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Mr. Shelby's Top 10



 
 
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Old May 13th 12, 04:31 PM posted to rec.autos.makers.ford.mustang
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Default Mr. Shelby's Top 10

Do you agree with this list?

By: Davey G. Johnson on 5/11/2012

As Pete Lyons notes in his obituary, Carroll Shelby was something of a
con man. He was also something of a legit genius. The man's a legend
because he did enough things that really worked. He won Le Mans as a
driver, as a team manager and a constructor. He's largely responsible
for the performance-car reputation the Ford Mustang enjoys today.
Without his Cobra, there likely never would've been a Viper, and of
course, he had a hand in that car's genesis, too.

While many can and undoubtedly will argue with this list — we're
already certain the Eleanor owners will be sore — we've picked out 10
Shelby-associated cars that made an impact.

1. 1959 Aston Martin DBR1

In the penultimate year of his racing career, Caroll Shelby and Roy
Salvadori swept the field at Le Mans in the DBR1. It was to be Aston
Martin's last victory in the 24-hour endure-a-thon until the DBR9 won
its class in 2007.

2. 1962 AC Cobra

Its shape's impression perhaps blunted by decades of questionably-
faithful kit cars, the original Cobra — whose basic styling dates back
to the 1953 AC Ace — still stands as the loveliest of the British-
American hybrid sporting machines and as one of the most influential
cars of the muscle decade. Plus, the Windsor-powered wonder gave the
Corvette crew a domestic competitor to sweat.

3. 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe

Famously penned by Pete Brock, the Daytona eschewed the Cobra
roadster's Britishness for a more Italian-American look. The Kamm-tail
coupe worked as intended, trouncing Enzo's equally-legendary 250 GTO.
What's more, with only six constructed, the Daytona's even rarer than
Ferrari's most vaunted machine.

4. 1965 427 Cobra

Because Carroll Shelby was from Texas and because more of everything
is always better, the Cobra was embiggened to swallow more cubic
inches. In this case, the cubes came courtesy of Ford's storied 427-
inch side-oiler, a high-performance derivative of Dearborn's Ford-
Edsel architecture. To handle the extra bulk and power, the chassis
saw a thorough upgrade, with coil springs swapped in for AC's postwar
leaf jobs. Extra-bulgey S/C models took the cartoon-Cobra to its
logical extreme.

5. 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350

Ol' Shel worked his F-101-grade voodoo on Lee Iacocca's rebodied
Falcon, turning what Shelby famously termed a “secretary's car” into
an SCCA weapon. It established the Mustang's performance credentials
just as John DeLorean was firing the opening salvos of the musclecar
wars with the early Pontiac GTOs.

6. 1967 Ford GT40 Mk IV

While the first three iterations of Ford's GT40 were transatlantic
affairs involving Lola's Eric Broadley, the Mark IV was largely a
homegrown project. The cars were designed at Ford, built at Shelby's
facility and utilized big-block power. The Mark IV only saw battle
twice — at the '67 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was
enough, however. Bruce McLaren and Mario Andretti hustled the Mark IV
to victory at Sebring, while Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt covered enough
miles in France to take the top spot on the podium. Gurney then
proceeded to shower the crowd with champagne, setting a precedent for
future victorious racing drivers across many a motoring discipline.

7. 1986 Dodge Shelby GLHS

An FWD hatch may seem like the odd duck of the bunch, but this hepped-
up compact stands firmly in the Shelby tradition of adding more, well,
everything to a European-bred automobile. He took the Dodge Omni —
originally developed by Chrysler's now-defunct European Simca unit —
and added more power. The result? The turbocharged Omni GLH, which
notoriously stood for “Goes Like Hell.” By the standards of the day,
it did exactly that. More fiddling on Shelby's part resulted in the
even hairier GLHS, which on a good day, could stomp practically
anything made in America at the time. Take that, Wolfsburg!

8. 1992 Dodge Viper RT/10

Imagined as a modern interpretation of the Cobra and constructed with
Shelby's input, it's safe to say that Chrysler's rude-begets-ruder
monster couldn't have existed without him.

9. 2005 Ford GT

Shelby never met a fence he couldn't seem to mend if the price was
right. His longstanding beef with Ford melted away in 2003 when they
made him an offer to rejoin the fold. SVT sought his input in the
development in one of the hands-down finest cars of the past 40 years,
a modern rendition of a car he'd had such an instrumental hand in
during the 1960s: the Ford GT40. Due to legal shenanigans, the
resultant car left showrooms as the Ford GT. It's just as well, since
the mid-engined supercar wound up over 40 inches tall.

10. 2013 Ford Shelby GT500

Although the GT500 was developed by Ford's factory performance
division, SVT's most bonkers Mustang carries the Shelby name. It has
662hp. It goes 200mph, just like Bill Cosby's Super Snake. As in the
Shelby/Ford heyday of the 1960s, one can walk into a Ford store and
roll out in what's truly one of the most insane cars on the road,
regardless of price. It stands as a fitting send-off to one of the
titans of American motorsport and performance.

Patrick
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