If
you had to choose one person who epitomizes the term ¡§car guy,¡¨ Carroll Shelby
would be near the top of everyone¡¦s list. He¡¦s left his stamp on the racing
scene as a world-class driver and team manager, and forever changed the face of
sports cars as a successful manufacturer both of racing and road cars.
Throughout his life, Shelby has worked as a consultant on some of the auto
industry¡¦s most entrepreneurial projects and sponsored a number of charitable
foundations. All of this and he managed to squeeze in a heart transplant along
the way, which makes him one of the oldest and longest living heart transplant
patients.
Born Carroll Hall Shelby on January 11, 1923 in Leesburg, Texas, his family
moved to Dallas when he was seven.
Following high school, Shelby enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served during
WWII as a flight instructor and test pilot. After completing military service,
his early career ventures as dump truck entrepreneur, oilfield roughneck and
Texas chicken farmer didn¡¦t quite pan out (all of the chickens died after
initial success).
Carroll then turned his racing hobby into more serious business. Winning four
races in borrowed cars, he caught the eye of team manager John Wyer and landed a
spot on the mid-1950s Aston Martin racing team. In 1958, teamed with Roy
Salvadori, Shelby won the famed LeMans 24 Hours for Aston Martin, giving the
marque its only victory in the long-distance classic and setting a new race
record of 112.569 mph average for the event.
One year after his LeMans victory, however, Shelby was forced to give up driving
for health reasons. His heart was failing and he had taken to driving with
nitroglycerine tablets under his tongue. Still, this is a man who consistently
turned adversity into advantage. So he turned his attention to building cars
instead of racing them and created what is considered perhaps the greatest
sports cars and one of the fastest road cars ever constructed ¡V the Shelby
Cobra.
The aluminum-bodied 289 and 427 Cobra models and the subsequent Shelby Mustangs
he built for Ford made Carroll Shelby a household name in the 1960s. His Shelby
American team built the six Cobra Daytona Coupes, which captured the World
Manufacturer¡¦s Championship in 1965. The next year a Shelby-led group of Ford GT
40s beat Ferrari at LeMans, putting him back in the winner¡¦s circle at the
famous race, this time as a manufacturer with two consecutive victories at the
famed 24-Hour classic in 1966 and 1967.
But it isn¡¦t just cars that drives Shelby. In 1967 he inaugurated the World
Chili Cookoff competition and began marketing Carroll Shelby Original Texas
Chili. In the early 1970s he established a safari expedition company in the
Central African Republic and created and produced the first aluminum motorcycle
wheel.
By the early 1980s, former Ford Motor Company President Lee Iacocca, a Carroll
Shelby aficionado, had moved to Chrysler and he now turned to the man who had
created a high-performance image for Ford, to work his magic on Chrysler¡¦s
fleet. Between 1983 and 1989, Shelby created a series of Chrysler-Dodge
high-performance vehicles, including envisioning and inaugurating the prototype
work on the concept car that ultimately became the Dodge Viper.
In 1990, Shelby launched his Can-Am Spec Racer, an affordable racing car for
entry-level competitors which was sanctioned as a separate racing category by
the Sports Car Club of American (SCCA).
On a more personal note, following his own successful heart transplant, in
September 1991 he launched the Shelby Children¡¦s Foundation„§, which funds heart
transplants for indigent children around the world. Over the years the
Foundation¡¦s funding has been supplemented from autograph signings, golf
tournaments, and a percentage of the profits from the sale of Shelby
automobiles.
The 1990s also brought Shelby a number of accolades, including his induction
into the International and the Michigan Motorsports Halls of Fame, and his
selection as the official pace car driver of the Dodge Viper that started the
1991 Indy 500 race. In 1996 he was inducted into the Mustang Club of America¡¦s
Hall of Fame. By the middle of the decade, Shelby also was hard at work on
another manufacturing project. He reinvigorated his original Cobra concept with
his new Shelby CSX4000 series Cobra S/C Roadsters, followed quickly by the
design and manufacture of the Shelby Series I exotic sports car and then the
introduction of the CSX7000 series continuation Cobra lineup.
Never one to rest, Shelby has embarked on still another engineering mission. In
conjunction with Advanced Engine Technologies (AET), he was determined to bring
economical power sources to emerging countries and to help lessen energy
concerns in the U.S. with the development of the revolutionary OX2 engine,
designed to help reduce dependency on fossil fuels to power the world¡¦s economy.
Industry honors continued in 2002 when he received the Kruse International
Collector Car Hall of Fame Award and again in 2003 when he received the
prestigious Robert E. Petersen Lifetime Achievement Award.
In his career in the automotive industry, Carroll Shelby has worked at a highly
visible level with all three of the major American auto manufactures ¡V GM,
DaimlerChrysler and now Ford again. His charisma, his drive, and his
entrepreneurial spirit is an integral part of every project he undertakes ¡V from
his early racing efforts to his current philanthropic endeavors on behalf of
needy children. A successful racer, an innovative engineer, a world-class
designer, manufacturer and entrepreneur, Carroll Shelby is one of the automotive
industry¡¦s true Renaissance Men and his impact on the automotive landscape
continues to be unmatched.
