A heart condition ended Carroll Shelby's driving and launched the Cobra
Carroll Shelby won Le Mans in 1959, then angina from a congenital heart defect forced him out of the cockpit after 1960. Within two years he was fitting Ford V8 engines into lightweight British bodies in a rented Los Angeles shop. The result was the Cobra, and his company went on to beat Ferrari at Le Mans.
Shelby had tried the formula before. Selling Maseratis from a Dallas dealership with partner Dick Hall, he dropped a Chevrolet engine into a British Lister chassis in the late 1950s. General Motors later sold him three Corvette chassis for rebodying in Italy, then refused more, fearing competition with its own car. When he asked again for Chevrolet engines in 1961 the answer was still no, so he turned to Ford, which was about to release a new small-block V8.
The body came from AC Cars of Thames Ditton in Surrey, which had lost its engine supply when Bristol Cars stopped making a six-cylinder unit. Ford delivered two engines in November 1961, AC's first shell arrived in February 1962, and Shelby and Dean Moon built the first Cobra. That April he leased a former Scarab racing-car workshop in Venice, California, founding Shelby American. Its open body lacked top speed in Europe, so Pete Brock designed the streamlined Daytona coupe, which in 1965 made Shelby the first American constructor to win an FIA world title.
Ford handed its struggling GT40 programme to Shelby after 1964. Fitted with a 7.0 litre engine, the Mk II swept the top places at Daytona and Le Mans in 1966, a story retold in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari. Ken Miles, one of its lead drivers, was killed that August while testing a successor at Riverside. The redesigned Mk IV won both races it entered in 1967, including Le Mans with Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt.
Lee Iacocca also recruited Shelby to turn the new Mustang into a racer, producing the GT350, special rental editions for Hertz, and the 1967 GT500. Sales of Shelby Mustangs rose sixfold between 1966 and 1967. The modern company, owned by a holding firm formed in 2003, was the first carmaker in Nevada and still builds Cobra replicas.
Source: Shelby American
