Imagine the odds on this one: a 37-year-old race car driver, cheating death at high speeds on the world's greatest tracks, suffering from severe chronic angina, and popping mind-clouding nitro-glycerine pills every six to seven laps just to stay in the race--and stay alive.
Many years later, as his 80th birthday approaches, he's not only very much alive, but he's the principal in no fewer than 10 automotive companies. Unlikely? Not if you're Carroll Shelby.
The heart condition forced the early retirement of this legendary piloto, winner of the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and so many other important sports car races. What happened after Shelby hung up his helmet and goggles, however, has been the subject of considerable discourse. By applying that same Texas guile and seat-of-the-overalls grit that served him so well on the track, Shelby put together a deal that would make him the father of one the most revered sports cars on the planet.
The resulting Cobra was a perfect storm of sorts. A.C. cars, in long, slow decline, needed a market for its Ace roadster, an aluminum-bodied masterpiece of classic 1950s sport racer proportions. Ford Motor Company was awakening to the benefits of a performance car's image ruboff on its entire lineup. And Ford had just introduced a relatively lightweight, compact V-8 engine that could be shoehorned into the Ace body and chassis. Shelby put 'em together. On the world's racetracks, with drivers the likes of Miles, Hill, MacDonald, Gurney, Bondurant, Holbert, and so many others, he bloodied the noses of the big factory teams. And the Shelby American skunkworks commenced the production of street versions that would become an integral part of the fabric of the American "sport car" (as he calls it).
Forty years later, Shelby American is still producing machines that get the heart pumping even faster. Marking this occasion, we thought it appropriate to revisit the cars Shelby American is manufacturing today and look in the rearview mirror at the racing exploits of the 1950s, which put Carroll Shelby on the competition program in the first place.
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