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| Carrol Shelby dies at 89 |
Carroll Shelby, legendary car builder and racing champion, dies at age 89
Carroll Shelby, an international automotive icon who rose from a bed-ridden childhood in Texas to build one of the most iconic sports cars ever and become a world-champion racer died Thursday at the age of 89 after a lengthy illness.
His cars will live forever.
A winner at Le Mans in 1959, a driver in everything from Formula 1 to the Bonneville Salt Flats, Shelby##Q##s lasting impact will be the cars he built, namely the Shelby Cobra 427 that beat Ferrari in Europe and his variations of the Ford Mustang that he was involved with from the 1960s through his death.
Throughout his career, Shelby battled and overcame his physical limitations, from racing crashes to a congenital heart defect that required several surgeries and eventually a heart transplant in 1990.
Born Jan. 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas, Shelby was the son of a rural mail carrier.
After being confined to bed for much of his first several years, his heart grew strong enough for Shelby to take an interest in cars. During World War II, Shelby served as a flying instructor, and wrote letters to his fiancée by putting them in flying boots he##Q##d drop on her farm.
Married with children after the war, Shelby began a racing career that quickly rose to international acclaim. After rushing to the track for his early races wearing the same bib overalls he wore at his chicken farm, the look became his trademark.
Sports Illustrated named him driver of the year in 1956, and Shelby won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959 — driving some races with a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue.
Shelby##Q##s high-performance cars helped Detroit challenge the dominance of the Europeans in racing. Ralph Gilles, head of product design for Chrysler, said Shelby created cars that helped enthusiasts worldwide find “joy and self-actualisation”.
“My name is Carroll Shelby and performance is my business,” Shelby said in an early commercial for the Cobra.
He was born in Leesburg, Texas, in 1923. He started racing cars in the 1950s, and in 1959 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a marathon race held in France.
He was diagnosed with a serious heart condition in 1959 that forced him to quit racing. Shelby had a heart transplant in 1990 and a kidney transplant in 1996.
He drove one race with nitroglycerin pills under his tongue to prevent against a heart attack. He complained that he would have won if not for the pills.
He soon turned his attention toward designing. He approached Lee Iacocca, who was then at Ford, about building a lightweight AC roadster with a Ford engine. That car became the Cobra, a name that Shelby said came to him in a dream.
In 1962, the Cobra was introduced at the New York Auto Show and Shelby##Q##s company began making the cars in California later that year. In 1964, Ford asked Shelby to develop a high-performance Mustang. That same year the song Hey Little Cobra by the Rip Chords embedded the sports car in pop culture.
“Whether helping Ford dominate the 1960s racing scene or building some of the most famous Mustangs, his enthusiasm and passion for great automobiles over six decades has truly inspired everyone who worked with him,” said Edsel Ford II, grandson of the company##Q##s founder Henry Ford.
He parted ways with Ford in the 1970s and headed to Chrysler, where he revamped the K car and worked on the initial design of the Dodge Viper. He also worked for General Motors##Q## Oldsmobile division.
Shelby sued Ford in the 1990s over the use of the Cobra name.
That suit was settled and by 2001, he was collaborating with the company again.
Source: The Guardian & Yahoo
