-designer, Carroll Shelby transitioned from Ford contractor to competitor, to contractor once again during an eventful time period from the early 1960s-onward.

Carroll Shelby’s life story is a tale of a man who had the taste for speed beginning at a young age and a vision that would captivate two of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world.

Early Life

Carroll Shelby, a man whose name would later be known across the globe, was born in a town with a population of roughly 200 people. On January 11, 1923, Warren Hall Shelby and Eloise Lawrence Shelby welcomed baby Carroll Hall Shelby into the world in the small unincorporated community of Leesburg, Texas.

The son of a mail carrier, Carroll Shelby later moved to Dallas, Texas, with his family, where he graduated high school, before joining the United States Air Force at age 18 in 1941. While serving at the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, Carroll worked alongside Air Corp bombardiers for important training missions. He never entered foreign soil for combat in World War II, but Shelby trained numerous young navigators and pilots to battle the Axis Powers.

When the war ended in 1945, Carroll Shelby moved back to Dallas with his new wife Jeanne Fields and newborn baby Sharon Anne Shelby and started a dump truck business. Four years and two more kids later, he started a chicken ranch, with his first batch earning him a $5,000 profit. Shelby’s foray into the poultry business did not last very long, however, as his second set of chickens caught a virus and quickly died off.

Now bankrupt after a failed animal raising career and faced with providing for three young children, Carroll Shelby turned attention to his true passions in life: Cars and speed.

Carroll Shelby the Racer

Carroll Shelby hit the racing circuit for the first time in January 1952, by hooking and booking a Ford hot rod down the quarter-mile. Several months later, Shelby got behind the wheel of an MG-TC and won his first-ever road race. That same day, Shelby once again crossed the finish line first, even beating out much faster vehicles, including a Jaguar XK 120.

It was his ability to meet and surpass more powerful vehicles that helped set Shelby apart from other racers in the ultra-competitive world of high-performance driving. For the 1953 racing season, Carroll Shelby made the switch to an Allard as his primary vehicle, which was a step up from the MG-TC, but nothing near what his chief rivals were driving.

In January 1954, exactly two years after he introduced himself to the racing industry, Shelby finished in the top 10 of a 1,000-kilometer race in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Being the competitive racer that he was, Shelby would have liked to have placed higher, but the mark was impressive considering that he was squaring off against Ferraris, Jaguars, and Aston Martins among other more powerful cars.

Speaking of Aston Martin, its team manager, John Wyer, was impressed with Shelby’s skills behind the wheel of an Allard and asked him if he would co-drive one of his British grand tourers in an upcoming race. Carroll Shelby’s new association with Aston Martin later brought the Texas native overseas for the first time, where he would display his skills in front of the European racing crowd.

Now behind the wheel of some of the most powerful vehicles on the planet, Shelby was able to demonstrate his true racing prowess to the world. Shelby claimed a host of championships throughout his storied career and won Sports Illustrated’s Sports Car Driver of the Year Award in 1956 and 1957.

In February 1960, one month after he began his final season racing for Aston Martin, Carroll Shelby began to develop chest pains for the first time, which physicians incorrectly proclaimed was not related to his heart. Shelby raced for the final time in December 1960, before his cardiovascular issues forced him to retire at the age of 37.

Designer

Once his racing career came to a screeching halt, Carroll Shelby set forth to make a name for himself in other areas of the automotive industry. Shelby spent the early days of his newfound downtime building his brand by opening both the Shelby School of High-Performance Driving and Shelby-American.

The latter organization was a simple shop in Verona, California that housed Carroll Shelby’s vision of stuffing a powerful, American V8 motor into a European sports car’s body. In early 1962, Shelby dreamt of the word "Cobra" plastered across the front of his project car, which caused him to promptly wake up and jot the idea down before going back to sleep.

With that, the idea for the first Shelby Cobra was born, but its namesake designer would need a lot of help to get this new project off of the ground. Carroll Shelby’s fortune changed immediately when he learned that the British organization AC Cars would end production of the famed AC Ace due to the decline in production of Bristol six-cylinder engines.

Shelby used this turn of events to leverage both AC Cars and the Ford Motor Company to put his vision to the test.

When he and his team received the body of his dream vehicle from AC Cars, with help from Ford, Shelby and his team quickly integrated a 260 Hi-Po V8 and Borg-Warner four-speed transmission into the build. With the full backing of Shelby-American, the ambitious entrepreneur began promoting the all-new Shelby Cobra to racers and automotive journalists alike.

Over the next two years, the Shelby Cobra established itself as a force to be reckoned with on the racing circuit in the United States, and eventually, Europe as well. Constantly butting heads with the Ferrari and the Corvette in its early days, Shelby officially laid down the gauntlet in 1964, by developing the ultra-powerful Shelby Cobra 427.

Critics claimed that it was foolish to jam such a massive engine into such light car but it was Shelby’s eccentric nature that got him this far. Once Carroll Shelby had stretched and widened the body, the Shelby Cobra 427 quickly established itself as the fastest American-made sports car of the time. Boasting an incredible 0-60 time of four seconds flat, the Cobra 427 was a true force to be reckoned with on the track, and Shelby’s adversaries had certainly been put on notice!

In March 1964, Shelby American driver Ken Miles drove a 427 on the track of Sebring International Speedway and defeated a Ferrari GTO for the first time in the Cobra’s history. With the unparalleled success of the Shelby Cobra, the Ford Motor Company asked Carroll Shelby to develop a Mustang that would meet the same high-performance standards.

One month after Ford unveiled its proposition, Carroll Shelby and his team built the first 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350 race and street cars. The Shelby Mustang GT350 Fastback proved to be Ford’s answer to the Chevy Corvette in SCCA road racing events. The 1965 breakthrough led to the development of later GT350s, as well as other Ford Shelby projects, including the GT350H, GT500, and GT500KR.

Due to a decline in sales and a host of creative differences, the Ford-Shelby partnership dissolved in late 1969. Shelby-American ended its racing agreement the following February, which severed all ties between the two organizations.

Carroll Shelby and Dodge

Staring at a broken partnership with one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world and facing a US government bent on targeting auto emissions, Shelby left his home and the industry as a whole to begin a new life in South Africa in 1974.

While on the other side of the globe, he launched a new line of Texas-inspired chili mix. Similar to his impact on the automotive world, the name Carroll Shelby Chili grew throughout the food industry, and he had carved out a nice life for himself while dwelling in South Africa.

Carroll Shelby Chili has a nice ring to it, but no matter how far he traveled, the retired racer and designer could not truly escape his passion for all things automotive.

In late 1982, at the request of a former Ford colleague, Lee Iacocca, Shelby began to contract with Chrysler, while focusing on improving the Dodge brand. While working alongside Iacocca, Carroll Shelby modified several Dodge cars that bore his name, including the Dodge Shelby Charger for six years in the early-to-mid 1980s. During his time with Chrysler, a number of Dodge vehicles utilized Shelby-modified parts, including certain year Dodge Daytonas, Spirits, and Durangos among others.

Perhaps Shelby’s biggest contribution to Dodge was his input with the heavily anticipated Dodge Viper project. Envisioned as a 1990s version of the reborn Cobra, Chrysler President Robert A. Lutz sat down with Carroll Shelby to map out what would eventually be known as the Viper. The combined ambitions of both Lutz and Shelby calculated the perfect modern interpretation of the Cobra, and the Dodge Viper would make its debut at the Detroit Auto Show in January 1991.

Shelby’s health began to take a turn for the worse during the maiden days and months of the Dodge Viper. His old heart-related issues resurfaced in the late 1980s, which caused him to scale back his advising duties. Because he was awaiting a heart transplant during the design process, Shelby did not have a direct hand in the Viper’s design, but those close to the development of the car viewed him as the “conscience” of the project. In 1990, Shelby underwent the much-needed heart transplant.

Following the operation, Shelby briefly came out of retirement from racing by taking part in the Indy 500 behind the wheel of a Dodge Viper at the age of 68 years young. Shelby remained a prominent fixture throughout the Viper’s first-generation and helped introduce the new Viper GTS at the LA Auto Show in December 1992. This particular Viper paid homage to the Shelby Daytona Coupe, which helped Carroll Shelby finally get the better of Enzo Ferrari on the track all of those years earlier.

Return to Ford and Death

As the year 2001 approached, Carroll Shelby and the team at Ford began to mend the once-broken relationship. In 2002, one year after Shelby participated in Ford’s 100 Years of Racing Festival, the company brought him in as a consultant for the latest Ford GT.

With Shelby declaring that he wished to end his advising career with the Ford Motor Company, Shelby American and Ford collaborated to develop and produce of a number of exciting vehicles over the next several years, including the 2003 Ford Shelby Cobra Concept, the 2005 Ford Shelby GT500, and the 2007 Ford Shelby GT500 among others.

During the initial stages of the latest Ford GT Shelby took Shelby American public to form Carroll Shelby International and Shelby Automobiles. In 2007, Shelby Automobiles announced the creation of the Shelby Performance Parts Company, an officially licensed retailer of Shelby Mustang parts. In the years that followed, the Carroll Shelby Wheel Company and a host of other organizations bearing his name would take the automotive industry by storm.

Health constrictions would limit Shelby’s role in both advising and building as he entered his late 80s, but that did not stop him from attending the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show. While in Hollywood, Shelby witnessed the unveiling of the 2013 Ford Shelby GT500. Sporting a monstrous 5.8L V8 under the hood, the all-new GT500 could put down 650-hp and 600lb-ft of torque, while reaching a top speed of 202 mph.

On May 10, 2012, Shelby passed away at the age of 89. One month before he passed, the automotive community celebrated the 50th anniversary of the original Shelby Cobra’s debut.

Celebrating the only way that Carroll Shelby knew how to, Shelby American introduced the Shelby 1,000 at the 2012 version of the New York auto show. The 950-hp producing specimen was the perfect celebration of the life of a true visionary and all that he sacrificed for the industry.

Carroll Shelby Legacy

No Carroll Shelby biography would be complete without briefly touching on some of the awards and accolades in which he achieved during his subsequent careers in auto racing and designing.

On October 1, 1992, shortly after he dipped into the racing circuit once more with the Viper and the 1965 Shelby GT350R, Shelby was elected into the Automotive Hall of Fame. Seven years later, Shelby’s most famous vehicle, the original Cobra, with a chassis number CSX2000, was named the “Most Significant Car of the Last 50 Years” by Motor Trend Magazine.

Shelby Cobras, Mustangs, and GTs have been pop culture icons through the years, highlighted by a '67 GT500 named “Eleanor” making an appearance in the 2000 remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds. The last great Shelby car did not hit the dealerships until after his death, but Carroll Shelby would have been proud of the 2013 Shelby GT500’s unrivaled power capabilities, and his influence will undoubtedly be all over high-performance vehicles manufactured for years to come!

Along with his work in the automotive industry, Shelby became renowned for his philanthropic efforts in the field of heart health. One year before he was inducted into Automotive Hall of Fame, Shelby established the Shelby Heart Fund, (later the Shelby Children's Foundation, and now the Carroll Shelby Foundation) which helped children battle life-threatening illnesses among other noble causes. Throughout his later years, Shelby raised great awareness and money for his charity, and one year before he passed, he was recognized by the World Children’s Transplant Fund for his contributions over the years.

The automotive icon also lives on by his endeavors in the food industry. In addition to the many Carroll Shelby Chili products available, the restaurant chain Chili’s exists partly because of him. Shelby’s son-in-law Larry Levine founded the popular Tex-Mex chain three years after attending a Shelby-hosted Terlingua Chili Cook-off in 1967.

Image and Text Credit: shelby.com, caranddriver.com, dyler.com