New York Times; Carroll Shelby

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This article appeared in the December 12, 2003 issue of the New York Times:

CARROLL SHELBY is excited about the new engine that his company, Carroll Shelby International, is manufacturing, and he wants to hear it hum. The eight-cylinder monster in question, which is called the OX2, is cordoned off in a glass booth at the company's headquarters in Gardena, south of Los Angeles, and is controlled by a console in an adjacent room.
1. "This engine can run on hydrogen," said Mr. Shelby, 80, while his mechanical engineers made the OX2 roar. Dressed in a gray cardigan sweater and black pants, with an old cap low on his forehead, Mr. Shelby is every inch the octogenarian grease monkey but one with an apparently modern bent. "I'm a greenie now, because we've screwed up the earth without giving anything back to it," he said. "We've got to figure out new ways to burn less fuel."

If Shelby were a Sierra Club member, this would be sensible talk. But since it's coming from one of the great fossil fuel burners of all time, it sounds downright heretical.

As a race driver and innovator, Carroll Shelby is high up in the pantheon of automotive legends, a maverick hot rodder from rural Texas who to came to Los Angeles and forced Euro-snobs to take American sports cars seriously. In the 60's, at the apex of the Southern California car efflorescence, his name was synonymous with muscle cars, relatively small vehicles with big, beefy engines. It was an era that many car buffs consider Detroit's golden age, and Mr. Shelby was arguably its prime mover. (To this day, Mr. Shelby complains about the safety regulations of the 1970's that "killed car design.")
The Shelby GT350, a tweaked Mustang with a distinctive blue-and-white color scheme, legitimized Ford's pony car as a high-performance vehicle in the mid-60's, and his racecars — the Cobra, Daytona Coupe and Ford GT40 — are among the most hallowed sports cars of the postwar era.
All of these, as well as the Shelby designs for the Dodge Viper, are currently on view in "Carroll Shelby: A Life in the Fast Lane," which runs through March 28 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (6060 Wilshire Boulevard, at Fairfax Avenue; 323-930-2277; www.petersen.org). The 17-car show features highly coveted models from various private collectors who have paid $500,000 apiece or more to own them (there are 100-plus Shelby car clubs all over the United States).
"Carroll is sort of like the car world's Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays," said Jay Leno, who owns three Shelby cars. "Unlike so many racers, he didn't come from a rich family, so he signifies that everyman, common-sense ideal. When I was kid, American cars were big, clunky things, until Carroll used his ingenuity to make them compete with European cars. He was a populist, the kind of guy that other car buffs could emulate. He was one of my idols as a kid."

Mr. Shelby rattled the clubby racing world both as a driver and as a designer. During the first half of the 20th century, Europe had a lock on the fastest cars, and its drivers dominated the sports car racing circuit. Mr. Shelby changed all that in 1959 when he became only the second American to win the 24 Hours at Le Mans, co-driving an Aston Martin, and then proceeded to continue winning abroad.

Mr. Shelby enjoyed a brilliant racing career until angina pectoris, the chest pain that can indicate a serious heart ailment, forced him out of the circuit and into the car-building business in 1961. "It got to the point where I had to pop nitroglycerin pills during races," said Mr. Shelby, who had a heart transplant in 1990 and now finances the Carroll Shelby Children's Foundation, which provides assistance for pediatric cardiology. "I'd have to slow down a lap, let the oxygen come back into my lungs."
As a builder, Mr. Shelby benefited from Henry Ford II's hunger at the start of the 60's to beat the Europeans at their own game. Mr. Ford reasoned that if his cars won races in Europe, he could increase sales at home. Douglas Brinkley's history of the Ford Motor Company, "Wheels for the World," notes that "Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday" was used as the title of a Ford brochure about racing.

When Leo Beebe, Ford's executive in charge of racing, approached Mr. Shelby for ideas for the company's "Total Performance" initiative, the retired racer proposed placing a 260-cubic-inch Ford V-8 engine into the chassis of an AC Ace, a highly regarded British sports car of the time. As other Ford engines became available, the displacement grew to 289 cubic inches and later, 427. The Cobra, as Shelby called it, became an instant hit on the circuit, eclipsing the competition in race after race, and car buyers rushed to get themselves on waiting lists for it.
1. The Cobra, with its sensual lines and toe-curling horsepower, turned Mr. Shelby into a creative automotive genius and his company into one of the most successful independent sports car companies of the era. It even inspired a single, "Hey Little Cobra," which became a hit for the Rip Chords in 1964. At one point, Shelby-American was fielding eight race teams around the world and winning every race in sight. In 1967, Mr. Shelby gave his modified Mustangs a power boost with Ford's 428-cubic-inch V-8, creating the GT500, another checkered flag regular.
Mr. Shelby and his crackerjack team built 20,000 Shelby Mustang GT350's until Ford transferred construction of the car to a plant in Dearborn, Mich. Today, Shelby Mustang GT350's, particularly the original cars built by Shelby-American, are among the most sought-after Mustangs, often selling in the mid-six-figure range.
Cobras are also highly collectible. Last year, a 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 S/C sold for $253,800 at auction, and one-off Cobras built for specific races or auto shows have sold for as much as $3 million.
Mr. Shelby, who rues the day that production of the original Cobra ended, still bristles whenever the Ford name is mentioned.
But a rapprochement of sorts in recent years has led to yet another collaboration with the company. In August, Ford announced that it had entered into a new partnership with Mr. Shelby, including the design of new Ford GT and Mustang models to celebrate the company's centennial this year. Forty-two years after the Cobra, Mr. Shelby is still looking for ways to put muscle in machines.

"I guess you would call me an innovator," Mr. Shelby said with no false modesty. "I could have made a lot more money, but I've had a lot of fun."

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