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RIP Carroll Shelby

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Sad. Not surprising, but sad. As classic a character as the cars he built.
 
Glad to be able to say that I was around many of the tracks where the Cobra legend was born...VIR...USRRC at Augusta, where I watched Ken Miles throw a wheel off into the swamp...Daytona with the introduction of the Daytona coupes and GT40's...and took a ride in the new 427 when the road show came to Charlotte in '65 (?) I think it was. That was a BRUTAL PIECE - 0 to 100 to 0 in one block of Tryon Street!

Shelby could be a challenge to deal with at times, but aren't most movers and shakers?

RIP
 
A sad event, for sure. I loved seeing photos of him - way back when - in various pits & paddocks in Europe wearing denim overalls. Back in the fifties he had a British car dealership in Dallas. He sold Berkeleys (!) among others. One of his early financial backers was Jim Hall's brother.

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The dealership in 1957.

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A shot taken in more recent times.
 
...plus a kidney transplant from his son in 1996.

Good thing he failed a chicken farming.
 
In 1964, my buddy and I towed our half-reassembled Lotus S7 from Millerton NY to Riverside to attend the CS driving school (the SCCA runoffs were to be there that December, and assumong we'd be there, we wanted to learn the track, and what better way?) Our instructor (John Timanus) was injured in a race the day before the school was to start. As we had to hang around for a week 'till he recovered enough to have the school. "Ol Shel" offered us to camp out in our pick up on the grounds of the Snake Works, in Venice, and have a corner of the shop to work on our car. He was there all the time, supervising the production line, the 427, and the GT350 projects. He would often stop by, shake his head, in pity, I suppose, and kibitz on our work, and even insisted we shove out car in line for the paint shop, and they painted our fenders silver to match the natural aluminium body. As there was a TV celeb in our class, he was out at Riverside often that week, to take advantage of any resultant free publicity, of which there was plenty. He was darn funny and an extraordinary guy. He did represent the spirit of SC racing of the day. Thanks. Shel.

BTW, we did make it to the runoffs, but instead of the poor abused S7, we took a brand new factory prepared Elan, which set track record, started on the pole, and choked on Calif. gasoline. Got it going again, unlapped, and finished somewhere in the top 1/3.
 
Re: Millerton in the 60's- yup a ways back. Love to go back to the Lime Rock historics over labor day and bore my wife to death w/ stories about the day (the Lime Rock Inn, Peter Pulver, Sam Posey, John Fitch, Gaston Andre, Skip Barbour, Lance Buell, Stagecoach Hill, etc.)
The TV Celeb. was Paul Peterson, who played a teenager on the "Donna Reed Show". He'd wrecked a Pontiac GTO, and the studio restricted him to a VW (bug). He wanted a new Cobra 289, the studio sayed OK, but only if he attended Shelby's school. The cameras were there everyday. He went on to get involved in racing, and wrote a book about it. I was mentioned in it as a "gofer" in a team of a coupla guys from West Virginia w/ a Lotus. I guess he was right about that. Jerk.
 
Seems as though he would have been safer in the GTO (other than the speed factor).

And a Shelby as long as he went to driving school?!

Yeah, right....
 
Made for good PR.
 
I was at Riverside in '64 for those run offs, crewing for Jim Downing from Atlanta who was later know for his work with Mazda, Daytona Lites, and one of the first and most commonly used head and neck restraints.

Remember the Dan Gurney for President campaign? I still have some of the handouts, button, #2 pencil, etc. Those were the days.
 
Dan Gurney was a regular at Riverside that week, cruising around the track on a Triumph Bonneville between runs in one of the competition Cobras Shel brought out. So was Ken Miles, who was working out some of the kinks in the Tiger project. I gave him and his wife Spanish lessons. She made tea with water from the tap fed by above ground pipes. That's how hot it was. Ken gave me a ride I'll never forget in the Tiger. The inside fronts were so high in the esses, you couldn't feel the half- buried tires which marked the edge of the course. He said the car was dangerous and wouldn't drive one on the street. I think he was right, as I knew someone who was killed in one a few years later.
 
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