Carroll Hall Shelby was a motorsports icon who is probably best known for his association with Ford Motor Company and its world-renowned Mustang muscle car.
What many people don’t know about Shelby is that he was also a renowned racer in the 1950s. Shelby’s racing career began innocently enough when a friend who had entered a car into a race called up Shelby to see if he could drive it at the last minute, and thus a legend was born.
From this innocuous early beginning in 1952, Shelby went on to dominate in motor racing across the midwestern United States.
In 1954 Shelby moved to Europe to further pursue his racing career. After arriving in Europe, Shelby raced a private entry Aston Martin followed by a stint for the Aston Factory team in the 1954 race at Silverstone.
In August of ’54, Shelby set about 17 new speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
Shortly after this Shelby began driving private entry Ferrari’s where he saw success through the 1957 season.
In 1956 after he started driving Ferrari’s, Shelby opened Carroll Shelby Sports Cars in Dallas. This was a step towards his lifelong goal of building cars.
In 1956 and ‘57 Shelby was named the Sports Illustrated magazine’s Driver of the Year.
Shelby joined the Aston Martin Factory team under John Wyer in the early spring of 1958. The highlight of Shelby’s racing career followed shortly after in June of 1959 when he and Roy Salvadori drove an Aston Martin DBR1 to victory in the infamous 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.
In 1960 after being warned of the dangers of racing with a heart condition he developed, Carroll Shelby retired from racing.
In 1961 he and Pete Brock opened the Shelby School of High-Performance Driving at Riverside International Raceway. In September of 1961, Shelby finally began to realize his dream of producing cars.
Shelby contacted Charles Hurlock of AC Motors in England to provide a chassis for Shelby on credit. At the same time, Shelby was able to acquire 3.6-liter and 4.3-liter V8 engines and the accompanying transmissions on credit from Ford Motor Company.
With that, one of the most well-known American sports cars, the Shelby Cobra was born. With the advent of the Cobra Shelby cemented his future legacy as a performance car builder.
From its inception, the Cobra proved to be an absolute powerhouse in American Racing. Pairing a lightweight and well-handling European Chassis with American muscle proved to be a winning combination as the Cobra quickly usurped the Chevrolet Corvette as the number one sports car in America.
After inventing the Cobra and forming his race team, Shelby American, Carroll set his sights on a lofty goal, beating Ferrari on the international race circuit. In 1964 Shelby achieved this goal with the famous Shelby Daytona Coupe, the only American-made car to ever take the overall win in a season of FIA-sanctioned racing.
In addition to creating the Daytona Coupe in 1964, Shelby also began production of the penultimate Cobra using Ford's new 427 cubic inch, 7-liter V8.
The success of these two cars led Shelby into further partnership with Ford Motor Company as he and driver Ken Miles spearheaded the development of the GT40, Ford’s attempt to beat Ferrari at Le Mans.
Although it would take a further two years Ford, and Shelby accomplished their goal in 1966 when Bruce McLaren won a controversial victory at Le Mans.
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