Carroll-Shelby-Obituary

Carroll Shelby

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DALLAS (AP) - Carroll Shelby, the legendary car designer and champion auto racer who built the fabled Shelby Cobra sports car and injected testosterone into Ford's Mustang and Chrysler's Viper, has died. He was 89.

Shelby's company, Carroll Shelby International, said Friday that Shelby died a day earlier at a Dallas hospital.

"We are all deeply saddened, and feel a tremendous sense of loss for Carroll's family, ourselves and the entire automotive industry," said Joe Conway, president of Carroll Shelby International, Inc. and board member. "There has been no one like Carroll Shelby and never will be. However, we promised Carroll we would carry on, and he put the team, the products and the vision in place to do just that."

Shelby was one of the nation's longest-living heart transplant recipients, having received a heart on June 7, 1990, from a 34-year-old man who died of an aneurism. Shelby also received a kidney transplant in 1996 from his so n, Michael.

The 1992 inductee into the Automobile Hall of Fame had homes in Los Angeles and his native east Texas.

The one-time chicken farmer had more than a half-dozen successful careers during his long life. Among them: champion race car driver, racing team owner, automobile manufacturer, automotive consultant, safari tour operator, raconteur, chili entrepreneur and philanthropist.

"He's an icon in the medical world and an icon in the automotive world," his longtime friend, Dick Messer, executive director of Los Angeles' Petersen Automotive Museum, once said of Shelby.

"His legacy is the diversity of his life," Messer said. "He's incredibly innovative. His life has always been the reinvention of Carroll Shelby."

Shelby first made his name behind the wheel of a car, winning France's grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race with teammate Ray Salvadori in 1959. He already was suffering serious heart problems and ran the race "with nitroglycer in pills under his tongue," Messer once noted.

He had turned to the race-car circuit in the 1950s after his chicken ranch failed. He won dozens of races in various classes throughout the 1950s and was twice named Sports Illustrated's Driver of the Year.

Soon after his win at Le Mans, he gave up racing and turned his attention to designing high-powered "muscle cars" that eventually became the Shelby Cobra and the Mustang Shelby GT500.

The Cobra, which used Ford engines and a British sport car chassis, was the fastest production model ever made when it was displayed at the New York Auto Show in 1962.

A year later, Cobras were winning races over Corvettes, and in 1964 the Rip Chords had a Top 5 hit on the Billboard pop chart with "Hey, Little Cobra." ("Spring, little Cobra, getting ready to strike, spring, little Cobra, with all of your might. Hey, little Cobra, don't you know you're gonna shut 'em down?")

In 2007, an 800-horsepower model of the Cob ra made in 1966, once Shelby's personal car, sold for $5.5 million at auction, a record for an American car.

"It's a special car. It would do just over three seconds to 60 (mph), 40 years ago," Shelby told the crowd before the sale, held in Scottsdale, Ariz.

It was Lee Iacocca, then head of Ford Motor Co., who had assigned Shelby the task of designing a fastback model of Ford's Mustang that could compete against the Corvette for young male buyers.

Turning a vehicle he had once dismissed as "a secretary car" into a rumbling, high-performance model was "the hardest thing I've done in my life," Shelby recalled in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press.

That car and the Shelby Cobra made his name a household word in the 1960s.

When the energy crisis of the 1970s limited the market for gas-guzzling high-performance cars, Shelby weathered the downturn by heading to Africa, where he operated a safari company for a dozen years.

By the time he h ad returned to the United States, Iacocca was running Chrysler Motors and he hired him to design the supercharged Viper sports car.

In the meantime, Shelby had also inaugurated the World Chili Cookoff competition and he began marketing Carroll Shelby Original Texas Chili.

In recent years, Shelby worked as a technical adviser on the Ford GT project and designed the Shelby Series 1 two-seat muscle car, a 21st century clone of his 1965 Cobra.

"I just wanted to see if I could do it one more time after a heart transplant and a kidney transplant," he once told the AP.

In 1990 he had marketed the Can-Am Spec Racer, an affordable racing car for entry-level drivers.

He created the Carroll Shelby Children's Foundation in 1991 to provide assistance for children and young people needing acute coronary and kidney care. According to its website, the foundation has helped numerous children receive needed surgery, as well as provided money for research.

Ca rroll Hall Shelby was born Jan. 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas.

During World War II he was an Army Air Corps flight instructor who corresponded with his fiancee by dropping love letters stuck into his flying boots onto her farm.

After leaving the military in 1945, he started a dump truck business, then decided to raise chickens. The poultry business initially flourished, with Shelby earning a $5,000 profit on the first batch of broilers he delivered. He went broke, however, when his second flock died of disease.

A friend then invited him to become an amateur racer and his success led to his joining the Aston-Martin team and competing in races all over the world.

JEFF WILSON, Associated Press


Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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After my Army active duty in the mid 60s I crewed for Bob Henderson while he raced his Mini at the Riverside SCCA Championships. While in Southern California we were guests of Briggs Cunningham for a private tour his museum and made a point to stop in at the Shelby shop in Venice. As I recall, the new 289 Cobras were on sale for about $6,500. That's the same price I could have paid for a Porsche 904 GTS while a LT in Germany in 1964. In those days a 1LT made the princely sum of about $375...

I fell in love with the Daytona Coupe at the age of 8. I've not been the same since! I'm 66 now and still get chills when I see a picture or going into my collection of Cobras that I've accumulated since the age of 8. I have well over 3,000 cars to date and if I still see one, I buy it!!! NO NONE ARE FOR SALE!!! I've watched every show on YouTube that pertains to the Cobra or Carroll!! Thank you for making my life what it is!!! Thank you for helping me recognize that passion that I will carry...

Thank you for sharing a part of your life with us.

Rest Carroll, until you hear at dawn,
the low, clear reveille of God.

Thank you for your service to this nation.

Carroll, your 427 ac cobra was the first plastic model I built that I really took great care to finish. I built it when my dad died in 1971. I took great pride in all my model builds from that point on. I was 10 at the time, 51 when you left the track. God bless you, and your foundations future. I know it meant so much to you and the kids.
Forever Live The Cobra, The Snake!

CARROLL SHELBY GOD BLESS YOU R.I.P.
YOU ARE A TRIBUTE TO ALL MY FAVORATE THINGS I LOVE;THE MUSTANG,AUTO RACING AND THE LAWRENCE FAMILY!! SINCERELY, HAYDEN K. RUTLANND

CARROLL,
HE WAS A ICON TO ME I MET HIM AT
KEELS & WHEELS WHERE HE SIGNED MY CAR YOU WILL TRUELY BE MISSED DEARLY!!

I just read today that Shelby passed away... I cant believe it. Huge shock to me. And to think I always dreamed if I ever won the lottery id go over to shelby's facility in Nevada and buy the mustang I want the way I wanted it and have shelby deliver and hand me the keys to my new car. lol... that was my dream but I guess Shelby was meant for other things. Perhaps he's racing with other fallen racing legends now. My sympathies to Shelby's family and to his company.

U are my hero u will be missed u made the best car the mustang my favorite

You will always be alive in everyone as long as racing and building cars are here