Carroll Shelby is one of the greatest Legends of the 20th century. He stood tallest in the USA. In his youth he farmed with chickens but failed, so he turned to motoring.
He was one of the world’s greatest sports car racers which came with winning the 24 hours at Le Mans in 1959 in the equally iconic Aston Martin DBR1 of the time.
He was forced to give up racing for health reasons but soon started building fast road sports cars. He timed it perfectly as there were demands for macho speed!! “Pedal to the floor and go, go, go!!”
With Ford, Shelby builds the first A.C Cobra from 2.6 Litre to a monster 7 litre car. He built over 1000 of these cars. Today there are many more continuation cars. The A.C Cobra was a hit in the 1963 Kyalami 9 Hour with John Sears and our Bobby Olthoff.
Shelby moved on with Ford and built the Shelby Daytona to take on Ferrari and they won the 1964 World Sports Car Championship. Then came the mighty Ford GT40 which won the Le Mans 5 times. Ferrari gave up trying to beat the Shelby cars at Le Mans. Carroll Shelby continued the need for speed, he never gave up and today there is no motoring enthusiast who has not heard of the Shelby Mustang. Health was always a problem, but he never gave up. He passed in 2021 at the age of 85. The motoring world would have been so, much poorer without Carroll Shelby.
At Zwartkops today we will have racing with us 5 x Ford GT40’s, 4 x Daytona’s, and 3 x Mustangs. Incredible cars. Sight and Sound are not to be forgotten.
