Carroll Shelby

Carroll Hall Shelby was born on January 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas, to Warren Hall Shelby, a rural mail carrier, and his wife Eloise. By age seven he had developed heart valve leakage problems that caused complications throughout his life. His family moved to Dallas, Texas when he was seven. By ten he was cycling to nearby dirt tracks to watch races; by fifteen he was driving and maintaining his father's Ford. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas in 1940 and enrolled in the Aeronautical Engineering program at The Georgia Institute of Technology.

On April 11, 1941, Shelby enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He began pilot training in November at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, graduated as a staff sergeant pilot in September 1942 at Ellington Field, and was commissioned second lieutenant in December 1942. He served as a flight instructor and test pilot on the Beechcraft AT-11 Kansan and Curtiss-Wright AT-9 Jeep, and went on to fly the Douglas B-18 Bolo, the North American B-25 Mitchell, the Douglas A-26 Invader, and the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. He was discharged after V-J Day. Afterwards he ran a dump truck business, worked as an oil-well roughneck from 1948 to 1949, then started a poultry farm that went bankrupt in 1952.

Shelby began racing as an amateur in January 1952, driving his friend Ed Wilkin's MG TC at a drag meet at Grand Prairie Naval Air Station. Later that year he drove Charles Brown's Cadillac-Allards at Caddo Mills, Texas. In 1953 he won eight or nine races with Cad-Allards.

In 1954, while competing in the Mil Kilometros de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Shelby met John Wyer, Aston Martin's team manager, who invited him to drive their DBR3 at Sebring — the car broke an axle and did not finish. Shelby then raced in Europe for Wyer at Aintree and Le Mans, and in June finished fifth with Graham Whitehead in an Aston Martin at the Thousand Kilometers at Monza. In August 1954, Shelby joined Donald Healey's team at Bonneville Salt Flats, setting approximately 70 Class D National speed records in Austin-Healey 100S models, 17 of them individually. He was severely injured in a crash later that year while racing an Austin-Healey in the Carrera Panamericana.

Despite eight months of operations, Shelby returned in 1955, finishing second at Sebring in Allen Guiberson's Ferrari Monza. In 1956 he won 30 races, set a record run at the Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race in a specially prepared Ferrari 375 GP roadster (10 minutes, 21.8 seconds), and was named Sports Illustrated driver of the year. He repeated as driver of the year in 1957.

On 18 May 1958, Shelby rejoined the Aston Martin team, driving a DBR3 at the Belgian Sports Car Grand Prix and a DBR1 at the Nürburgring 1000 km with co-driver Roy Salvadori. He also drove a Maserati 250F for Scuderia Centro Sud in three Grand Prix races including the Portuguese Grand Prix, gaining Formula 1 experience.

The highlight of his driving career came in June 1959, when he and co-driver Roy Salvadori won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin DBR1. Shelby later wrote that winning Le Mans was "probably the greatest thrill I ever got out of racing." In the 1959 Grand Prix season he drove the Aston Martin DBR4 in the Dutch Grand Prix, the British Grand Prix at Aintree, the Portuguese Grand Prix, and the Italian Grand Prix.

In 1960, Shelby won the Sports Car Club of America United States Auto Club Road Racing Sports Car Championship with victories at Riverside International Raceway in a Maserati Tipo 61 "Birdcage" and at Continental Divide Raceways in a Chevrolet Scarab Mark II. He retired from driving in October 1960 for health reasons.

One year after retiring, Shelby opened the Shelby School of High Performance Driving at the Riverside track with Pete Brock. He then established Shelby American in Los Angeles in 1962 with the goal of building an all-American sports car by pairing a large V8 engine with a lightweight European chassis.

Shelby became interested in the AC Ace chassis after Bristol Aeroplane Company stopped building automobile engines. He contacted Charles Hurlock of AC, who agreed to supply chassis on credit. Dave Evans of Ford Motor Company agreed to supply 221-cubic-inch and 260-cubic-inch V8 engines with transmissions, also on credit. The first car, the Carroll Shelby Experimental (CSX0001), was marketed as the Shelby AC Cobra, then AC Cobra, and eventually the Ford Cobra. Production began in March 1962; 75 cars had been sold by the end of that year, and 100 had been built by April 1963. The 427 Cobra prototype was built in October 1964.

To make the Cobra competitive with Ferrari GT cars at high-speed circuits, Shelby replaced the open roadster body with an enclosed low-drag coupe body. The resulting Shelby Daytona Coupe took three GT class wins on the 1964 World Sportscar Championship GT circuit, including Le Mans and the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood, plus the Sports Car Club of America's U.S. GT Championship. In 1965, Shelby American Cobra won the International Championship for GT Manufacturers.

After success with the Daytona Coupe in 1964, Shelby American became more heavily involved in Ford's GT40 Sports Prototype racing program. Shelby made changes to running gear and transmissions to improve reliability, and designed the GT40 Mark II around Ford's 7.0-litre (427 cu in) engine. In 1966, the Mark II earned Ford the overall Constructors' title in the World Sportscar Championship with a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans. Shelby then finalized development of the Mark IV after the project experienced setbacks including the death of driver Ken Miles in August 1966. The Mark IV was introduced at the 1967 12 Hours of Sebring and won. It went on to win Le Mans in 1967, with driver Dan Gurney spraying champagne on the podium and starting a tradition.

Shelby also collaborated with Ford Motor Company on the Mustang-based Shelby GT350, starting in 1965, and the Shelby GT500, starting in 1967. He produced those cars through 1968. He also worked with the Rootes Group to upgrade the Sunbeam Alpine by installing a Ford small-block V8, the result being named the Tiger by Rootes; Chrysler bought Sunbeam in 1967 and eventually discontinued the model.

At the request of Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca — who had previously brought Shelby to the Ford Mustang — Shelby began working with Dodge as Performance Consultant on the Dodge Viper Technical Policy Committee, alongside Chrysler executive Bob Lutz, Product Design chief Tom Gale, and Engineering Vice President François Castaing. Modified vehicles bearing Shelby's name under the Dodge marque included the 1983–1984 Dodge Shelby Charger, the 1984–1986 Dodge Omni GLH, and a limited 1996 Dodge Viper RT/10 CS run of 19 cars.

In 1997, Shelby unveiled the Series 1 roadster at the Los Angeles Auto Show, his only car produced from a clean sheet of paper. It used Oldsmobile's 4.0 L L47 Aurora V8. Shelby American built a total of 249 production Series 1 cars as model year 1999 cars.

In 2003, Ford Motor Company and Carroll Shelby resumed ties and he became technical advisor to the Ford GT project. He formed Carroll Shelby International, Inc. in Nevada that same year. At the 2005 New York International Auto Show, Ford introduced the Shelby GT500, the first official Shelby-Ford Mustang collaboration since 1971, powered by a supercharged 5.4L V8 rated at 500 hp.

Shelby was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992, and the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1992. He received the 2008 Automotive Executive of the Year Award. He established the Carroll Shelby Children's Foundation to cover medical bills of children with heart disease. His memoir, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967 and re-released in 2019.

Shelby received a heart transplant in 1990 and a kidney transplant in 1996. He died on May 10, 2012, at the age of 89. He had been suffering from a serious heart ailment for decades.

In popular culture, Shelby is portrayed by Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari, a 2019 film about the 1960s rivalry between Ford and Ferrari at Le Mans.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.