RIP Carroll Shelby

The hot-rodding world lost another legend this week when Carroll Shelby died at age 89. If you've lived in a cave for the past 50 years-Carroll Shelby was a Texas born auto racer that had great success in the 1950's. When a heart condition forced him to retire from driving race cars, he started building cars for racing and for enthusiasts. In 1962 he took the the AC Ace, a British sports car with a gorgeous body and a great suspension, and stuffed a 260 inch Ford V8 under it's "Bonnet" as the Brits would say-basically tripling it's power while adding virtually no weight. Dubbed the "Shelby Cobra" it got a hotter and more powerful 289 inch Ford V8 for 1963, and won tons of SCCA races-beating Ferarris, Jaguars, Corvettes, and Aston-Martins. Enzo Ferrari and Zora-Arkus Duntov-chief Corvette engineer-did not like to lose and developed much more powerful Ferarris and Corvettes for 1965. What did Shelby do? Like Burt Reynolds said in the "Longest Yard"-"If it worked once, it'll work twice." His team made the Ace larger and more muscular-although the wheelbase was still only 90 inches-and used the old hotrod trick- a big engine in a light car. He stuffed Ford's legendary 427 Nascar motor into this beast and called it simply the "427 Cobra". To this day only certain Porsches and Z06 Corvettes and Dodge Vipers ( Which Shelby helped develop ) have even come close to equalling the 427 Cobra's performance on the street or track, and an argument can be made that if the old Cobras had modern 12 inch wide ZR-rated radials instead of skinny, bias-ply Goodyear Blue Streaks, that it would still be the undisputed heavyweight champion, nearly 50 years after it's release. Shelby is probably most famous for his Mustangs-a collaboration with Ford that propelled the Mustang from a Falcon-based cheap sports coupe- to a feared contender on the world's racetracks. The GT350 used a hopped up 289 and a race-bred suspension, and slick bodywork. As the musclecar wars heated up-A big 396 Camaro or 400 inch Firebird had little to fear from a hotted up 289 Mustang-Shelby dropped the 428 Police interceptor engine into a Mustang and called it the GT500. He took it easy for most of the '70's, but in the 1980's he worked with Chrysler developing several front-drive hot rods-the Omni GLHS-for one, and then the Dodge Viper-basically an updated "Chrysler Cobra."  He also did some more work for Ford-witness their current-540hp supercharged GT500 that only a Ferrari F430 or Corvette ZR1 can challenge. There are companies that sell 427 Cobra replica kit cars to this day. It would take several encyclopedia-sized vloumes to list all his accomplishements, but just like when Robert Mitchum and Evel Knieval passed, the world is a slightly less cool place without Carrol Shelby. May he rest in Valhalla!!  Mastermind