Carroll Shelby: An Interview with the Snake

[Music] there once was a time in the history of speed when sports car supremacy was a European domain that swept across the racetracks of the world with shameless bravado during the 1950's cars that poor names such as Ferrari Jaguar Maserati and Aston Martin reigned proudly over the automotive Kingdom with power and handling which secured their rightful places in the hierarchy of grand touring cars in America only one production car dared to challenge its European counterparts in the arena's of performance the Chevrolet Corvette it was called America's only true sports car and although that might have been true by the early 60s the Corvettes racing successes were more national than international achievements but then again America's racing Compass Point was headed in other directions in the decade of the 60s the late-model stock cars of NASCAR the quarter-mile dragsters competing in the National Hot Rod Association and the United States Auto clubs oval racers blasting around the Brickyard had lured most of America's racing enthusiasts some distance away from sports car consciousness and by the middle and late 60s the muscle car phenomenon was the most influential stream-of-consciousness on the domestic automotive agenda there is a man who in only a handful of years brought automotive thunder to the world of high performance and gave America the most furiously fast sports cars that have ever been built cars which made America the country to beat in a sport that Europeans had invented and dominated in with predictable regularity for decades until this quick-witted Texan with a sparkle in his eye and an unquenchable desire to guide his dreams into the daylight of reality brought a bunch of unknown but ingenious hot rodders together for a know so short but oh so glorious quest for excellence his name is Carol Shelby [Music] would you like to be driving that baby some thrilled but you know before that pilot could fly from coast to coast and three hours plus somebody had to invest about a million hours getting him ready for it there's a lot of designing testing and fire runs behind every new innovation or new performance record how do I know my name is Carol Shelby and performance is my business Carol Shelby was born in Leesburg Texas on January 11th 1923 his desire to become a racecar driver began to emerge in his teen years but it wasn't until 1952 at the age of 29 after a few less than successful career attempts that he actually began driving sports cars in sanctioned racing events well I was in the chicken business a story's been told a thousand times now chickens died with a limber neck or Newcastle's disease as it was it's called so I'd always wanted to be a racing driver I was 29 years old and I said the hell with it I'm going out and do that and friend of mine had an mg ed Wilkins in Dallas mg TC and we'd been trying to build us a Chrysler special with a Hemi engine and to make a long story short we went up to Oklahoma to a race and his mg and I won the race and from there own it was about three years struggle before I was driving for the Aston Martin team in Europe early on in his racing career he would go directly to the racetrack from his other job still wearing his bib overalls it would become a Shelby trademark I didn't drive very long I didn't drive race cars but nine years because I had the heart problem I got in in 1959 Carroll Shelby short race driving career was nevertheless a brilliant one he won three national drivers championships in 1955 57 and in 1960 in 1956 and 57 he was named Sports Illustrated sports car driver of the year he won a record 19 consecutive races in his 1957 championship season and in 1959 scored his greatest racing success as he and co-driver Roy Salvadori won the 24 Hours of LeMans in an aston martin dbr1 helping Aston Martin to win the world manufacturers championship that year he drove Formula one cars for Aston Martin and Maserati for a short time but in 1960 he learned that he was suffering from a heart condition he won the United States Road racing club drivers championship that year sometimes competing with nitroglycerin pills under his tongue in the event of chest pains then in December of 1960 Carol's shall be retired as a race driver in 1989 at the Monterey historic races at Laguna Seca a special tribute is held to commemorate Aston Martin's and Carroll Shelby's victory at the 1959 24 hours of lamothe the recreated pit area was a colorful backsplash to the lineup of the fully restored Aston Martins which competed in that great race looking just as menacing as they did 30 years ago Aston Martin teen drivers from the 1950s also reunited at the event in a sire almost a family atmosphere I think and which included all the mechanics and when one where that the mom we all stayed in the same hotel with the mechanics never and dinner was always with everybody present and it was just a wonderful feeling that you got from and they were very serious about what they were doing and the Gwyn sterling moss until he more things that were wrong with the Austin path having said that it was one of the best balance and characteristics the car did so well I mean not it's with another man with is to me is even more remarkable than the other success because it was not really a little on car and the 1959 winning team Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori along with the dbr1 that Shelby and Salvadori drove the victory it was a day for religion fond memories such a wonderful handling car the first American to win the world driving championship in 1961 and a former teammate an employee of Carroll Shelby Phil Hill was there and duly impressed creating the 1959 Laguna Seca that's about an extraordinary thing as anyone could do another very famous fan of Shelby's was also there comedian and Tonight Show guest host who owns several Shelby vehicles well that's just fun I mean I'm a big car guy so this is this is great fun I'm having a lot of it did stirring you know this is what I do it's like the ultimate garage this event was not the only one in which Carroll Shelby's driving successes we showcase [Music] a second Maserati was the car being up and once again Shelby moss and Hill were reunited [Music] although Carroll Shelby's career as a driver ended in 1960 his association with automobiles and racing was on his experiences behind the wheel of some of Europe's most successful race cars had planted a great undeniable see the Germany the reason I wanted to go to Europe was because I wanted to learn how Ferrari Maserati Aston Martin all those teams built their cars and ran little automobile companies and that was a double reason for me not only to drive race cars but I wanted to learn how those little companies worked and I found that out and when I quit in 1960 I started building the Cobra and his brief relationship with an American hybrid sports car had also fanned the flames of his creative vision the Allard the car which Sidney allit had built for several years in the 50s was the combination of a lightweight chassis and body and powerful American engines such as Ford side valves Cadillac and chrysler VX carroll shelby drove the alert a number of times and fellow Texan Tom Turner is a noted Allard collector and vintage racer there was a first development of the big engine in the European chassis and we asked Carol Shelby one time where he got the idea for the Cobra and said where the did you think I got it and he thought say for the Allard was the first big car that he ever drove 1962 was the year that the first Cobra Pro was built in February of that year as any Cobra enthusiasts can tell you the end result of one of history's greatest strokes of coincidence came into being everybody's heard that story I guess I borrowed an engine from Ford got AC to build a chassis that take the v8 engine everybody thought that we just took an AC chassis but it was much more complicated than that we had to change the shed although the chassis was the same type of design as at Ruggiero chassis for many years before that there was a lot heavier and beefier to take the 400 horsepower that we were we were putting in it versus 120 for the little AC Bristol engine Ric kopeck is the president of the Shelby American Automobile Club one of the most devoted groups of automotive enthusiasts in the world he is a friend of Carroll Shelby and one of today's most knowledgeable historians on Shelby and his cars well someone once said that timing is everything and I think we can look back over 25 years of hindsight and see that Shelby was the right guy in the right place at the right time with the right idea he went to Ford right when Ford was on the edge of their total performance project they wanted to be known in NASCAR in IndyCar in sports cars and in drag racing and Shelby was the Sports Car Connection he came to them with an idea to put one of their engines in a sports car they were warm they weren't red-hot they were lukewarm and Shelby was enough of a promoter to get them involved and to keep them involved and and his ideas of where he wanted to go happen to coincide with where Ford wanted to go and Ford was happy to let him do the driving to get him there the two 60-48 dropped into the AC roadster created an explosive combination of power and acceleration that made a mockery of the performance envelopes of any production car being built here or abroad the Coldren had been born as a street car the Cobra didn't pamper its driver or passenger its sole purpose in life was to be the fastest wildest most uncivilized driving experience money could buy and if it scared the bejesus out of you in the process so be it in September of 1962 Road & Track magazine Road tested an early production Cobra it went from zero to 60 in 4.2 seconds drivers of other performance cars were those numbers and swallowed hard the 260 v8 was soon replaced with a 289 Ford v8 which made the Cobra and even more carnivorous creature in the autumn of 1962 in a small industrial complex in Venice California Carroll Shelby got on with the job of preparing the Cobra for real warfare national and international racing and to tackle the daunting task of developing a winning race car in 1962 Shelby's dancing partner was the Ford Motor Company after Ford decided to jump in bed with me they put some good people out helping me sometimes there were help sometimes they were hindrance because I knew what I wanted to build I knew that you couldn't compromise it and I was shooting for a little niche market now niches are all over the place there's a lot of niche markets but I didn't want to build but about 500 cars a year to begin with the first racing encounters of the early comers mixed bag of successes and feelings every race smoked out another part or subsystem that needed improved or upgrading by 1963 with many of the mechanical shortfalls corrected Carol's shall be spectacular juggernaut of racing championships got up to speed that year the Cobras won both the SCCA eight production national championship and the newly organized United States Road racing championship the Cobra would also become a national drag racing champion in the National Hot Rod Association the Shelby American Crew 1963 was not a rewarding year for the Cobras at international events such as they taught Sebring in the law it was in the following year that Shelby team cars would begin to dismantle their overseas competition we wanted to go international racing and the old 289 Cobra was about as aerodynamic as a shoebox so we got together Pete Brock Phil Remington al Dowd several of the fellows around the shop and Pete Brock came up with a sketch I'd say the team was Pete Phil Remington and Ken miles and we came up with a car that went from 150 miles an hour with 400 horsepower at 200 miles an hour it debuted at the Daytona International Speedway on February 16 1964 hence the name Daytona Coupe its first GT win occurred at the 1964 race at Sebring and there were several other GT victories for the sleek Cobra that season in fact 1964 might have been the year that Carroll Shelby's aluminum-bodied snakes won the world manufacturer's championship with three events remaining the Cobras ended the show well in at least two to capture the necessary points for the championship but one of those events was in Italy where Enzo Ferrari wielded enormous clout we should have won the world championship in 1964 with it but old man's Ferrari being a rascal that he was got the last world championship event at Monza cancelled so he had beat him five straight races up till then and he saw the handwriting on the wall and he got it changed but we get we nailed him next year so it doesn't make any difference Carroll Shelby was a success in building the cars he built because he had the ability to to see see the goal that he wanted to envision that and then to find the people who could best help him meet that goal one of the examples of that is P Brock when he designed the Daytona Coupe here was a guy that was a real young guy out of General Motors design school he had some experience working on the Corvette he really didn't have a lot of experience with wind tunnels and with aerodynamics but yet he had a sixth sense that Shelby must have picked up on in order to put him in charge of that project you wouldn't just pick somebody off the street to do that and so P Brock designed this car by the seat of his pants and it worked Carroll Shelby's Cobras did indeed go on to win that elusive championship in 1965 an accomplishment that becomes even more remarkable when you consider that only six Cobra Daytona coupes were ever built and it wasn't only their second full season of international competition that the Shelby team won a championship that Ferrari had won almost effortlessly in 1963 two brief years earlier and even more remarkable yet a championship no other American car had ever won before or since the Cobra roadster was the one that I had the most experience with although Pete Brock a young design engineer who was also very creative God very brave and went out and designed a coupe and did a terrific job on that and that that still it still looks good and it still performs well even today that but the origins the Southern California origins which include what was the hot rod phenomena from the dry lakes and the illegal racing on the streets in post-war California and also later on the the beginnings of drag racing which still goes today that that was the the progenitor or that that's where the Cobra really came from and it was a hot rod and Ford engine and and this AC Cobra chassis the marriage of that plus the RAM and the rest of the engineers that put it all together it was a it was an interesting and unique automobile that was able to get the job done the Cobra was nothing but a hot rod the Scarab [Music] the big Ferraris big engines like chasis big brakes I think that what went on in America in the late fifties bringing out these hotrod and showing that they could compete with with the best that the Europeans built showed American ingenuity and it helped a lot of us Americans get to Europe get jobs over there because we had these hot rods to go when the race is with beat those Ferraris and so forth in 1965 perhaps the most notorious car to wear the Shelby name entered the fiercely fought muscle car rebellion and with startling immediacy took over sole control of the main streets the 427 Cobra first we put a 427 minute 289 chassis and Ken miles tested we called it the mule and worse names because we knew that Chevrolet had said they weren't in racing but they were secretly building the Grand Sport and we would have had the 427 out of 289 chassis ready for them but kin wrecked it and there would have never gone to Daytona I mean to Nassau and and beat the Cobras that Ken had and wrecked the car when we were testing it I were that's where the 427 came from and class iearning one of Ford engineers it was the first car that was laid out chassis was laid out on computer he's the one that did it Phil Remington went over and to the AC cars and a couple of the other guys and we put the car together all in three months and we're producing it and we had to do it to encase Chimel a had gone ahead and produced the they're lightweight Corvettes which they they went out of business when they saw us building the 427 Cobra so I was sorry to see that because it would have been a lot of fun to race you know to race them the 427 Cobra is racing exploits were largely confined to national events in 1965 since an insufficient number of them were built in time to qualify for international competition the a production championship of the SCCA was to be sold property of the 427 Cobra the remainder of the decade and on the streets the 427 Cobra a team is so fearful a reputation feud there the Challenger it could accelerate from zero to 60 in under five seconds it ran a 12 second quarter mile on street tires and could accelerate to its top speed of 165 so quickly cars with higher top speeds would have need ten miles blasted from zero to 100 to zero in 13.8 seconds in a 427 Cobra wearing Street tires was said of such stunning magnitude but no other production counter has ever people the 427 Cobra it's probably the the card that more people have lusted after who have never driven one or have never even ridden in one that it's shrouded in legend and in mystery and they didn't make very many of them when you think about all the cars that were made in numbers they made about 350 of these cars most of the the mystique is because they came on the heels of the 289 Cobra the 289 Cobra really was the car that gave the Cobra its name it became a household word people thought that that was the fastest sports car ever made and it was the fastest production car ever made until Shelby come out with the 427 which was even faster and he did something that up until that time no one had even thought about doing was putting a big-block NASCAR engine a 450 horsepower engine into a 2500 pound sports car and you were driving really little more than an engine with a seat behind it the cars have had a mystique they were the high-water mark and performance they would go from 0 to 60 faster than you could catch your breath if they had the right rear end they would top 200 miles an hour they would they would break the rear wheels loose at any speed in almost any gear and it was the kind of thing that you saw a car like that once and you remembered it the rest of your life you didn't have to drive it I know people who have you know they remember very distinctly seeing the car like that and back in 1966 when maybe they were 16 or 17 and they remember the first 427 Cobra they ever saw I mean I remember the first one I saw just like it was yesterday 27 Cobra was solidifying Carroll Shelby's place in muscle-car history my mother she'll be creation was emerging from the same Southern California gene pool from which the Cobra had hatched taking a horse and giving it the things of a reptile Shelby Mustang came along because I Koko went to sport car Club of America and says we're going to make Mustang a sport car and I didn't know about this - about a month later they've gone to John Bishop told him that they were gonna make it a sport car and and he says well it's not a sport car it's a horse seat car it's not a sport car finally when they told Ike okhla they couldn't make it a sport car he called me and say can you make a sport car so I called my guys together the people that I worked with it forward and and the people that were out in the field Remington's and and said can we make this a sport car and then I called we decided we could then I called John Bishop and said John what does it take to make the Mustang a sport car instead of saying we're going to make this a sport car and he says all hail Shelby says that's pretty simple said take the back seat out and change the suspension around so that it handles better and not a little mushy six-cylinder they had to start putting the v8s in them and and so I got them to build high-performance 289 v8 we took the suspension and changed it we put a large rear end in it with a limited-slip took the rear seat out and without and beat the hell out of Corvettes with the question of Shelby's cars I guess comes down to are they sizzle or are they steak and there's a lot of both I think there's a so much sizzle that sometimes the smoke overpowers you and you get caught up in it they certainly were everything they were meant to be they were ultra high performance they accelerated well they brake well they handled well and they won races and and you can't ask for much more than that this GT 350 is a racing version of Ford's Mustang 2+2 we set the cars up for racing installing special components racing shocks and so on we're doing a lot of testing as well this is Willow Springs Raceway tucked away in the Mojave Desert it's where we do much of the testing for our new cars the interesting thing about testing out high-performance automobiles is you can only do it with top drivers who can take the cars right up to the maximum we've got with us today instructor driving behind the wheel of the new Mustang gt350 the Shelby gt350 began life in 1965 as a rough and fastback with power handling and blue-chip category it immediately dusted its competition including the Corvette's in the SCCA SB production category on its way to the national championship in 1965 66 and 67 if there was a negative with the Cobra it was that the Ford dealers found it very hard to associate that car with the other cars on their showroom floor whereas a Corvette was very clearly a Chevrolet but when Shelby came out with them with his version of the Mustang of course that was much easier it was obviously a Mustang and yet there was something about the car that if you saw one coming at you down the road or in a parking lot there was just something about the silhouette of that car that you knew it was more than just a Mustang I think the tires filling up the wheel wells just the the aggressive stance that the car had the stripes the the hood scoop the hood pins the things that you were used to seeing on a real race car and at that time you didn't see him on street cars you look at a 65 Shelby Mustang they were sold for $4,800 that was a lot of money for a Mustang well you could pay $3,000 for a loaded Mustang I don't think you could pay 48 hundred dollars for a Galaxie you know so it was an expensive car it was a racing car that they had detuned to put on the street it was different I think one of the interesting things about the Shelby Mustang project at the very beginning was that whenever anyone builds a high-performance version of a standard car a Camaro z/28 is based on the the car the standard version that they sell and what Shelby Dead which took the race car and detuned it to make the street car instead of taking a street car and hopping it up to make it a race car it was clear that Carroll Shelby's great player greatness and others facing upstarts to reap a whirlwind of success in an astoundingly short time in the early days everybody had to do three jobs the marketing man had to be the salesman sometimes a janitor sometimes the chief engineer had to be the chief mechanic or the I had to wipe the cars off clean him up so it was really a very interesting time we had a lot of spirit around the place over in Venice California at that time and I longed for those days because I had more fun than building cars than I ever have since then we've been publishing the club magazine for 17 years and during that time we've interviewed a lot of people who work for Shelby I'm always joking that we'll never run out of people but it seems like to a person every one of them has said that at the time that they spent with Shelby American and the cobras and Carroll Shelby was probably the high point of their life although they didn't realize it at the time at the time they were just people doing a job whether they were building race cars or driving home or building streetcars and it was a job like any other job that they've had you never know where it's going to go and you never know that you look back through the hindsight of history 20 years later and it's going to be one of the more famous or important things that you've ever done but at the time they got a lot of personal satisfaction they had a lot of enjoyment and they certainly experienced success which is enough to pump you up and keep you going for the next round meanwhile after the World Championship season of 1965 Carroll Shelby had become more directly involved in Ford's ultimate quest winning the 24 Hours of LeMans Ford GT in the weeks to come we hope to continue our string of victories success we find for erasing it that way it's a rich mixture of heartache enjoy those of us who participate in this most exciting of sports the board people whatever the outcome Racing becomes and never-ending pursuit of excellence house burly can break it is and I went to Europe and hired John Wyer who used to run the Aston Martin team and we took Erik proudly in but and bought the rights to a car that he had done a lowly Ridge midship Indian GT car but he couldn't stand the Ford politics and and being the independent I said Eric he is I can't say that I blame him because he knew what he wanted to do and and he didn't need three thousand engineers telling him what he wanted what he ought to do and 15 marketing people telling him what do you ought to do and everybody having a different opinion of what you ought to do and so he pulled out of it but the the gt40 evolved from that John Wyer put the people together over in England and that's where the gt40 came from then we did a lot of work on it but we didn't do any of the initial design work that was John John wine and then Bailey and and we did a lot of development working we waste it and when the gt40 really became viable though was when Bill Ennis and all those wonderful engineers O'Sullivan that built the first Ford flathead build us a 427 aluminum engine that and put it on the dynamometer and ran them all with an engine and gearbox three or four times that broke they fixed it strengthened that part and that's the reason we went and went to Lamar and won in 66 and 67 Ford would achieve their Lamar victory in 1966 Ford GTS would finish first second and third the top to finishing cars the ones prepared by the Shelby team several months later the Shelby American team would suffer an immeasurable loss one of the most valuable members of the Shelby American success story who had come aboard in early 1963 was Ken miles he was an outstanding driver and development specialist he had been instrumental in the Shelby racing program and in the development of the 427 Cobra and the GT 350 in August of 1966 while testing the new Ford GT J car at Riverside he crashed and was killed Ken mouths God rest his soul the gt40s would never have reached the pinnacle that they reached without ken miles he was a very quickly if he had proved but he was the ultimate as far as long-distance racing is concerned I've never had a loss that hit me as hard as when we lost Ken he was not only a friend but he was a good engineer he was a good test driver he was a good as good a race driver as I ever knew and I can't say what a boy I felt when we lost him shall be returned to Lamar in 1967 to once again head up the for assault remembering that race gives him a chance to talk about his close friend Dan Gurney the greatest I'm sure Dan wouldn't agree or AJ for it wouldn't agree but the greatest drive that I've ever seen Dan put together was when he won the mall for us and the Ford GT in 1967 Boyd had just won Indianapolis for it you know still had the fire in his belly gurney played it so cool so smart he never went within 15 seconds of how fast he could go and practice and he did that for a reason he knew fort would try to go faster and he played it like that he never ever even during the race went anywhere near his limit he drove such a beautiful race all the rest the Fords blew up gurney and poet held it together and won the race which I thinks is great a a racist boy that ever drove - and I've seen him drive a lot of because he kept himself in check although he wanted to go fast gurney kept himself in check and while everybody else dropped by the wayside they won the race and to me that just shows you what a bright individual that Dan Gurney is and I will thank him for that to my dying day the lamaze race in 67 my final race of the month I had been there six times prior to that and had managed to lead the race and been great contenders and had some great teammates [Music] who I admired a great deal and was maybe the greatest oval racer ever although he's certainly among the top four or five and has won more still today Indy car races than anyone else was it was a tremendous I think as the patriot and that some guy like the way the flag was a wild was a terrific occasion and but I think my previous experience where I had been there six times and had almost always been beaten by another older fellow Briggs Cunningham who wasn't really well known as a race driver but knew how to approach that race I took a lot of hints from from Briggs and applied that to my effort there in 67 and convinced AJ that our philosophy should be it's not a race it's a yes contest well we did regardless of what horde said to us and and I don't think Ford realized we were voted the most least likely to succeed I'm sure and of course by applying what was Briggs's philosophy next thing you know we set new records and and won the index of performance which had to do with mileage as well I mean you just smoked the Dickens out of everybody and it was a it was a great day for Carroll Shelby the dream had been realized he had won a World Championship numerous national championships and had taken Ford to the winner's circle at Lamar twice but the world and the cars he was building were changing I had a beautiful relationship with Ford in the earlier years if we needed something if we needed an engine built down the assembly line with a couple hundred at a time with another hundred horsepower they did it for us wonderful people that we worked with an engineering as it progressed and Ford got into serious racing themselves and spending a lot of money there was a lot jealousy overdue the fact that we were an outside company we were doing we were getting all these good pieces and parts and create a lot of jealousy and it wasn't as much pleasure as it was in the beginning however I have to say in all honesty I would never been able to do what we did or we would never have been able to do what we did if it hadn't been for forward with any factory or any big corporation there's also a concept that they have that they call a not invented here that if it didn't come out of their corporate boardrooms or from the ideas of somebody they fight very hard against it I think partially that's just human nature they don't want someone else to take credit for things that they're doing but they also don't want to to risk the company name on something that might not be successful because if Carol Shelby were a failure Ford's name would have been dragged down with him very fond memories for a lot of the people that forward the Homer Perry's and and and the people that were not only helpful but were there anytime we we needed them and and made it possible to go to engineering and get what we needed on very short notice and help us in every way they could Ford doesn't always get the credit that it deserved and Carol Shelby is quick to admit that he says that there were a lot of people at Ford that helped him that he would not have been able to do what he did without their help and yet they get overlooked in the journalistic shorthand when someone writes an article and it says Shelby wins Lamont's it's much easier to write one headline like that than it is to say Shelby along with Ford along with drivers along with its designers and stylists and engineers and everybody else it gets to wieldy and so the journalists would come along and just say Shelby wins LeMans and the people at Ford would would not feel too good about that they feel like they're not getting the the respect or the credit that they deserve and to an extent I think that's true in 1967 by year's end production on the Cobra was halted and the Shelby Mustangs which in the beginning were hairy-chested muscle cars had begun an evolutionary cycle in 1966 that had made them more civilized 1,000 GT 350s were built that year for Hertz rent-a-car most were black and gold and all of them carried the gt350 H designation an adult hertz customer could rent a Shelby Mustang for a few bucks more than an Ltd would have cost for the weekend in 1967 the Shelby gt500 was introduced powered by the four at 428 big-block engine but both the GT 350s and 500s were getting bigger and heavier meanwhile Ford had a stronger hand in the positioning of the Shelby build vehicles in the marketplace performance was now only an incidental rather than an essential component in the game plan and the government was beginning to cast a jaundiced eye and cars that proclaimed their performance credentials and racing bloodlines so on October 4th 1969 Carroll Shelby announced his retirement from the world of high-performance automobiles it ended about 1970 because performance went away the Mustang was getting too heavy you had to fool with environmental problems emissions and so forth that we had to clean the environment up but there there was nothing to do there weren't any interesting cars you could build so I I went to Africa for 10 years I wanted to see Africa before it was gone and I'm glad that I went then because it it'll be impossible to do in the 90s in Africa what I did in the in the 70s late 60s and 70s Nazi Africa as Africa was the Cobras came along right at the beginning of the end right before the federal government got involved with with safety aspects forcing car makers to to reach certain standards I'm not going to make a value judgment whether that was good or bad it certainly killed the Cobra because in order to to meet those standards the cobra would have had to become a different car than it was and I think Shelby had enough foresight to to let the Cobra die right where it was instead of continuing to build it into him escalated you know to reduce its effectiveness a little bit every year just to meet some arbitrary requirement and so you know he went out with a bang the car the the last Cobra that was built was faster than the the the first Cobra that was made and you don't see that with a lot of car projects I know those are those were great days one weekend I mean one week Chrysler had come out with another muscle car and the next week Chevy had come out with another muscle car and the next week Pontiac the next week Ford and the next week Buick we really had some we had some interesting cars back there then and Carroll Shelby's proud legacy of performance might have reached its ultimate conclusion 20 years ago had it not been for a phone call in 1981 from an old friend when I went to Chrysler we started talking about putting some kind of law situation together but they didn't have two pennies to rub together so we finally got together last part 81 and all we had was a little four-cylinder engine and we started playing with mirrors and trying to announce the world that that was a performance car and we built some pretty good cars at a secret base in California a renowned designer of modern race cars is developing a new general of weapons for dodge his name Carroll Shelby the names of his weapons Daytona Lancer Omni GLH and Shelby charger [Music] these are dodges performance weapons and each is available with turbocharging which gives dodge more turbocharged models than any American car makers and gives you further proof that dodge is an American Revolution we can handle 250 horsepower and a little 2,000 2,200 pound car without any problems with the steering Dodds Omni has always been a good old buddy a nice little guy loyal efficient well we got this kind of sneaky idea first we gave it a sleep new collagen we put fifteen inch alloy wheels and performance rubber beefed up the suspension quite a bit the final touch a real screamer under the hood Dodge's high outputs Shelby mg with optional turbine power we need to come up with for the fastest production cars in America [Music] do it no more mr. nice guy the Chrysler Shelby collaboration soon resulted in a new generation of muscle cars cars which packed power and pleasure from smaller more fuel-efficient engines and handling that could match all but a few of the most expensive imports in the world with turbocharger and intercooler shall be proved that there may after all be a substitute for cubic inches it's hard to talk somebody into that that's responsible for the money to let you spend a hundred million dollars build another cylinder head and another 200 million to tool it up but we're coming along with things like the Dodge Spirit with four-cylinder engine 225 horsepower 4 doors in the ended there's a performance advantage there are a lot of very interesting cars now coming out but I'm afraid that that we're entering into another area era of the bureaucrats in Washington forcing us to go back to four-cylinder engines trying to raise the the mileage up to something that's unconscionable I'm afraid that we're entering that again so just as we're beginning to have a little fun again in spite of emissions in spite of all the safety stuff that have been brought out which I'm not degrading we needed upgrading a little bit in the industry but we've accepted all that and we're building interesting cars and now they started yelling about all now we've got a double the mileage we've got to the cafe the safety aspects so I hope they don't run it again but I I don't have much hope that the bureaucrats are gonna screw it up you can't let the Nader i'ts tell you what to build an automobile when Publix the one that has to buy them so if you listen to all these environmentalists and these bureaucrats they would flatfoot us out of the automobile business because they don't give a hoot what the public wants to buy they want to jam it up the public's behind what they're going to get Carol Shelley underwent heart transplant surgery in late 1990 and the successful outcome restored much of the energy and enthusiasm that his ailing heart had robbed him up two projects besides his Goodyear Tire distributorship now occupy the lion's share of his thoughts and efforts one is the automobile that has been called the 427 Cobra reincarnate the Viper I drove it the other day at the test track in Phoenix quite extensively I can tell you for sure that it's a worthy successor to the Cobra and it's a hell of an automobile I'm tickled to death with it the guys have done a terrific job of putting it together it's going to be just about what the 427 Cobra was 30 years ago with it's still going to be a wind and a face sport car but it's got some improvements suspension brakes a few more the creature comforts but I am very very happy to be associated with it and I'm looking forward to doing a lot of test driving in it the next year while while we're getting into production his second project is the spec racer which he builds and distributes from a Southern California facility a car that competes in its own Sports Car Club of America series the Shelby can-am there aren't any American drivers in Formula One and in Europe anymore and yet there's a whole bunch of American drivers that are capable of being in Formula One and I built the can-am car so that we can have a cheap car that young Americans can get into after they race a little Formula Renault for a season or so and they can find out and people can see whether they have any ability or not so that they can move on up to Indianapolis and and Formula One it's been over 25 years since the days when Carroll Shelby and his team tore holes in the air with the brute force of their handiwork but his life in time still provide great enjoyment to the many members of the clone that bears his name Shelby automobile club run by Rick kopeck ken deeber is the greatest club that there is anywhere and it's a wonderful Automobile Club for the simple reason that they own it and they don't get in squabbles all the time about who's gonna be President next year like all the other clubs do they do a wonderful job of running it they do a wonderful job of keeping this interest alive on these cars and we were very fortunate that the cars came along right in the middle of the muscle car era era and then they went away in the 70s and nobody's been able to build any cars like that again most members see Carroll Shelby as the the patriarch of a big family and our national conventions are more like family reunions Carroll Shelby is in private the way he is in public he doesn't put on a false face or an affected person oh he talked to you and within five minutes you get the feeling that he's telling you things that he wouldn't tell anyone else and that's not put on he's not you know trying to get his arm around your shoulder or his hand in your pocket it's just the the way he is I think part of it is from being from Texas and part of it as being a good old boy and really enjoying his position and his what he's accomplished he's very very confident and very comfortable with it he comes to our conventions and he'll meet someone last year that had a 67 Shelby with a an oil leak in it and the guy I'll be a little nervous and he'll say well my car leaks a little oil it smokes a little bit but I'm gonna get the engine rebuilt next year and the following year they'll meet again at the convention and and Carroll Shelby will say this guy John how is your gt500 engine did you get it rebuilt yet and it knocks the guy right out of his socks because he wouldn't have dreamed that Shelby would remember him after a full year I think one of Carroll Shelby's secret pleasures in this club are the number of people who name their kids after him either Carroll Shelby Smith or Shelby Smith or Carroll Smith it's amazing that people are that deeply involved and I can recall at one convention the wife of a member came up to me trying to get some sympathy and said you know he's three years old his name is Shelby Jones what do I tell him when he's 15 and he asks where he got his name I have to say that his father was interested in a certain kind of a car and that's what we named him after and I just told her it's a good thing that your husband wasn't interested in Studebakers and as Carroll Shelby moves ever closer to a sixth decade of helping to define the boundaries of driving excitement he is careful not to dwell too stubbornly on the accomplishments of yesterday I've had a lot of highs win and Lamar's a driver building the Cobra winning the World Championship really there's been so many of them that I can't decipher which was the most thrilling the thing that's the most thrilling to me is the fact that I'm sitting here with a new heart 34 35 years old and I'm still able to build what I want to build and I want to cut back and have fun doing instead of trying to build a lot of cars I want to do what I've always wanted to do that's build a few of them the way I want to build them for little niche markets and be a part of the thing like the viper be a part of Chrysler's overall plans as far as product is concerned I don't think that I'm past it and that that's the highlight of my life what's gonna happen tomorrow in that golden age of horse power when broad children bas that rippled with high compression muscle tore the pavement and filled the air that with deep throated voices warning of their intentions there were indeed cars that rewrote the laws of physics with acceleration that could knock you senseless and racetrack credentials that many cars with much longer lineages zealously invade Carroll Shelby tipped the performance world upside down with his motley crew of West Coast hot rodders they weren't interested in making history yet they made it they didn't care about creating legends and yet they're legends still shine brightly they wanted to be the fastest and they wanted to be champions and in that brief little snapshot of history Carroll Shelby saw his dreams and the dreams of those around him come to pass in a land where Giants once well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: WheelsTV

Views: 937,090

Rating: 4.8106914 out of 5

Keywords: Carroll, Shelby, Cobra, Shelby Mustang, Ford GT, Ferrari, GT Championship, Sports Car Racing, Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Aston Martin, Le Mans, Caroll Shelby, Jay Leno, Rick Kopec, Daytona, SAAC, car Club, Ford vs Ferrari, shelby ford, carroll shelby interview, carroll shelby complete history, Carroll Shelby jay leno, gt40, fordvsferrari, carrol shelby documentary, ken miles, le mans, ford le mans, carroll shelby le mans 1959, carroll shelby gt500, life of carroll shelby, lemans, car

Id: 4hNoWuTvhgQ

Length: 60min 6sec (3606 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2015