1. Carroll Hall Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur.
68 Facts About Carroll Shelby
1. 2.
Carroll Shelby won the 1960 Sports Car Club of America United States Auto Club Road Racing Sports Car Championship by winning the round-one race at Riverside International Raceway in a Maserati Tipo 61 "Birdcage", and winning round two at Continental Divide Raceways in a Chevrolet Scarab Mark II.
3.
The younger Carroll Shelby suffered from heart valve leakage problems by age 7 and related complications throughout his life.
4.
From a young age, Carroll Shelby was fascinated with speed, which led to an interest in cars and airplanes.
5.
Carroll Shelby moved to Dallas, Texas, at age 7 with his family, and around age 10, he rode his bicycle to dirt tracks nearby to watch races.
6.
Carroll Shelby honed his driving skills with his Willys automobile while attending Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas.
7.
Carroll Shelby enrolled at The Georgia Institute of Technology in the Aeronautical Engineering program.
8.
Carroll Shelby enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on April 11,1941, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
9.
Carroll Shelby graduated with the rank of staff sergeant pilot in September 1942 at Ellington Field.
10.
Carroll Shelby served as a flight instructor and test pilot in the Beechcraft AT-11 Kansan and Curtiss-Wright AT-9 Jeep.
11.
Carroll Shelby was posted to several other air bases in Texas, including Kelly Field, Cuero Field, Perrin Army Air Field, Ellington Field, and Childress Army Airfield.
12.
Carroll Shelby went on to fly the Douglas B-18 Bolo, the North American B-25 Mitchell, the Douglas A-26 Invader, and finally the Boeing B-29 Superfortress at Denver, Colorado.
13.
Carroll Shelby started a dump truck business, worked as an oil-well roughneck from 1948 to 1949, then started a poultry farm but went bankrupt in 1952.
14.
In January 1952, Carroll Shelby raced his friend Ed Wilkin's MG TC at the Grand Prairie Naval Air Station drag meet.
15.
In 1953, Carroll Shelby raced Brown's Cad-Allard, then Roy Cherryhomes' Cad-Allard, winning eight or nine races.
16.
Eyston, Mortimer Morris Goodall, and Roy Jackson-Moore set about 70 records, with Carroll Shelby setting 17 on his own.
17.
Carroll Shelby was severely injured in a crash while racing an Austin-Healey in the Carrera Panamericana.
18.
Carroll Shelby drove in the Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race in a specially prepared Ferrari 375 GP roadster, to a record run of 10 minutes, 21.8 seconds.
19.
Carroll Shelby set records at Giants Despair Hillclimb, and raced at Brynfan Tyddyn.
20.
Carroll Shelby was Sports Illustrated magazine's driver of the year in 1956.
21.
Carroll Shelby repeated as Sports Illustrated driver of the year.
22.
On 18 May 1958, Carroll Shelby joined John Wyer and the Aston Martin team in Europe and drove a DBR3 at the Belgian Sports Car Grand Prix.
23.
Carroll Shelby then drove a DBR1 at the Nurburgring 1000 km with co-driver Salvadori.
24.
Carroll Shelby was teamed up with Salvadori at Le Mans, but Carroll Shelby came down with dysentery and was replaced by Stuart Lewis-Evans a few hours into the race.
25.
Carroll Shelby then drove a Maserati 250F for Mimo Dei's Scuderia Centro Sud in 3 Grand Prix races to gain Formula 1 and open-wheel car experience, including the Portuguese Grand Prix.
26.
Carroll Shelby finished the year driving John Edgar's 4.5L Maserati in the Tourist Trophy at Nassau.
27.
The 1959 Grand Prix season saw Carroll Shelby driving the Aston Martin DBR4 in the Dutch Grand Prix in May, followed by the British Grand Prix at Aintree in July.
28.
Carroll Shelby finished the 1959 racing season driving Casner Motor Racing Division's Birdcage Maserati at the Nassau races in December.
29.
Carroll Shelby finished the year driving Max Balchowsky's "Old Yeller II" in the Road America, then a Birdcage Maserati in the Pacific Grand Prix and the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, which was his last race.
30.
One year after retiring from driving in October 1960 for health reasons, Carroll Shelby opened a high-performance driving school with Pete Brock: the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving at the Riverside track.
31.
Carroll Shelby opened the Shelby-American performance equipment and customization company in the Los Angeles area.
32.
Carroll Shelby became interested in the potential of the AC Ace chassis, especially after Bristol Aeroplane Company stopped building automobile engines, and the sales with the Ford Zephyr engine were declining in September 1961.
33.
Carroll Shelby contacted Charles Hurlock of AC, who agreed to provide the chassis on credit.
34.
Carroll Shelby started racing his creation in October 1962 at Riverside, with Billy Krause driving the CSX0002.
35.
Carroll Shelby made changes to running gear, particularly transmissions, to improve reliability, and designed their GT40 Mark II variant around Ford's 7.0-litre engine.
36.
Carroll Shelby was brought in to finalize the development of the car after the project experienced setbacks in 1966, which included the death of driver Ken Miles in August.
37.
Carroll Shelby produced those cars through 1968, then subsequent cars with the Carroll Shelby GT brand were produced in-house by Ford.
38.
Carroll Shelby simply ordered an insufficient number of cars and skipped a large block of Vehicle Identification Numbers, to create the illusion the company had imported large numbers of cars.
39.
Decades later in the 1990s, Carroll Shelby alleged that he had found the "leftover" frames, and began selling cars that were supposedly finally "completed".
40.
Carroll Shelby was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992, the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Diecast Hall of Fame in 2009.
41.
Carroll Shelby was inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame on March 2,2013.
42.
Carroll Shelby began working with Dodge at the request of Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca.
43.
Carroll Shelby unveiled the Series 1 roadster at the 1997 Los Angeles Auto Show, with the intention for it to be a modern day reinterpretation of the original Carroll Shelby AC Cobra.
44.
Carroll Shelby had already built an Aurora-engined sports prototype together with Racefab in 1997, in an attempt to continue his single-make Can-Am series.
45.
Carroll Shelby American built a total of 249 production Series 1 cars as model year 1999 cars.
46.
The Ford Carroll Shelby GR-1 was floated as a possibility of taking over the Ford GT's production line after its production came to an end.
47.
Carroll Shelby first built a V8 modern version look of the Eleanor.
48.
All Carroll Shelby GTs are shipped with the Carroll Shelby serial number on the dashboard badge and in the engine compartment, such as 07SGT0001 or 08SGT0001.
49.
Carroll Shelby did so and Rootes, pleased with the results, named the upgraded model the Tiger.
50.
In October 2007, Carroll Shelby ended his licensing agreement with Unique Performance after customers complained that vehicles had not been delivered.
51.
Carroll Shelby was in turn sued by victims of Unique Performance for his involvement in the criminal activity.
52.
In 2008, Halicki won a case against Carroll Shelby, who was selling "Eleanor" using the trademark name and copyrighted image.
53.
Gary Laughlin, a wealthy Texas oilman and amateur racer, and Carroll Shelby decided to build a dual-purpose car based on the Chevrolet Corvette chassis and European-style alloy coachwork.
54.
Carroll Shelby declined to buy a car and it was promptly sold.
55.
Carroll Shelby was the initial partner of Dan Gurney in Gurney's All American Racers.
56.
Carroll Shelby produced a line of eight-spoke alloy wheels for Saab automobiles in the early to mid-1980s.
57.
Carroll Shelby supported a project with Rucker Performance Motorcycles to manufacture 12 Carroll Shelby motorcycles that were designed by William Rucker.
58.
In 2008, Carroll Shelby was awarded the 2008 Automotive Executive of the Year Award.
59.
In 2008, Carroll Shelby began funding scholarships for the automotive program at Northeast Texas Community College, the local community college in his hometown of Leesburg, which renamed the program for him.
60.
The Carroll Shelby Foundation continues to fund scholarships and the program.
61.
Shelby's memoir, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967 by Pocket Books.
62.
Carroll Shelby was married seven times; the first and last marriages lasted 15 years before divorce proceedings.
63.
In 1962, Carroll Shelby married Harrison, but the marriage was annulled the same year.
64.
In 1989, after 28 years of being single, Carroll Shelby married Cynthia Psaros, a former actress, beauty queen, and daughter of a retired US Marine colonel fighter pilot.
65.
Just four months after Dahl's death, Carroll Shelby married his last wife, Cleo, a British former model who drove rally cars.
66.
Carroll Shelby received a heart transplant in 1990, and a kidney transplant in 1996.
67.
Carroll Shelby had been suffering from a serious heart ailment for decades.
68.
Shelby American: The Carroll Shelby Story is a 2019 feature-length documentary about Shelby's life and career.