63 Facts About Carroll Shelby

Carroll Hall Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur.

Carroll Shelby established Shelby American in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles.

Carroll Shelby was born on January 11,1923, to Warren Hall Shelby, a rural mail carrier, and his wife, Eloise Shelby, in Leesburg, Texas.

Carroll Shelby suffered from heart valve leakage problems by age 7 and experienced several health-related complications throughout his life.

From a young age, Carroll Shelby was fascinated with the concept of speed, which led to an interest in cars and airplanes.

Carroll Shelby moved to Dallas, Texas, at age 7 with his family, and around age 10, he would ride his bicycle to dirt tracks nearby to watch races.

Carroll Shelby honed his driving skills with his Willys automobile while attending Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas, graduating in 1940.

Carroll Shelby later enrolled at The Georgia Institute of Technology in the Aeronautical Engineering program.

Carroll Shelby graduated with the rank of staff sergeant pilot in September 1942 at Ellington Field.

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, before being discharged following V-J Day.

In 1953, Carroll Shelby raced Brown's Cad-Allard, followed by Roy Cherryhomes' Cad-Allard, winning 8 or 9 races.

Carroll Shelby traveled to Europe in April 1954, where he raced a DBR3 for John Wyer at Aintree, followed by Le Mans.

Eyston, Mortimer Morris Goodall, and Roy Jackson-Moore set about 70 new records, with Carroll Shelby setting 17 on his own.

Carroll Shelby was severely injured in a crash while racing an Austin-Healey in the Carrera Panamericana.

Carroll Shelby then started driving Tony Paravano's Ferraris in August 1955.

Carroll Shelby won a further 30 races with the Ferrari in 1956, started driving for John Edgar, and opened Carroll Shelby Sports Cars in Dallas.

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 on his way to victory in 1956.

Carroll Shelby set records at Giants Despair Hillclimb, and raced at Brynfan Tyddyn.

Carroll Shelby was Sports Illustrated magazine's driver of the year in 1956 and 1957.

Carroll Shelby joined John Wyer and the Aston Martin team in Europe and drove a DBR3 at the Belgian Sports Car Grand Prix on 18 May 1958, followed by a DBR1 at the Nurburgring 1000 km with co-driver Salvadori.

Carroll Shelby was teamed up with Salvadori at Le Mans, but Carroll Shelby came down with dysentery and had to be replaced by Stuart Lewis-Evans after a few hours into the race.

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.

Carroll Shelby finished the year driving John Edgar's 4.5L Maserati in the Tourist Trophy at Nassau.

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.

Carroll Shelby finished the 1959 racing season driving Casner Motor Racing Division's Birdcage Maserati at the Nassau races in December.

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.

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.

Carroll Shelby contacted Charles Hurlock of AC, who agreed to provide the chassis on credit.

Carroll Shelby started racing his creation in October 1962 at Riverside, with Billy Krause driving the CSX0002.

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.

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.

Carroll Shelby produced those cars through 1968, then subsequent cars with the Carroll Shelby GT brand were produced in-house by Ford.

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.

Decades later in the 1990s, Carroll Shelby alleged that he had found the "leftover" frames, and began selling cars that were supposedly finally "completed".

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.

Carroll Shelby was inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame on March 2,2013.

Carroll Shelby began working with Dodge at the request of Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca.

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.

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.

The Carroll Shelby GT500 was revealed at the New York International Auto Show, and became available in the summer of 2006 as part of the model year 2007 lineup.

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.

Carroll Shelby did so and Rootes, pleased with the results, named the upgraded model the Tiger.

Carroll Shelby American sued Superformance after the company had developed and begun production of the Superformance Brock Coupe.

In October 2007, Carroll Shelby ended his licensing agreement with Unique Performance due to numerous issues of customer complaints where vehicles were not delivered.

Carroll Shelby was in turn sued by victims of Unique Performance for his involvement in the criminal activity,.

In 2008, Halicki won a case against Carroll Shelby, who was selling "Eleanor" using the trademark name and copyrighted image.

Laughlin met with Jim Hall and Carroll Shelby to begin discussing what form their new Italian-American hybrid would take.

Carroll Shelby, who had helped conceive the project, ended up declining the remaining car and it was promptly sold.

Carroll Shelby licensed his name to many products outside of the automotive industry.

Carroll Shelby's name is associated with a chili fixings kit.

Carroll Shelby was a founder of the Terlingua International Chili Championship in Terlingua, Texas.

Carroll Shelby was the initial partner of Dan Gurney in establishing Gurney's All American Racers.

Carroll Shelby produced a line of eight-spoke alloy wheels for Saab automobiles in the early to mid-1980s.

Carroll Shelby supported a project with Rucker Performance Motorcycles to manufacture 12 Carroll Shelby motorcycles that were designed by William Rucker.

In 2008 Carroll Shelby was awarded the 2008 Automotive Executive of the Year Award.

Shelby wrote his memoir called The Carroll Shelby Story published in 1967 by Pocket Books.

Carroll Shelby was married seven times; the first and last marriages lasted 15 years before divorce proceedings.

In 1962, Carroll Shelby married Harrison, but the marriage was annulled the same year.

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.

Just four months after Dahl's death, Carroll Shelby married his last wife, Cleo, a British former model who drove rally cars.

Carroll Shelby received a heart transplant in 1990, and a kidney transplant in 1996.

Carroll Shelby had been suffering from a serious heart ailment for decades.

Shelby American: The Carroll Shelby Story is a 2019 feature-length documentary about Shelby's life and career.