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Carroll Shelby and His Cars

Petersen Automotive Museum celebrates this automotive icon

Hailing the father of American high-performance automobiles, the Petersen Automotive Museum recently opened a new exhibit entitled Carroll Shelby: A Life in the Fast Lane. Ranging from rare, race-winning Cobras to the first Dodge Viper and Shelby Series I, this astounding collection of benchmark vehicles spans five decades to represent Shelby's life-long passion for automotive excellence. Examples of every significant vehicle raced, built or directly influenced by Carroll Shelby are on display, along with little-known archival materials documenting his colorful career.

Racing Stripes

The exhibit begins with examples of cars Shelby personally raced in the Fifties (sometimes while wearing his signature striped overalls). They include a MG TC (similar to the one in which he won his first race) and a 1953 375MM Ferrari. He also was involved with the little-known 1959 Corvette Italia, which set the stage for his collaboration with Ford.

Of course, the cars Shelby is best known for are the Cobras, and the exhibit features the very first one built in 1962, model number CSX2000. Even more significantly, several priceless racing Cobras are part of the collection. They include the first of only five 289FIA models, which won their class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Daytona Coupe, the only American car to win the FIA World Manufacturers Championship. The latter vehicle is represented by an authentic 289 Cobra roadster converted to a coupe. Although putting an exact value on the original competition models is difficult if not impossible, collectors estimate their worth in the many millions of dollars.

Shelby went on to manage racing teams for other Ford-powered vehicles, such as the Le Mans-winning GT40. The model at the Museum is a Mark I model painted with the colors of the Le Mans-winning Gulf team cars.

Dragonsnake

At the entrance to the display is the awesome 427 Competition Cobra. Only 22 of these big-block cars were built before the introduction of the only slightly more tractable Street Competition (S/C) version, also in the Museum. Drag racing enthusiasts will likely be impressed by the small-block powered Dragonsnake, which in its day outran every car in its class, including the big-block Corvettes.

Representing Shelby's involvement with other Ford-powered competition vehicles is a 1965 GT350 Mustang painstakingly modified at Shelby American. One of them on display was used in the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving (later sold to race driver Bob Bondurant, who renamed the school).

After making his indelible mark in the history of motorsports with Ford, Shelby was lured away to develop a number of Mopar-powered sports cars, including the turbocharged GLH (which he claimed stood for "Goes Like Hell") and the GLHS ("Goes Like Hell Some More"). Only 500 of the latter model, which is on display in the exhibit, were ever produced. In 1990 Shelby also developed a Dodge-powered CAN-AM spec racecar. His collaboration with Chrysler culminated in the Dodge Viper. The model shown here is one of the early pilot versions.

Series 1

A crowning achievement in Shelby's life is the development of the Shelby Series I, powered by an Oldsmobile V-8. This association with GM and Oldsmobile meant that Shelby is the first person ever to be involved in the development of performance cars for all of the Big Three automakers. Today, at the age of 80, Carroll Shelby remains active overseeing the day-to-day activities of Carroll Shelby International, which designs and engineers specialty and high-performance cars. Remarkably, among its many interests is the ongoing manufacture of Shelby Cobras, the legendary sports car that first made Shelby famous more than four decades ago.