The Wonder Years

Driver's Meeting

Recalling the birth of the Cobra

To the race fan of the fifties, Carroll Shelby was that decade's outstanding road racer. Sports Illustrated twice named him its Driver of the Year and the New York Times honored him with a similar title. In 1959, he and Roy Salvatori co-drove an Aston Martin to victory in the LeMans 24-hour race.

Although Shelby was a skilled driver, racing wasn't his ultimate goal. "It was always my dream to build a car. Racing was only a means to that end," he says in a soft east Texas drawl.

1960 marked Shelby's last year of road racing. Heart trouble slowed him down: There were times when he was racing with a nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue. Yet he still managed to win the U.S. Auto Club's road racing championship that season.

"I'd been planning a sports car using a powerful American V8 coupled with a lightweight roadster," he continues. "I went to Chevrolet and their management was interested. But I got turned down. They already had their Corvette and I think the engineers shot down my proposal.

"When I retired from racing, I set up operations in Southern California." Shelby started a racing school at Riverside International Raceway and hired his first employee, a driving instructor by the name of Pete Brock. He also wrote a column for the old Sports Car Graphic magazine and met with the ed9itorial staff regularly for lunch.

One of those noon meetings started Shelby on a course that's now history. During lunch, on of the journalists mentioned that the AC sports car was probably going to cease production. The reason: Bristol Aeroplane Company was going out of business, and that firm had been supplying AC Cars, Ltd., with the powerplants for its two-seat roadsters.

Following his rejection by Cheverolet, Shelby talked to the people at Ford about installing that company's new 221 V8 in a sports car. The AC seemed an ideal candidate.

The production line of the AC factory in Great Britain in 1963

As Shelby tells it: "I went to AC and told them I had Ford interested in supplying motors for their chassis, then I went to Ford and told them that I had a chassis lined up for their engine and transmission if they'd provide them [to me] on credit."

The beginning of the coupe project saw Shelby, Ken Miles and Pete Brock sharing a laugh as they begin measuring for the wood buck.

The final decision on whether or not to go with the brash Texan went to an executive in Ford's marketing and sales department - Lee Iacocca. Shelby continues, "Lee told [his associates] to pay [me] and get [me] out [of there] before I bit somebody."

"I only hit Ford [up] for $25,000 in cash to finish the project. I knew they'd come up with the money later. Just like a poker game, they'd want to be sure to cover their bets," Shelby says with a grin.

An English chassis builder faced with going out of business or shipping cars on credit to a small garage in Santa Fe Springs, California, sent an AC roadster to Shelby. Ford supplied its V8 and a four-speed transmission, and famed hot rodder Dean Moon helped Carroll put the pieces together.

The original Shelby AC was unpainted aluminum. "I got the name Cobra one night in a dream," says Shelby. "I woke up and wrote the name down before I forgot it."
According to Shelby historian Richard Kopec's Shelby American Guide (Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI), "Carroll Shelby's true goal in building the Cobra was to produce a winning race car - one that would outrun the Corvette and Ferrari production cars. He never wanted to build a lot of cars and make a lot of money. He just wanted to go racing."

This polished aluminum Cobra bears the number CSX 2000. It was the firs Cobra to be built and came to life in the late Dean Moon's shop.

However, to go racing Shelby had to sell at least 100 Cobras a year to have the car qualify as a production vehicle.
Kopec continues: "Shelby knew that there was no way that he was going to sell 100 race cars a year, so the Cobras were sold as street cars. They were, in effect, detuned race cars."

Some have said that Shelby isn't a car designer. Whether or not that contention is true, he certainly is a "car conceiver," one who envisions what he wants and brings that conception to market.

He proved that with the Cobra. He followed his dream, and when the opportunities to exploit his idea arose, he jumped on them. And no one who knows Carroll will ever say he doesn't know how to promote a vehicle, starting with the original Cobra.

As soon as the engine and transmission were installed in the metal-colored roadster, Shelby began asking magazine editors to try the car out. Then the original car saw more coats of paint (all different colors, of course) than most vehicles will see in a lifetime.

Years before his Cobra venture - in fact, before he started racing - Shelby had lost most of his money in a chicken ranch venture. When that happened, I thought to myself, 'If I can lose everything, I can't lose any more than I already have.'" From that point on, Shelby's business career blossomed.

Undoubtedly, as Kopec suggests, Shelby wanted to go racing. He wanted to beat the Corvette executives and show them that they had made a mistake. And he wanted to beat Ferrari, too. Years before, Enzo had offered Shelby a position as a race driver but wouldn't pay him enough to feed his family. Shelby never drove for Ferrari's factory team.

The AC Cobra was only the beginning of the Shelby racing legend. The 221-cubic-inch Ford grew2 to 260 and then 289 cubic inches in the old transverse leaf-sprung AC Roadster. That car won many national road racing championships. It was followed by the fire-breathing 427-cubic-inch AC Cobra, sporting rounded flares at the wheelwell openings and a coil spring suspension. The Corvettes that raced in Sports Car Club of America events never stood a chance.

In 1964, Shelby set his sights on the FIA World Grand Touring Championship for enclosed production cars - a class dominated by Enzo Ferrari's prancing horses. The Shelby American team almost won that title the first season racing the Pete-Brock-designed Cobra Daytona Coupe.

The first Daytona Cobra Coupe takes shape at the Venice, California shop in December 1963.

A year later, Shelby's crew took the GT championship away from Ferrari in convincing fashion, the first and last time an American car has won the crown. "That was one of the proudest moments of my career," says Shelby. "We took a bunch of California hot rodders and beat old man Ferrari."

Shelby remembers the crew with a mixture of pride and sadness. "We had some really great people: Phil Remington, Davey MacDonald, Dan Gurney, Ken Miles, Phil Hill, Bruce McLaren, John Wyer, Pete Brock. Many people contributed to our success. Guys like Lew Spencer, Peyton Cramer, Al Dowd, Bob Bondurant." Shelb sold his high-performance driving school to Bondurant during this era.

1965 marked the end of Shelby's Cobra-racing days. He had become involved in converting Ford Mustangs into Shelby GT350s and racing them. Ford hired him to manage its successful GT40 racing programs in 1966 and 1967.

Front to back the drivers are Ken Miles, Dan Gurney and Bob Holbert. The event was the Bridgehampton 500 in September 1963. Gurney won the race, which was also the firs F.I.A. GT win.

In all, approximately 1000 AC Cobras were produced between 1962 and 1967. There have probably been more Cobra replicas built than originals. How does Shelby feel about that? "I don't mind people making copies of that old car if that's what they want to do. It's outmoded by today's standards, really. What I don't appreciate are those who are trying to bring back the name on a car that isn't a Cobra. It only looks like one."

"If I build another two-seat sports car, it will be a car of the Nineties." Says Shelby, who is now taking Dodge models and upgrading their performance, handling and appearance at an assembly plant in Whittier, California - only a few miles from where the first Cobra was born.
"We're turning out some pretty fast cars right now - at an affordable price," he says. "But I'd still like to put together another two-seater. A car that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. Powered with a turbocharged 16-valve four-cylinder engine in a composite chassis…"

At Road America in 1963 Shelby (in hat) and Lew Spencer wrestle with the over-center jack while the shirtless Ken Miles looks on.