Interesting Information about Carroll Shelby
- He was a well-known race car driver and some considered him the best driver in the world.
- He was the founder of Shelby American company.
- He was a romantic. He dropped love letters in a boot from an airplane as he flew over his fiancé’s farm while he was a flight instructor in San Antonio during WWII.
- He was Tough. In 1955 he drove the “12 Hours of Sebring” race with a broken hand that was in a fiberglass cast and taped to the steering wheel.
- He invented the Cobra in his sleep. Like many great minds, he kept pen and paper by his bed for ideas in the middle of the night.
- Shelby drove for Enzo Ferrari until several drivers including Luigi Musso, a friend of his was killed.
- Shelby’s beef with Enzo lead to the birth of the legendary Cobra Daytona, which strangely used WWII-era German tech to beat Ferraris on European tracks.
- He was the first American manufacturer to win the FIA World Sportscar Championship.
- Ford drafted Shelby to reshape the Mustang so it could race in the “Sports Car Club of America” against the Corvette.
- In February 2014 a Cobra Daytona became the first car considered to be a piece of national heritage by the Library of Congress.
