Mehta was born in Uganda in 1945 into a wealthy Indian Gujarati family of plantation owners. His grandfather Nanji Kalidas Mehta founded the Mehta Group, a major East African business conglomerate, and his father was Khimji Mehta. He began rallying at age 21, driving a BMW. In 1972, as Idi Amin's regime accelerated its expulsion of Uganda's Asian population, Mehta and his family fled to Kenya — one year before he won his first Safari Rally title. He later married his sometime co-driver Yvonne Pratt in 1978, and the couple had one son, Vijay, born in 1980.
Through the most successful period of his career, Mehta drove Datsun machinery. The Safari Rally, run across thousands of kilometers of East African roads and bush tracks, rewarded mechanical preparation, local knowledge, and strategic restraint as much as outright pace — all qualities central to Mehta's approach.
His first Safari title came in 1973 under historic circumstances. Mehta and Sweden's Harry Källström both finished the event on identical penalty points — 6 hours and 46 minutes each — making the 1973 Safari the first WRC event ever to end in a dead heat. The tie was resolved in Mehta's favor because he had been fastest in the opening stages. The episode was a measure of the extraordinary closeness of competition Mehta was capable of generating.
After a gap, he returned to dominate the Safari between 1979 and 1982, winning four consecutive editions. The consistency required to succeed four years running on such an unpredictable event — with its flash floods, wildlife crossings, and degrading road surfaces — was widely regarded as a remarkable achievement. His 1981 season was strong enough to secure fifth overall in the WRC drivers' standings.
Beyond the Safari, Mehta won the inaugural African Rally Championship in 1981 and the Cyprus Rally in 1976. He appeared on the podium at the Acropolis Rally twice and three times at the Rallye Côte d'Ivoire. His career ended in 1986 after a near-fatal crash at the Rallye des Pharaons in Egypt while driving for Peugeot.
After retiring from competition, Mehta moved into motorsport administration. He held several positions at the FIA, eventually becoming president of the FIA Rally Commission in 1997. He was re-appointed as interim President of the WRC Commission shortly before his death. He died in London on 12 April 2006, from liver problems and complications arising from an old injury.
Shekhar Mehta's five Safari Rally victories remain the record for the event, and his four consecutive wins between 1979 and 1982 stand as one of the most sustained dominant runs in WRC history on any single rally. He bridged the world of competitive driving and international motorsport governance, contributing to the administration of the sport he excelled in. His career embodied the unique demands of East African rallying, where deep local knowledge and extraordinary endurance counted as much as speed.