0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Carroll Shelby was both a man who knew what he wanted, and how to get it. Constantly driven to succeed and seemingly unable to sit still, even during his so-called retirement years, that lifetime of constant toil, experimentation and philanthropy left an indelible mark in the automotive world. And it’s one that is still thriving today, more than a decade after its founder’s passing.

Just last December the covers were pulled off the latest machine to proudly wear the famous Shelby American badge as the 2025 Shelby Super Snake was unveiled at Barret-Jackson in Palm Beach, Florida. With an 825bhp 5-litre V8 at its heart and a 0-60 time of a ludicrous 3.5sec, you can image Shelby himself cracking a smile over the clouds.

The 2025 Shelby Super Snake, with its convention-defying 825bhp V8

The 2025 Shelby Super Snake, with its convention-defying 825bhp V8

Who even uses a 5-litre V8 anymore in this world of electrification and forced induction? Shelby does. And it’s all the better for it

The Shelby name is a worldwide performance icon. See that cobra emblem and you know something special lurks beneath. And it’s a name hard-earned through a relentless pursuit of perfection and frankly, rebellion, against the way things shouldn’t be. That was Shelby in a nutshell. He rarely followed convention, and that same DNA still exists in the companies that fly the Shelby flag – who even uses a 5-litre V8 anymore in this world of electrification and forced induction? Shelby does. And it’s all the better for it.

But did Carroll ever set out to build a business empire that now spans performance tuning, aftermarket automotive parts, car construction, a museum, a charitable foundation, global image licensing and even a culinary spice range? We doubt it. But the fact the man who originally failed at chicken farming in his native Texas did what he did paved the way for what will likely be an ever-lasting legacy.

The birth of an icon. Shelby’s first Mustang was the GT350, overhauled to help the ‘Pony Car’ better fit into Ford’s sporting spectrum

The birth of an icon. Shelby’s first Mustang was the GT350, overhauled to help the ‘Pony Car’ better fit into Ford’s sporting spectrum

CHALKLANDS SANDON

In the grand scheme of things, Shelby’s driving career was remarkably short. He excelled at the wheel for just eight years of the 89 he would spend on this Earth. The full details of the ‘whos’, ‘wheres’ and ‘what he wons’ are covered elsewhere in this edition, but what came after that is arguably more important in forming the Shelby we know today.

Sidelined from a race seat by the diagnosis of a heart condition in 1960, he never quit competition. It just came in a different form. After a dream about creating his own sports car to be titled ‘Cobra’, Shelby put the wheels in motion to connect the small British AC Cars firm and Ford to bring his dream to life. That prompted the foundation of Shelby American in 1962, a company birthed with the sole aim of producing the Cobra on American soil, and going on to prove the machine’s capabilities on the track by becoming the first, and as it stands only, American constructor to win the World Manufacturers’ GT Championship with the achingly pretty Daytona Coupé in 1965.

Shelby stands beside the 2007 Mustang GT500 2006 Ford Motor Company

Shelby stands beside the 2007 Mustang GT500

2006 Ford Motor Company

Despite this solo success, the Shelby brand has become synonymous in the mainstream with Ford thanks to the Mustang and that fairytale GT40 Le Mans project. This relationship that began back in 1964 when Ford’s then divisional manager Lee Iacocca decided the Blue Oval’s latest offering needed pepping up a bit to truly fit into the sporting mould. He contacted Shelby, who overhauled the original Mustang to create the GT350 of 1965. Up against the likes of the Corvette Stingray, Jaguar XKE, Sunbeam Tiger and anything Ferrari could throw at it, the Mustang swept the board in the Sports Car Club of America Production Class, with the road-going 350s selling as fast as they were winning. Aside from his own Cobra and Daytona Coupé, Shelby’s other iconic production arrived in 1967 in the form of the emblematic GT500. Still stunningly muscular and purposeful today, (anybody who says they don’t hold a soft spot for Nicolas Cage’s love interest ‘Eleanor’ in Gone in 60 Seconds is lying) a GT500 will set you back well into six figures. A one-off upgraded 1967 Fastback ‘Super Snake’ designed by Shelby purely to promote Goodyear’s Thunderbolt tyre range by running for 500 miles at an average speed of 142mph went on to become the most expensive Mustang ever, selling for $2.2m at Mecum’s 2019 Kissimmee sale.

The smell of success. Shelby’s rather odd deodorant brand

The smell of success. Shelby’s rather odd deodorant brand

Things changed in 1968 when Ford took over production of Shelby automobiles and the models gradually leaned more toward corporate demands than the ruthlessness Shelby always strived for.

Displeased at this direction, Shelby retired, opting instead to spend up to nine months per year exploring Africa. His sense of adventure and wanderlust never faded, and there’s a wonderful story of a young Shelby taking time out from his military flight instruction during WWII to court his future fiancée by flying his Army-issue planes over her farm and dropping old boots stuffed with love letters for her to find. Charmer.

not just American-made

Not just American-made, Shelby also tuned Toyota’s 2000GT for SCCA races in 1967

Shelby

The travels only stoked other business ideas, and Shelby turned his hand to a plethora of projects – from becoming a major Goodyear tyre distributor to building a specialist wheel manufacturing company (which counted Saab as a client) and even launching a bizarre deodorant line called ‘Carroll Shelby’s Pit Stop… A Real Man’s Deodorant’. Catchy.

Perhaps his most overlooked achievement stemmed from his love of cooking. Being born and bred in Texas, Shelby was raised on a diet of chili, and his love for the warming stew boiled over when he co-founded the first chili cooking championship in 1967. After New York journalist H. Allen Smith caused outrage in the State by claiming in an article that the dish wasn’t of Texan origin, Shelby and a group of friends set about to organise a cook-off between the writer and local legend Wick Fowler – himself a journalist and Vietnam veteran with a sideline in founding the Chili Appreciation Society. The former mining hub turned ghost town of Terlingua was chosen as the venue with the dispute of ‘who knows more about chilli, Texans or New Yorkers’ set to be settled. Except it wasn’t, as the contest ended in a draw. But the PR it generated meant the competition continued annually, and today the Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff has grown into a world-famous event featuring live music and the best chili cooks from across the globe.

everyone’s new favourite chili mix

Everyone’s new favourite chili mix

Off the back of that, Shelby also launched the International Chili Society together with his friend and fellow food judge C.V Wood. During those early events Shelby took great pride in his cookery and often handed out DIY spice kits in brown paper bags to impressed patrons wanting to replicate his recipe at home. Cue another opportunity, and Carroll Shelby’s Texas Chili was born and is still selling cookery kits from coast-to-coast today, each packet branded with a small chequered flag. Mustangs weren’t the only thing Shelby liked on the spicy side.

Shelby was lured out of retirement to reunite with Iacocca again in the 1980s, when Dodge was desperate to revive its ailing sporting image. Shelby collaborated on a range of Chargers and Omnis, culminating in the GLH (standing for Goes Like Hell), many of which were manufactured from new Shelby Performance premises in California. Then came the iconic Dodge Viper… It would be this relationship that would also bring Shelby back into motorsport with the launch of the Shelby Dodge Pro Series in 1991. Initially using spec sports prototype chassis and a 3.3-litre Dodge V6 engine, the series ran for six years in the US before being repackaged as Can-Am South Africa, where the cars continued to compete up until 2014.

Shelby in cooking mode

Shelby in cooking mode

There were also some failures, such as the ill-judged Series 1 sports car brewed up in partnership with General Motors in 1999. A bespoke aluminium body with costly carbon bodywork and a rebadged Oldsmobile V8, the car was over-budget, over-weight, under-performing and simply didn’t sell, costing Shelby a small fortune in his investment. He once told Motor Trend of the failure “You’re never so slick you can’t get greezed.”

Shelby had suffered from a leaking heart valve from the age of seven, and eventually underwent a heart transplant in 1990, and later a kidney transplant in 1996. After recovering, he became dismayed at both the cost and the wait times for such procedures so founded the Carroll Shelby Children’s Foundation in 1991, established to help young sufferers of heart disease cover their treatment bills. The Foundation was expanded in 2008 when Shelby also began to fund automotive scholarships at the Northeast Texas Community College near his hometown of Leesburg. The Foundation continues charitable support of both causes to this day, and became the primary focus for Shelby for much of his later life.

one of the rare failures, the Series 1 of 1999

One of the rare failures, the Series 1 of 1999

Shelby

The Shelby snake and the Blue Oval would reunite in 2005, with a revival of a hot Mustang range, both produced for the mass market and in an exclusive deal with car rental firm Hertz, which created souped-up versions for hire. This time working side-by-side with Ford, Shelby Automobiles produced the modern 5-litre V8 GT500 Super Snake, and reimagined the car that started it all, the GT350 in 2011. This marked the first time since 1970 that the public could buy both a Shelby 350 and 500 in showrooms.

Today, Shelby American is the flagship enterprise, producing up to 600 customised Mustangs or Cobras per year, as well as pickups like the Shelby Raptor and various F-150-based models. There’s a performance parts arm creating and distributing anything you could possibly need to tweak your own Ford, and even Team Shelby: a members club established by Carroll in 2008 that organises events and shows for car lovers and has become a merchandising Goliath. Shelby’s Texan roots are still there too, with Shelby Garage offering performance tuning in the town of Flower Mound, just outside of Dallas.

The Shelby Collection is housed in Shelby American’s Las Vegas HQ

The Shelby Collection is housed in Shelby American’s Las Vegas HQ

Shelby

Shelby American relocated to its current Las Vegas location in 2013, and has since become a mecca for all things Shelby. Featuring a dedicated museum and car collection, plus cutting-edge manufacturing facilities, the company is set fair for years to come.

The man who built it all may be gone, but the Shelby name endures as a performance icon. Turns out, winning Le Mans in 1959 wasn’t the pinnacle achievement after all.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Most halfway serious race fans know that the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix – technically the US Grand Prix West – ushered in the age of modern street circuits in 1976. But only the geekiest trivia hounds know that the event also featured perhaps the greatest historic race of all time.

Imagine an entry list with 12 drivers who’d won 10 world drivers’ championships, 10 Monaco Grands Prix, six Le Mans 24 Hours and 73 points-paying Formula 1 races, not to mention 64 non-championship F1 events and one Indianapolis 500 thrown in for good measure. As Jim Stranberg, who worked at Long Beach as a Bugatti mechanic, puts it, “At that race, I met every hero I ever had – at least the ones who were still alive.”

Moss reunited with his 1954 Maserati 250F

Moss reunited with his 1954 Maserati 250F

These days, of course, the legends of yesteryear turn out en masse year after year at lavishly funded and meticulously curated celebrations of motor sport history such as the Goodwood Revival and the Porsche Rennsport Reunion. But in 1976, historic racing was in its infancy, especially in the United States, and gatherings of this sort were still the stuff of fantasy.

Steve Earle had staged the first Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Laguna Seca Raceway only two years earlier. While getting the event off the ground, he met a would-be motor sport entrepreneur named Chris Pook. British by birth and a tour agent by trade, Pook had a dream – some sceptics called it a delusion – that holding a Formula 1 race on the streets of downtown Long Beach would help transform a seedy port city filled with dive bars and X-rated movie theatres into an internationally renowned destination metropolis.

from left, garlands for Moss, Fangio, Trintingnant and Gurney

from left, garlands for Moss, Fangio, Trintingnant and Gurney

Against all the odds, Pook lined up support from civic leaders, and the first Long Beach Grand Prix was held in 1975 for Formula 5000 cars as a proof of concept. Brian Redman beat a stellar field including Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Jody Scheckter, Tom Pryce, Tony Brise, Jackie Oliver and Chris Amon. The race was so successful that the FIA gave Pook a date for an F1 GP six months after the temporary grandstands had been disassembled.“The

“Formula 5000 race was so successful that the FIA gave a date for an F1 GP”

A born promoter, Pook realised that an F1 race alone might not be enough to attract Americans who were more accustomed to oval-track racing. “We needed to educate the fans,” he says. “All they knew were stock cars and Indycars at Ontario [Motor Speedway] and Riverside [International Raceway]. We wanted to get the public and the media in our market – which we defined as the 11 western United States – familiar with Formula 1 and its lineage.”

Maurice Trintingnant took the wheel of Briggs Cunningham’s 1952 Talbot-Lago

Maurice Trintingnant took the wheel of Briggs Cunningham’s 1952 Talbot-Lago

Steve Earle was the obvious choice to spearhead the support project. By happy coincidence, the two co-directors of the F1 race were Dan Gurney and Phil Hill, and they eagerly agreed not only to compete in the historic event but also to help entice other participants to travel to Long Beach. Meanwhile, Earle drew upon his contacts in what was then a tiny community of American race car collectors to provide most of the machinery.

Joel Finn, who would later write several exhaustive histories of road racing, brought no fewer than three cars – a 1957 Maserati 250F for Innes Ireland, a 1932 Bugatti Type 51 for René Dreyfus and a 1957 Formula 2 Cooper for Denny Hulme, who’d helped design the Long Beach circuit. Bob Sutherland, the passionate scion of a timber fortune, entered two more cars – a 1927 Bugatti Type 37A for Richie Ginther and Stirling Moss’s old 1954 Maserati 250F, to be driven by the British racing hero himself.

The Bugatti’s steering was too heavy for Dreyfus; Phil Hill stepped in.

The Bugatti’s steering was too heavy for Dreyfus; Phil Hill stepped in.

There were also four singletons. Briggs Cunningham, the grand old man of American road racing, pulled out a 1952 Talbot-Lago T26C from his extensive collection for Maurice Trintingnant. Ernie Beutler showed up with the 1952 Ferrari 375 that had been driven in the Indy 500 in 1952 by Alberto Ascari. It would be raced at Long Beach by Carroll Shelby. The 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza owned by Roberts Harrison, from a well-heeled Philadelphia family, was entrusted to Phil Hill. The entry list was filled out by the oldest car and driver in the field, Pete DePaolo, 76, who’d won the Indy 500 in 1925, and a 1926 Bugatti Type 37 owned by Bill Serri Jr, a collector who’d bought his first Bugatti while he was still in high school.

Dreyfus was 70 when he arrived at Long Beach. Linda Vaughn was a pit regular in the US, a mix of model and sassy marketeer

Dreyfus was 70 when he arrived at Long Beach. Linda Vaughn was a pit regular in the US, a mix of model and sassy marketeer

Getty Images

Inevitably, there were a few no-shows. The blue and white Ferrari 158 F1 car that John Surtees had raced at Watkins Glen and Mexico in 1964 didn’t arrive. Neither did the V6 Ferrari 246 that Phil Hill had driven during the 1960 grand prix season. Gurney had intended to run the Eagle that carried him to victory at Spa-Francorchamps in 1967, “But we were busy with our Formula 5000 and USAC projects,” he said. “There wasn’t time to get it race-ready.”

former Mercedes team-mates Moss and Fangio with a W196

Former Mercedes team-mates Moss and Fangio with a W196

Getty Images

The prospect of holding the historic race without Gurney was unthinkable. Earle called top British racing car collector Tom Wheatcroft, who generously agreed to send over a pair of 1959-vintage F1 cars – a BRM P25 for Gurney and a Cooper T51 for Jack Brabham. But Pook and Earle wanted an even bigger attraction. So Earle phoned Leo Levine, Mercedes-Benz’s American PR director, to request both Juan Manuel Fangio and a W196 open-wheel car.

Hill was initially entrusted with a 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza from a private collection.

Hill was initially entrusted with a 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza from a private collection.

“Are you nuts?! You think we’re gonna send a car worth more than anybody can imagine… And get Fangio too?”

Levine, a journalist who’d written the magisterial history Ford: The Dust and the Glory, before transitioning into public relations, was notoriously unwilling to suffer fools gladly. “What are you, nuts?” he snapped at Earle. “You think we’re going to send a car that’s worth more than anybody can imagine – and get Fangio too?”

But that’s exactly what Mercedes did. To generate publicity, Levine rented Ontario Motor Speedway for a pre-race shakedown. Media types streamed out to interview the famously gracious Fangio and watch the W196 on track. Although Mercedes dispatched five factory mechanics from Germany to support the car, the local gasoline didn’t agree with the desmodromic straight-eight engine under the distinctive long, silver hood.

Mercedes pulled out all the stops to ensure that Fangio could race a W196 at the California circuit

Mercedes pulled out all the stops to ensure that Fangio could race a W196 at the California circuit

Getty Images

“The motor dropped dead,” Earle recalls. “It was a total panic situation. They’re on the phone to Germany, where, of course, it’s the middle of the night.”

The powers that be decided to send the original streamliner version of the W196 to Long Beach. Then somebody pointed out that an envelope body was exactly what you didn’t want on a street circuit. So Mercedes reacted as only Mercedes could: the company pulled out a third W196, this one with open-wheel bodywork, prepped it ASAP and flew it to Long Beach.

 

“I’m sure there has never been as many racing stars gathered together”

While the Mercedes drama was unfolding, another pre-race media event was held to promote the historic race. “I’m sure there have never been as many racing stars gathered together at one time,” Pook declared. “That event alone would be worth the price of admission on Saturday.”

The festivities gave Ireland, the perennial bad boy, an excuse to perform a series of showy wheel-spinning launches in Finn’s 250F – until he roasted the clutch. “Joel was not a happy camper,” Earle says. So the Maserati was an early scratch. Then DePaolo contracted flu and withdrew from the race.

British car collector Wheatcroft also sent a 1959 BRM P25 for Dan Gurney to race

British car collector Wheatcroft also sent a 1959 BRM P25 for Dan Gurney to race

Mercedes prepped this W196 against the clock and flew it to the US from Germany

Mercedes prepped this W196 against the clock and flew it to the US from Germany

Friday practice was, well, interesting. Dreyfus could barely operate the heavy steering of the Bugatti Type 51, so he swapped cars with Ginther, who’d been in the lighter Type 37A. Shelby wasn’t happy with the handling of his ponderous Ferrari, which he described as “a big old tub”. Moss was having trouble with the engine of his 250F despite the help of his personal mechanic Alf Francis. Meanwhile, Hill had more serious issues with his Monza. “Phil characterised it as a carburettor failure,” Phil Reilly recalls. “The carburettor was broken off the motor by a connecting rod.” Ouch!

Ireland leapt into Dreyfus’s Bugatti

Ireland leapt into Dreyfus’s Bugatti

Phil Reilly Collection

Reilly, who went on to run one of the best-known restoration shops in the country, sadly died in December but without him this feature wouldn’t have been possible. He was working at the time as a mechanic on the Alfa Romeo prepared by his boss Stephen Griswold. With the car rendered hors de combat, Reilly spent the rest of the weekend using the credential Earle had given him to roam the track and take most of the photos seen here. Hill, meanwhile, took over the Bugatti that was supposed to have been driven by DePaolo.

Hill battled “carburettor problems” with the Monza

Hill battled “carburettor problems” with the Monza

After practice, the drivers convened in the Long Beach Convention Center for a TV interview. Larry Crane, who went on to have a long career as an art director of books and magazines, happened to swing by, and he took the marvellous group photo that later hung in a place of honour in Le Chanteclair, the French restaurant that Dreyfus and his brother ran in midtown Manhattan.

 

Although the drivers were gathered reverently around Dreyfus in Crane’s photo, it was Fangio who was the centre of attention. Fangio was remarkably humble about his own unparalleled accomplishments, yet he exuded a regal presence that inspired many of his rivals to defer to him as ‘Mr Fangio’. At one point, Earle asked Bugatti restorer Bob Seiffert, who’d attended school in Mexico, if he’d serve as Fangio’s translator. “That was like asking me if I’d take care of the King of England,” Seiffert recalls.

Moss also faced engine issues with his old Maserati

Moss also faced engine issues with his old Maserati

That night, all the drivers (except Moss, who had another commitment) got together again for dinner. At the end of the meal, Fangio rose to offer a toast. “The most important thing about racing is the friendships – not the wins, not the championships, the friendships that were established,” he said.

Earle was there. “I looked around the room and everybody’s mouth kind of dropped open,” he says. “It wasn’t just humility. It was the way Fangio saw things. He was on a plane above everybody else.”

Fangio rolled back the years in the Mercedes, posting a fastest lap

Fangio rolled back the years in the Mercedes, posting a fastest lap

“It was a sun-kissed morning and the grid looked magical”

Race day dawned as a typically sun-kissed SoCal morning, and the grid looked magical. Not only did the cars evoke vivid memories of the glory days, but so did drivers dressed as they’d been back in their prime, from Fangio in a short-sleeve shirt showcasing his large, muscled arms to Dreyfus wearing a fastidiously knotted tie and pristine white coveralls, to Shelby sporting the helmet battered when he crashed in the Carrera Panamericana in 1954.

Earle had repeatedly emphasised that this wasn’t supposed to be a race. It was, he cautioned, an exhibition, a celebration, a high-speed parade. The cars were to be flagged off in pairs a few seconds apart to limit the temptation for serious dicing while giving fans ample photo opportunities before the field inevitably strung out.

Wheatcroft asks where you can get a decent cup of tea

Wheatcroft asks where you can get a decent cup of tea

Phil Reilly Collection

Carroll Shelby raced Alberto Ascari’s Ferrari from the 1952 Indy 500

Carroll Shelby raced Alberto Ascari’s Ferrari from the 1952 Indy 500

Phil Reilly Collection

Fangio’s smooth pace brought a podium finish

Fangio’s smooth pace brought a podium finish

Getty Images

Moss talks with Wheatcroft

Moss talks with Wheatcroft

Phil Reilly Collection

Gurney and Brabham, driving the newest cars, started first. Gurney, decked out in a Simpson fire suit, evidently didn’t get Earle’s memo about the race not being a speed contest. He dropped the hammer when the flag fell and immediately left Brabham way behind. “I don’t know what he was waiting for,” Gurney said later. “Tom [Wheatcroft] said, ‘There’s no use hanging about.’ He gets a tremendous kick out of his equipment being run the way it should be run.”

Denny Hulme in an F2 Cooper

Denny Hulme in an F2 Cooper

Phil Reilly Collection

Brabham was second to Gurney, with Hulme – who’d only recently retired from F1 – a seemingly uncatchable third as they circulated past seaside flophouses and porno cinemas. Trailing blue smoke, Shelby limped home to the finish, but Hill’s Bugatti expired before reaching the end of the race. So did Moss’s Maserati, hamstrung by a misunderstanding over sparkplugs requested by Alf Francis. “The situation was nothing new,” Moss said afterwards. “I’ve broken cars before trying to catch Dan Gurney.”

 

Although Dreyfus motored sedately around at the back of the pack, his performance was enlivened by Ireland’s antics. Ever the class clown, Ireland unexpectedly jumped into Dreyfus’s Bugatti right before the start to serve as a superfluous riding mechanic. He then flashed a rude salute every time he passed the pits on Ocean Boulevard and hid his eyes in mock terror as Dreyfus bent his car into the corners. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” Ireland reported later. “It was like a seven- lap accident.”

The night before the race, Fangio had toasted his fellow drivers as friends

The night before the race, Fangio had toasted his fellow drivers as friends

Getty Images

“When Moss peeled off, Fangio put his race face on. It was the highlight of the weekend”

But the highlight of the race was more serious stuff – a performance that reminded fans of what had attracted them to racing in the first place: Juan Manuel Fangio, the Maestro, was back in the game. After several minutes dutifully running in formation with Moss’s ailing 250F, Fangio was trailing Gurney by half a lap. “When Moss peeled off, Fangio put his race face on,” Reilly says. “That was the highlight of the weekend, even more than the real grand prix.”

Fangio began using more revs before upshifting and venturing ever closer to the walls on corner exit. After the slower turns, he’d turn in his seat to look back at his rear tyre to see if the rubber was glazing over from wheelspin. Drifting through the faster curves, he made subtle steering corrections to prevent the tail from wagging the dog.

Long Beach was a run-down area in the mid-1970s, filled with low-rent cinemas and cheap hotels.

Long Beach was a run-down area in the mid-1970s, filled with low-rent cinemas and cheap hotels.

Phil Reilly Collection

“I was on Linden Avenue at the bottom of the hill, and from across the street I could feel the concentration in his car,” Reilly says. “He was faster every lap but so precise that there was never anything at risk. It was amazing to watch.”

Although Fangio passed Hulme to finish third, he couldn’t quite catch Brabham despite posting the fastest lap of the race – 1min 45sec flat, or 2.8sec faster than Gurney. Clay Regazzoni turned a lap at 1min 23.076sec while winning the F1 race from pole the next day in his Ferrari. But Fangio and company weren’t racing for championship points.

Mercedes supplied a racing crew of five for Fangio

Mercedes supplied a racing crew of five for Fangio

Phil Reilly Collection

Podium drenching

Podium drenching

Phil Reilly Collection

Moss with Ireland – the latter was in typically effervescent mood

Moss with Ireland – the latter was in typically effervescent mood

Phil Reilly Collection

Jack Brabham in the Tom Wheatcroft-owned Cooper T51

Jack Brabham in the Tom Wheatcroft-owned Cooper T51

Gurney won easily. “I’d never say I beat these men,” he said after spraying champagne over the victory rostrum. “It was just a thrill to be on the same course with Mr Fangio.” For his part, Fangio sounded wistful that the event hadn’t been more than a mere exhibition. As he said, “It is too bad it is impossible to turn the clock back and have a real race.”

Historic racing has come a long way since 1976. At premier events the cars are even more impressive, and the competition is far more cutthroat. Ultimately, though, are these the standards by which events ought to be judged?

By its nature, historic racing scratches a different itch from ‘real’ racing. The goal is to recapture the beguiling allure of a bygone era. By this measure, the greatest historic race ever was held at Long Beach in 1976. Gurney was the winner, Fangio the star, and Chris Pook and Steve Earle were the impresarios who brought history to life.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

In 2023 Goodwood marked Shelby’s centenary with a gathering like no other. All images here are from that event.

Two generations of Le Mans winners, with the Daytona Coupé that claimed class success in 1965 next to the Ford GT40 that famously dethroned Ferrari a year later

Two generations of Le Mans winners, with the Daytona Coupé that claimed class success in 1965 next to the Ford GT40 that famously dethroned Ferrari a year later

Peter Summers

 

Cobras alongside the green MG-TC that Shelby used for his racing debut in 1952

Cobras alongside the green MG-TC that Shelby used for his racing debut in 1952

Peter Summers

 

Shelby’s MG-TC was driven in the 2023 event by his grandson Aaron

Shelby’s MG-TC was driven in the 2023 event by his grandson Aaron

Peter Summers

carroll-shelby-celebration-at-the-2023-goodwood-revival.-ph.-by-peter-summers.–12
carroll-shelby-celebration-at-the-2023-goodwood-revival.-ph.-by-peter-summers.–10

Peter Summers

sunshine and Daytona Coupés... bliss

Sunshine and Daytona Coupés… bliss!

Peter Summers

 

A Maserati Birdcage. Shelby won the 1960 Riverside Grand Prix aboard the Tipo 61

A Maserati Birdcage. Shelby won the 1960 Riverside Grand Prix aboard the Tipo 61

Peter Summers

 

Lord March addresses the crowd

Lord March addresses the crowd

Peter Summers

 

Cowboy hats were the order of the day to honour the Texan hero

Cowboy hats were the order of the day to honour the Texan hero

Peter Summers

carroll-shelby-celebration-at-the-2023-goodwood-revival.-ph.-by-peter-summers.–3

Peter Summers

carroll-shelby-celebration-at-the-2023-goodwood-revival.-ph.-by-peter-summers.–5

Peter Summers

Aaron Shelby (centre) was a guest of honour in 2023

Aaron Shelby (centre) was a guest of honour in 2023

Peter Summers

 

Back to 2015 and the Daytona gathering. Goodwood made some history by reuniting the six original Daytona Coupés, as Neil Cummings from Shelby International said: “Even in ’65, they weren’t in the same place at the same time; they were all at different places”.

Back to 2015 and the Daytona gathering. Goodwood made some history by reuniting the six original Daytona Coupés, as Neil Cummings from Shelby International said: “Even in ’65, they weren’t in the same place at the same time; they were all at different places”.

Tom Shaxson

 

designer Peter Brock poses with the cars he created

Designer Peter Brock poses with the cars he created

Peter Summers

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

In many ways, the Dodge Viper was a gamble. It was way ahead of its time on the styling front, sacrificing comfort and usability for pure performance, and it took a brave soul to get the best from one without putting it through a hedge.

It’s fair to say that the first-generation Viper earned itself a reputation for being rather dangerous. Vipers were tricky to drive for the inexperienced, and many early cars were crashed in some way or another. It sounds like a marketing catastrophe, but it only made the Viper more revered: you had to be a real driver to handle one. Nothing turned heads like a Viper, with its machine-gun V10 and striking lines that drew inspiration from another super snake – the Shelby Cobra.

The Viper and the Cobra are intrinsically linked, and you can see the resemblance: side-mounted exhausts, gorgeous curves and swept-up tail, evoking the Daytona Coupé. The link was Carroll Shelby. Back in the late 1980s, Dodge had managed to shake off much of its sporting image. Remember the iconic 1960s Charger? It was now fatter, and distinctly more European. And that was the brand’s sporting choice, alongside hum-drum Colts and Conquests.

Viper was an instant hit at Le Mans, winning its class in 1998

Viper was an instant hit at Le Mans, winning its class in 1998

Profits were falling, and Dodge was in trouble. It was during the ’80s that Chrysler’s operations director Bob Lutz decided to recreate a legend. He wanted an all-new, all-American sports car that revived the Cobra spirit. Lightweight, curvaceous, extreme and with a whacking great engine up front. Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca wasn’t keen on gambling development budget on Lutz’s vision, so Lutz recruited Shelby to talk Iacocca round. He agreed to let them design a concept to be shown at the 1989 Detroit Motor Show, and when the media clapped eyes on the stunning wide-stance, open-topped, rocket-red bodywork designed by Tom Gale, it created such a commotion that Iacocca relented and ordered a team to make it a reality.

Two years later the first pre-production Viper RT/10 was shown in public, but not where you may expect. It rumbled out of the pits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to act as the pace car for the 1991 Indianapolis 500, with Shelby himself at its wheel.

“You didn’t get luxury for $50,000. But you did get a sledgehammer of an engine”

The first customer cars were delivered in 1992, and proved rather raw with its lightweight plastic body, questionable shut lines, very plastic interior, a rag-top and wobbly plastic windows. You didn’t get luxury for $50,000. But you did get a sledgehammer of an engine.

Tom Gale styled the Viper and paid tribute to the Cobra spirit

Tom Gale styled the Viper and paid tribute to the Cobra spirit

Dodge wanted to use a naturally aspirated 8-litre V10 from a RAM truck but realised the heavyweight cast-iron block just wouldn’t work. So it turned to then-Chrysler brand Lamborghini, sending a development team headed by chief power engineer Dick Winkles to Italy, where a lighter aluminium block was made.

The result was 395bhp sent to the rear wheels through a 6-speed manual gearbox. No ABS, stability control or traction control. Just a direct throttle and the driver’s wits to control it. Weighing just 1487kg, the Viper could reach 60mph in 4.6sec in the right hands. Chrysler’s health and safety chaps also had fun littering it with warning signs.

Perhaps the biggest development came in 1996 when the more usable GTS hard-top coupé arrived, with its double-bubble   roof, rear exhaust outlets, 444bhp and, thankfully, airbags.

The more stable GTS proved itself in racing. The GTS-R made its debut at Le Mans in 1998 and finished first and second in the GT2 class. In 1999 the Vipers trounced Porsche, filling the top six in the GTS class.

Viper production spanned a full 25 years, and five different generations, topping out with the SRT Viper in 2017, its V10 now expanded to 8.4-litres and pushing out 640bhp, as one of the best-loved modern American sports cars went out with a bang.

 

Price new $50,000
Engine 8-litre V10, naturally aspirated
Power 395bhp
0-62mph 4.6sec
Top speed 165mph
Rivals Ferrari Testarossa, Chevrolet Corvette
Verdict Still one of the most striking and menacing cars you’ll see on the road

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

It takes one to beat one: Enzo Ferrari was an ‘agitator’ of men’ and so, too, was Ken Miles. The controversial Englishman – a naturalised American from 1959 – who was never of short of an opinion on any subject and never shy of proffering them, was the vital spark of Shelby American’s successes with both the AC Cobra and Ford GT. It was he who put the kick in ‘Kick Ferrari’s butt!’

His ‘reward’ was a sucker punch that denied him endurance racing’s Triple Crown in 1966.

Miles aboard a Shelby Cobra in 1965

Miles aboard a Shelby Cobra in 1965

Getty Images

This former Wolseley apprentice, who had once driven up a Normandy beach and on into Germany, emigrated in 1951 and swiftly became the hub of SoCal’s burgeoning sports car racing scene. He ran the local club in a manner befitting a seasoned ex-staff sergeant – and cleaned up on the track in a couple of self-designed MG specials and a sequence of Porsches for West Coast importers.

He set up on his own in North Hollywood in 1960 and made Sunbeam Alpines go faster than they ought before knocking out the Tiger prototype. Work thinned – he had a generous streak and gave too much gear away – and Miles was unemployed and at a low ebb when he got the call from Carroll Shelby in early 1963.

Joining initially as his competitions manager – Miles was 44 already – Shelby needed Miles’ renowned chassis-sorting skills most of all, but ultimately could not deny him a race seat.

The wins continued to flow aboard Cobras – Miles had been an advocate of American muscle in a British frame since mating Mercury V8 flathead to chain-drive Frazer Nash in the late 1940s! – and the tag of small-car specialist was dropped. He could extract the max from any car – even one that was now at the cutting edge of technology.

with the Ford GT40 he helped transform;

With the Ford GT40 he helped transform;

It was Miles and his small, dedicated crew who gradually drew the performance from the to-date-disappointing mid-engine Ford GT. And it was Miles who suggested fitting a 7-litre NASCAR lump for Le Mans. A late decision, it cost him in 1965 – but his was a long-term plan.

“Miles was unfazed by the hoo-ha. His moment in the big time had been earned the hard way”

Having won the Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours – the former in Scuderia Ferrari’s absence and the latter at luckless team-mate Dan Gurney’s expense – he arrived at Le Mans in 1966 as favourite, and with a new co-driver in Denny Hulme; regular partner Lloyd Ruby had been injured in a plane crash. Miles was unfazed by the hoo-ha. His moment in the big time had been earned the hard way; he knew his car inside out; he was fit; he was ready.

victory at Daytona in 1965, with Shelby on the bonnet

Victory at Daytona in 1965, with Shelby on the bonnet

What he was unprepared for was the politics: Shelby American versus Holman-Moody; Firestone versus Goodyear; and Shelby American versus Shelby American, come to that. All played out before an attendant army of yes-men and hangers-on. In the past Miles had shrugged such matters aside with a sarcastic remark, issued in trademark ‘Sidebite’ style from the corner of his mouth. But FoMoCo was an immovable object – and the big men behind ‘Detroit Iron’ were not big on iron-y.

Ford got its photo – a staged 1-2-3 finish – but missed the opportunity. Theories abound as to why Miles finished second – and he is a wronged man in the majority of them. A PR disaster that refuses to fade and which has illuminated the big screen since.

second at Sebring in 1965 with Bruce McLaren

Second at Sebring in 1965 with Bruce McLaren

“Carroll Shelby knew that ‘Teddy teabag’ was irreplaceable”

It was difficult to see how Ford could have put matters right even had it wished to. Not that it got the chance to. Miles was killed two months later during a test of its revolutionary J-Car. The crash occurred at the end of a typically arduous day – Miles was perpetual motion on such occasions – when the car’s braking system likely malfunctioned.

Motor sport had lost one of its more unlikely – and for too long underappreciated – heroes. A keen talent with a sharp tongue, Miles was not everyone’s cup of char – but Shelby knew that ‘Teddy Teabag’ was irreplaceable.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

The last time I saw Carroll Shelby was at the Los Angeles Auto Show in the autumn of 2011. He was there to unveil the latest car to bear his name. When asked what he thought of it, he replied “I’ve always been asked, ‘What is your favourite car?’ and I’ve always replied, ‘The next one’. Well, I’m taking that back tonight. This is my favourite car.”

Even before I drove the Shelby Mustang GT500, it wasn’t hard to see why. The following sentence is worth considering for a moment: it has more power than a McLaren F1 or any Ferrari that’s ever gone on sale, but at a UK equivalent price of £34,500, it costs less than a top of the range Vauxhall Insignia.

It got that way by taking the engine from the Ford GT, expanding it to 5.8-litres and turning the screw on its supercharger still further. Everything else – brakes, steering, tyres, diff, gear ratios and suspension – is uprated to cope.

I came across it in the Goodwood Festival of Speed Future Tech pavilion, though what ground-breaking technology brought it there eludes me: if ever there were an old-school bruiser, a car that directs 662bhp to the Tarmac through the medium of a live rear axle, this is surely it.

“The last person in this car left black lines 100 yards long, we’re expecting rather more from you”

It was the only Shelby in the country and was due to leave Goodwood straight after the Festival, but far from wanting me to gently ease my way up the hill, Ford requested quite the reverse, “we’ve only got it for the weekend and it’s important we show what it can do,” said its custodian before kindly showing me how to disarm all the traction and stability programmes. “The last person in this car left black lines 100 yards long,” I was told, “we’re expecting rather more from you.”

I don’t know how far it is from the start of the hillclimb to the braking point for the first corner, but I do know that it was only when my foot lifted from the accelerator for that corner that the wall of white smoke in my mirror finally cleared. I was, of course, trying to keep the tyres spinning for as long as possible, but the usual cheat of slowing the car with your left foot on the brake while keeping the tyres alight with your right foot was entirely unnecessary.

To be honest it didn’t seem that fast. In fact I was more surprised and therefore impressed by the precision with which the nose turned into the corner. But when I finally opened the throttles wide again, two gears higher to make sure the tyres would bite, I was struck by the sensation that if I didn’t lift really rather quickly, we’d soon be in Kent. If it has the traction, this Mustang is preposterously, wildly and wonderfully fast.

For someone who grew up with a probably unhealthy love of late 1960s American muscle cars, the Mustang was all I could have hoped for and about 200bhp more. No doubt had I driven it for more than a single minute I could have found all sorts of issues with it, but in those few flashing moments it knew precisely what was needed. As the last car seen by Carroll Shelby to bear his name it was important to me that it was ridiculously quick, absurdly dramatic and just a little frightening. Sitting slightly wide eyed at the top of the hill watching the smoke settle, I knew how well that job had been done.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Phil Remington was the Paul Bunyan – the US superhuman lumberjack folk hero – of American motor sports. During a career that stretched from pre-war hotrods to the carbon-fibre DeltaWing, he generated enough lore to fill several volumes of epic poetry. Did he really bend a 40ft-long piece of tubing by using the roof of his house as a fulcrum? Maybe not. But there are witnesses who saw him straighten a crooked swing arm without ever touching it with his hands by deftly heating it with the oxygen-acetylene welding rig he wielded like a magic wand and letting the metal settle into the correct shape. And there are photos of him in the wind tunnel at Ford, where, working purely by intuition, he transformed the unloved Ford J-Car into the unbeatable Mark IV. And then there was the time that everybody in the Shelby American shop stopped to gawk while he power-hammered a roll bar into existence because he was working at such a furious John Henry-esque clip to get the GT40 X-1 in the transporter en route to Sebring, where it would win the 12 Hours.

Phil Remington was instrumental in the Ford GT40 Mark IV’s win at Le Mans 1967

Phil Remington was instrumental in the Ford GT40 Mark IV’s win at Le Mans 1967

Fellow All American Racers crewman Mike Lang still laughs as he thinks back to the day that Boy Hayje crashed an AAR Toyota Celica GTU during practice at Mid-Ohio. The instant the car arrived back in the pits, Remington starting cutting away the wreckage. He found that somebody had forgotten to fill the tank for the TIG welder with argon. No problem. But when Remington dragged out an old-school acetylene torch, he discovered that there were no welding rods. Without missing a beat, he climbed into the team transporter, collected the wire coat hangers holding the drivers’ suits, knocked the paint off them with a belt sander and used the bare metal to weld up the front end of the car.

“Phil was welding with a crappy old pair of goggles. Finally he tossed them and just squinted”

It was mid-summer in the American Midwest – brutally hot and obnoxiously humid. “We’re all sweating like there’s no tomorrow, and ‘Rem’ is gas-welding with a crappy old pair of welding goggles that kept slipping down off of his eyes,” Lang says. “Finally, he tossed the things to the side and just squinted as he welded. There were some younger guys there who’d been recruited for the Toyota programme, and they were completely slack-jawed. I mean, they could not believe what they were seeing. And, if I recall correctly,” he adds with a chuckle, “we were back at the hotel bar by seven o’clock.”

Motor sports is a hugely labour-intensive proposition. The drivers monopolise most of the attention, with what little is left over going to a handful of prominent designers, crew chiefs and team owners. But the vast majority of the people who do most of the actual work – fabricators, machinists, mechanics, data-acquisition geeks and so on – fly under the radar. Remington was one of the few who emerged as a celebrity. And for good reason.

It was while working at Shelby American that Remington began to stand out

It was while working at Shelby American that Remington began to stand out

“He became probably the greatest race car builder in the world”

“We had some really good guys in the shop – really good. And some of them could do some things as well as Phil,” says Cobra Daytona Coupé creator Peter Brock, referring to his days at Shelby American. “But he could do everything well, and he was unbelievably fast. He’d be working on something of his own, and if he happened to look up and see somebody doing something wrong on the other side of the shop, he’d walk over, shove the guy out of the way, get it done in half the time and walk away without saying a word. I was just in awe of the guy. He became a legend in his own time – probably the greatest race car builder in the world.”

Nobody who came before or after could match the breadth of Remington’s experience. His professional career began immediately after World War II, and he was still wearing a shop apron and standing – never sitting – at his workbench at AAR until six months before he died in 2013, at age 92. Along the way, he worked on dry lakes roadsters, midgets, dirt champ cars, five decades of Indycars, Trans-Am sedans, Can-Am big-bangers, two Le Mans winners, GTP prototypes and sports cars of every description. Oh, and he also did a stint in Formula 1 and was the lead mechanic/fabricator on a six-month around-the-world trip that Ford arranged to promote its 1958 model line-up.

“In Turkey, the hill people were shooting at us. Afghanistan was pretty rough, too,” he once told me. “In Australia, we picked up a load of monkeys for a lab in Oakland. Months later, I went back to the engineering garage in Detroit, and the thing still smelled so terrible you could hardly get near it.”

Remington was born in 1921 in Santa Monica. As a teenager, he joined the Low Flyers, a local hotrod club whose members included Phil Hill, fuel-injection pioneer Stu Hilborn, famed cam grinder Jack Engle, and Jim Travers and Frank Coon, who later formed the renowned engine shop Traco. Remington would eventually set a record by going 136mph at El Mirage dry lake in the Mojave Desert in a homebuilt Model A roadster. During World War II – which he referred to as “Big Smoke” – he saw combat in the Pacific as a flight engineer in a B-24 bomber. After the war, he apprenticed with prominent Indycar builders Lujie Lesovsky and Emil Diedt.

Remington’s bench with All American Racers pass – now in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in the US

Remington’s bench with All American Racers pass – now in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in the US

“I did everything – metalwork, welding, frames, chassis, exhaust systems, whatever you had to do to build a car. I learned it all the hard way – on my own,” he recalled. “I enjoyed doing the tough jobs that nobody else can do – or wants to do – figuring out how to do them and then doing them properly. And fast. Those are the things I’m kind of proud of.” (I talked to Remington many times, and other than describing his work on an intake manifold so fiendishly complicated that it made other fabricators weep with envy, that’s the closest I ever heard him come to bragging.)

A stint modifying engines – everything from hopped-up flatheads to blown Cadillacs for hydroplanes – for Eddie Meyer, the brother of three-time Indy-winner Louis Meyer, led to a gig with wealthy sportsman Sterling Edwards. While teaching himself to work with glassfibre, Remington almost single-handedly built the one-off roadster that Edwards drove to victory in 1950 in the first major sports car race on the West Coast. Remington also did some racing himself until wrecking a C-type Jaguar at Pebble Beach, when his pregnant wife, Joy, told him, “That’s it.”

as a young man he was banned from racing by his wife.

As a young man he was banned from racing by his wife.

Next, Remington worked with Hilborn on fuel-injection systems, then helped Travers and Coon build the cars that won the Indianapolis 500 in the hands of his friend Bill Vukovich. “He was very strange,” Remington said. “But he was a hell of a race driver. He could really go, and he was plenty brave.” Remington made his first trip to Indy in 1958, when Pat O’Connor was killed in a first-lap crash involving 15 cars. “At that time,” he said, “Milwaukee was just a week after the Speedway, so people wanted their stuff straightened out right away. Lujie and I were standing out there in the rain, beating aluminium day and night for about five days.”

Remington (left), Shelby, Bob Bondurant, Jochen Neerpasch and Richard Attwood in 1964

In World War II Remington was a flight engineer on B-24 Liberator bombers

With the monkeys off-loaded at the end of his around-the-world adventure, Remington joined the collection of All-Star fabricators, machinists and mechanics that fabulously wealthy Woolworth heir Lance Reventlow had hired to build the Scarabs. He was a core member of the team that assembled and supported the first – and last – truly all-American Formula 1 car. Decades later, the shock of arriving at Monaco for the first race of the 1960 season and seeing the rear-engine Coopers for the first time still rankled.

In World War II Remington was a flight engineer on B-24 Liberator bombers

In World War II Remington was a flight engineer on B-24 Liberator bombers

Getty Images

“It was pretty embarrassing,” he said. “We were in the same garage with Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren, and we just couldn’t believe the differences between our cars. The workmanship of our cars was really nice but when you looked at the general layout of their cars and how simple everything was, you could see that we were out to lunch.”

Remington was just about the last man standing when Reventlow shut down the Scarab operation in 1962. After Reventlow sold his well-equipped shop to Carroll Shelby, Remington stayed put. “I just changed payrolls, I guess you could say,” he said.

Ford drivers line up ahead of the historic 1966 Le Mans. After the race, while the team was out celebrating its 1-2-3 sweep, Remington returned to the garage to pack away the tools

Ford drivers line up ahead of the historic 1966 Le Mans. After the race, while the team was out celebrating its 1-2-3 sweep, Remington returned to the garage to pack away the tools

It was at Shelby American that Remington was transformed from a talented but essentially faceless artisan to an icon whose exploits became the stuff of racing folklore. It’s not true that company blueprints routinely carried the legend: “Draftsman: Remington. Designer: Remington. Engineer: Remington. Approved: Remington.” But they could have.

When the Cobra broke a rear hub in its race debut in 1962, Remington got a set of forging blanks from his old pal Ted Halibrand and machined replacements to his own specifications. (They never broke again.)

Ford drivers line up ahead of the historic 1966 Le Mans. After the race, while the team was out celebrating its 1-2-3 sweep, Remington returned to the garage to pack away the tools

Ford drivers line up ahead of the historic 1966 Le Mans. After the race, while the team was out celebrating its 1-2-3 sweep, Remington returned to the garage to pack away the tools

When Phil Hill complained that the new Daytona Coupé was trying to kill him at Spa in 1964, Remington fabbed up a rear spoiler out of aluminium scrap, and Hill broke the lap record by three seconds. When the overweight GT40s kept burning through brakes, he rigged up a quick-change system to replace brake pads more quickly, which helped the cars finish 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966.

The next year, using what Mario Andretti described as “his mental brain tunnel”, he reshaped the awkward J-Car into the Le Mans and Sebring-winning Mark IV.

“Without him, [the Ford GT effort] would have been an unbelievable failure,” Pete Weismann, who worked as a Kar-Kraft engineer on the Ford programme before becoming the nation’s leading authority on racing transmissions, once told me. “He’s the master. Whatever the engineers dreamed up, he was the one who made it work.”

With Carroll Smith discussing plans prior to Le Mans ’66

With Carroll Smith discussing plans prior to Le Mans ’66

After Shelby quit racing, Remington built stock cars at Holman-Moody before joining Dan Gurney at All American Racers in 1968. For the next four and a half decades, every car that left the AAR shop in southern California bore Remington’s fingerprints. One year, when there wasn’t enough money to create a glassfibre body for the team’s new Indycar, Remington beat 4ft x 8ft-long sheets of 3003 aluminium into shape on the chassis. “I once watched him take a fresh sheet of aluminium, put it on his leather-covered sandbag and utterly destroy it with a mallet,” former AAR engineer Jim Hamilton recalls. “When I came back 20 minutes later, he held up a compound-curve air duct that looked like it was ready to be put on a Phantom II fighter jet. It was that gorgeous.”

Remington’s toolboxes – which, along with his workbench, are now in the permanent collection of the Henry Ford Museum – were stuffed with one-of-a-kind implements that he made himself. Not just punches, chisels and T-squares but also DIY-run-amok items like a hammer fashioned out of a broken forklift axle and metal-shaping “slappers” laboriously fabricated out of Model A leaf springs and the noses of oxygen bottles. “He was a Depression-era kid who kept B-24s flying with baling wire,” longtime AAR designer John Ward explains.

Longevity in action: Remington worked on the 2012 DeltaWing

Longevity in action: Remington worked on the 2012 DeltaWing

Remington often delivered parts when they were still warm from being finished with 80-grit sandpaper on the World War II-vintage band sander that he and Fred Carrillo (of connecting rod fame) had upgraded with pulleys from his father’s reel lawnmower and springs from an Offenhauser-powered race car. “There were fabricators who would build parts that were prettier and more highly polished,” says former AAR crew chief and team manager Gary Donahoe. “But they took four or five times as long to create. Rem could just knock them out. And their beauty was in their simplicity and how well they worked.”

“By the time others realised a problem, he’d already got six fixes”

Of course, someone has to be the best, the fastest, has to work the longest hours. What made Remington more than a mere all-time great were two qualities that verged on superpowers. First, he was able to examine a broken component and immediately suss out why it had failed. Second, he had the rare ability to come up with solutions on the spot. “When there is a problem,” race engineer Carroll Smith once said, “by the time other people realise it, he’s already made six fixes.”

Precisely because he was so tireless and exacting, Remington could be difficult to work with. At Shelby American, they called him STP, short for ‘Super-Twitchy Phil’, and it wasn’t a form of endearment. “He was as big a pain in the ass as I’ve ever met,” Shelby confided. “Nobody could keep up with him, and he was always getting mad at people who did something less than perfect.”

Remington, left, with Dan Gurney at Le Mans 1966, the year the GT40 began its dominance

Remington, left, with Dan Gurney at Le Mans 1966, the year the GT40 began its dominance

Getty Images

But Remington was eager to share his knowledge with those who were interested in learning, and he was happy to help out when others had a problem. (Standard progression: he would explain how to do it. If he sensed incomprehension, he would draw the solution on paper. If that failed, he would do it himself.) And he had a sense of humour appreciated by his co-workers – at least the ones with thick skins.

When Jeff Heywood – who would become Remington’s protégé and a master fabricator himself – joined AAR, he didn’t have any tools, and it took him a while to accumulate a decent collection. One day, Remington called over to him, “Get over here, and bring your other tool with you.” A few years later, Heywood inadvertently ruined a piece of aluminium that he’d taken to another shop with a larger press brake. Remington saw Heywood when he returned to AAR. “I didn’t think they’d mess it up that soon,” Remington said. “Did you?”

Remington was always the first to arrive at the shop in the morning and often the last to leave. If lunch stretched on too long, he would flick the lights on and off to signal that it was time to get back to work. His head-down attitude translated to an aversion to loud music on the job. When Shelby American fabricator Jerry Schwarz refused to turn down the volume of his radio, Remington blew it up. As Schwarz explained, “Phil didn’t like acid rock music and turned it off with an M-80 [firecracker].”

Remington was so driven that virtually nothing could stop him. Shortly after the war, he was in hospital after a gruesome motorcycle accident. The doctors wanted to amputate his leg. “I called my mother, got her to bring me some clothes, and I bailed out,” he said.

As he got older, he regularly nicked his fingers at work. But instead of cleaning and bandaging them properly, he would shove his hand into the bucket filled with filthy water used for quenching hot metal and wrap the wound with duct tape. Sometimes, it was said, you could find him simply by following the trail of blood.

The last time I saw him, Remington was 91 years old. He was having trouble with his manual dexterity, so he’d devised and crafted a tool to help him pull up his zipper to get dressed in the morning. But he was still manning his workbench at AAR, building an aircraft-style electrical box for the DeltaWing. “Airplane stuff is so repetitive,” he complained. “When you do it once, you do it a thousand times. I don’t know how guys stand it.” Even after all those years, he was still looking for a new challenge.

Remington lived to be 92 before his death on February 9, 2013

Remington lived to be 92 before his death on February 9, 2013

Shortly after the DeltaWing raced at Le Mans, Remington fell awkwardly at his house. Although he never returned to work, he remained passionate about racing. Two months before he died, he spoke to Hamilton, who worked on the DeltaWing project for Chip Ganassi. “He asked me all sorts of questions about the flex of surfaces under load – questions I would have expected to hear from a young aerodynamicist,” Hamilton says.

The late Dan Gurney knew Remington longer and better than just about anybody, and nobody appreciated him more. “Rem is a remnant of an age of American ingenuity,” he once told me, his face lighting up into the famously boyish smile.

“He’s the kind of guy who can do things. It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, he can do it. If you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere, he’s the guy that you’d want with you. He’s really a one-man band. He’s just like a tornado – a great, unstoppable force of nature.”

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

When Eric Broadley’s Lola coupé, with Ford V8 engine mounted amidships behind the cockpit; appeared at the 1963 Racing Car Show I was very excited, as were most people who saw it. The whole conception of the car looked so right, and I remember thinking how I would dearly like a ride in it some time, but did not contemplate driving it as it seemed beyond my capabilities. This was January, 1963, and now just under four years later I have been using a production version of this original prototype on the road for a week, temporarily replacing the 4.2-litre Jaguar E-type.

As is well known, the mighty Ford empire bought Broadley and the Lola coupé, set them up in a factory at Slough and developed that first car into the Ford GT and started three years of serious motor racing, culminating in victory at Le Mans. From the first factory in Slough developed ‘Ford Advanced Vehicles’ who were in charge of the mid-engined coupé project, and as the racing versions progressed so did the idea of production versions to be used as road cars. The first racing coupés were very much Lola-Fords, but gradually the Ford engineers took over completely so that the name Lola could justifiably be dropped, and Broadley ended his contract and returned to Lola Cars. The mid-engined coupé gradually became completely Ford and was designated the GT40, but to Eric Broadley must go all the credit for the original conception and early development of what has become the most outstanding car of the day and very much a leader for the car of tomorrow. When I talk about ‘car’ I mean the specialised competition or GT car, not bread-and-butter stuff for Mr. Everyman. At the end of 1965 the GT40 was well into production (hand-built) and chassis GT40P/1013 was finished off as a road car. Mechanically the specification was not changed, nor was the shape, but there was a lot of attention to “home-comforts”, such as interior trim, door pockets, radio, heaters, silencers, heavier flywheel and a less-fierce clutch. The 4.7-litre Ford engine was not tuned to such a high degree and the maximum speed was modestly quoted as 164mph. In racing trim and depending on axle ratio, tyre size and so on, these were capable of 190mph down the Mulsanne at Le Mans, and given a long enough ‘run-in’ they could probably touch 200mph.

During 1966 the GT40 was produced in increasing numbers, all the chassis/body units for Le Mans emanating from F.A.V. at Slough, so that a proper production line of 6-8 cars at a time was set up. Having started at chassis GT40P/1001, the P denoting the finalised production series for homologation as Group 4 sports cars, a mixed array of cars to GT40P/1052 was completed by the end of the summer. I say mixed as some were to Group 4 specification and sold for racing, such as GT40P/1009 to Peter Sutcliffe, 1014 to Karl Richardson, 1021 to Nic Cussons and so on, others went to Shelby and Alan Mann as body/chassis units for building the 7-litre MkII cars for Le Mans, and some were built as road cars, such as 1033 to Switzerland, 1034 to Gloucestershire, 1043 to America… altogether eight road versions were built. By the end of the year 20 more road versions, numbers 1053 to 1072, will be completed and shipped to Dearborn for customers in the USA. These 72 cars are all in the production series.

“You simply cannot appreciate just how fast the GT40 is until you have driven it”

Car number GT40P/1013 was retained by Ford Advanced Vehicles of Slough as a ‘demonstrator’ and it was this one that John Wyer and John Horsman kindly lent me, with the advice “have fun”. It does not need much imagination to appreciate that the GT40 is very fast, though how fast and how safe you cannot appreciate to the full until you have driven it, or been driven in it by a very competent driver. At the end of 1965 I had a few quiet laps of the Goodwood circuit at the wheel of a GT40 (actually GT40P/1008, owned by Ford of Dagenham). Everything on the car worked beautifully and efficiently and you felt you could do no wrong. After my few laps I got Sir John Whitmore to show me how it should really be driven and he set out to frighten me, not realising that providing I have confidence in the driver I have never yet been frightened in the passenger seat of a racing/sports car. He threw that GT40 about with all the Whitmore abandon. Not only were the road-clinging qualities of the Ford outstanding, but its manners were impeccable when he overcooked it and we got sideways, usually done deliberately by him.

As the GT40 has been developed various people have expressed strong opinions about it, one of these being Carroll Shelby. I had long discussions with him about the GT40 concept as applied to an everyday GT car, he being of the opinion that it could never come about due to heat, noise, space and comfort. He was pushing the Shelby-Mustang and the Shelby-Cobra at the time, so was probably biased.

“One friend actually had the audacity to look at it and ask ‘what’s it like for parking in london…’”

I have been using a 4.2-litre E-type Jaguar for all-round motoring for two years now, and consequently have become pretty used to speeds between 100 and 140mph. So when I left the Jag at Slough and set off in the Ford GT40 I did not feel I was moving into a new world. My short trip to Goodwood had confirmed my ideas about the handling and performance of the GT40, so what I was really interested in now was its ability to be used as a replacement for the E-type. I am not suggesting that either car is suitable for everyday motoring of the town-bred commuter, the parking enthusiast or the domestic man. One friend actually had the audacity to look at the Ford GT40 and say “What’s it like for parking in London?” I told him I wouldn’t want to take it to London, let alone park it there. Two more friends who were given rides asked what were the snags. The only one I could think of was the limited luggage space, so I said that I could not even take a tooth-brush and pyjamas. Almost in unison they chorused “Who cares about sleeping in your clothes when you can motor in a car like that!” Another friend who is a scientist/engineer accompanied me on a fairly long and fast cross-country trip and was absolutely staggered at the smooth ride and ability of the wheels to stay on the ground not only over undulations and round bumpy corners, but over long brows at 120mph or more and over short humps at half that speed. He smiled serenely in technical satisfaction. Weighing just under a ton and with at least 335bhp, the straight-line performance is highly impressive. The outstanding thing about the GT40 is not ‘what it does’ but the ‘way that it does it’.

 

The seating position is very reclining, like a modern grand prix car, but so good is the visibility through the large raked screen with its pillars wrapped around the sides, that even in heavy traffic there are no problems. The nose of the car falls away in front of you, containing as does only the radiator, with thermostatically controlled fan, spare wheel, steering gear and bulkhead for the front wishbone suspension.

The steering wheel is vertical and at arms’ length so that you point the car rather than steer it. An inch or two from the wheel, on the right, is the very solid gearlever that controls the 5-speed ZF gearbox at the tail of the car. There is a purposeful wooden knob, with the letters GT. Just above it is an ‘all-purpose’ lever; up and down operates indicators, press and it blows the horn, move it left and it flashes the headlights, move it right (with the lights on) and it dips the headlights. There are all the usual instruments, including 8000rpm indicator and 200mph(!) speedometer. Under the dash is a horizontal hand-brake looking suspiciously like a standard Anglia part. Between the seats is a padded bulkhead to keep the occupants apart under cornering forces, plus an ashtray and starter button.

Created alongside its racing brethren, and featuring only limited changes to make it suitable for road use, the Ford GT40 set a new standard in fast road cars when it was launched in 1966

Created alongside its racing brethren, and featuring only limited changes to make it suitable for road use, the Ford GT40 set a new standard in fast road cars when it was launched in 1966

Power comes from a pushrod 4.7-litre Ford V8 engine running on four double-choke downdraught Weber carburetters, with a Climax-type cross-over exhaust system feeding into a large silencer on top of the gearbox and with two large-diameter tail pipes sticking out like a pair of cannon. At tickover and low speeds the V8 sounds a bit like a tractor, but a touch of the accelerator and the rpm shoots up and everything goes smooth. A short length of Motorway had 5800rpm showing with no sign of acceleration tailing off. There was no opportunity (Monday traffic!) to reach 6000 in top gear, but at anything over 5000 the engine was impressively smooth.

I have a very short list of desirable gearboxes, this part of a car being one of my essentials for enjoyable motoring, and on this list are things like Porsche 911 and Alfa Romeo. At the top of the list is now the ZF box of the GT40, the movement across the gate being infinitesimal. There is a very clever and foolproof interlock mechanism that only allows two segments of the gate to be open at any one time. Thanks to this you can push the lever across from 1st to 2nd, or 3rd to 4th with no possibility of getting the wrong gear. Similarly when changing down you pull the lever diagonally across towards you from 4th to 3rd with no fear of going into 1st for bottom gear is not available until the lever goes into second gear and opens the interlock. The movement of the lever is so small and with gearbox ratios of 2.42, 1.47, 1.09, 0.96 and 0.85 the speed of the change can be easily envisaged and all ratios are synchronised.

Acceleration, apart from sprint bikes and dragsters, now has a new meaning for me, for the GT40 is doing 100mph before you can say ‘Barbara Castle’, and it feels constant right up to 150mph. I thought the E-type Jaguar had acceleration from 80-130mph, but I now have to alter my sense of values, and the handling of the Ford makes it all so safe. Known local bends that the Jaguar can accelerate round in the upper 80s were taken easily at 120 and still accelerating. One of my prerequisites for high-speed motoring is to have enough reserve of horsepower and torque at 100mph to be able to stamp on the accelerator and surge forward so that you are quickly past an impending change of traffic conditions. Getting this sort of performance is no great problem these days, but getting it as safely, smoothly and confidently as the Ford GT40 does is a new conception of motoring. It makes you really appreciate the modern racing car, for in all mechanical respects, as regards ride, suspension control, cornering power, steering and braking this road-equipped GT40 was identical to the Group 4 racing versions. When you drive it fast over winding, undulating roads at speeds in excess of 110mph the suspension and shock-absorbers are working superbly; the engine is smooth, the steering light and unbelievably accurate, so that it is easy to see why so many racing drivers have rushed to get on the Ford payroll: it was obviously not money alone that attracted them. The steering at normal fast speeds is essentially neutral, but on high-speed corners, with low cornering forces, over exuberance is scrubbed out by understeer and a very gentlemanly characteristic of the front running out a little wide. On slow corners with a high cornering force being generated the rear end will slide, but is instantly corrected by the high-geared steering. The wide track and low centre of gravity make noticeable roll non-existent and the car remains well balanced and well mannered at all extremes, as Whitmore demonstrated very ably at Goodwood last year.

 

Fuel is carried in two sidetanks that run under the door sills and contain Goodyear Fuel Cells that hold 20 gallons between them. They are topped up by enormous fillers on each side just by the screen pillars; the average pump attendant seemed very suspicious of squirting the tiny nozzle of his Gilbarco pump into the gaping orifice, as though afraid a hand was going to come up the filler neck and grab the nozzle!

During nearly 900 miles of ridiculously fast motoring I became so enamoured of the Ford driving position and road manners that I felt I was getting into a ‘vintage’ car when I got back into the Jaguar. I have yet to find adjectives good enough to describe the way the GT40 motors about the place, and can only sum it up by saying that it is an entirely new conception of motoring. One that grand prix drivers and certain other racing drivers have known for some time in racing circles, but here it was in a usable road car. The mid-engine layout for a GT coupé is so obviously right from the performance, road holding and handling point of view, that it is now up to designers to think of ways of overcoming the little snags that come in its train when using the car for everyday motoring. With such a low roof line, doors present a problem and though I was able to slide in and out easily, it is more difficult for the average-sized driver and almost impossible for the taller ones. Three-quarter rear vision is another problem, for those who worry about things behind them. At the moment this is overcome by sticking Les Leston-type ‘goody’ mirrors on each side, but this seems too archaic for such an advanced vehicle. Also the carrying of a spare wheel in the nose should be a thing of the past and then you could use the space for luggage. Some form of inbuilt emergency castor or roller to get you to the next service station would seem better. The great holes in the fibreglass body work for the fuel fillers, right on points of critical airflow over the body must surely be a temporary measure, and the road dirt that is swirled up behind the car so that it covers the rear vertical surface, including the lamps and number plate, is such that improvements will have to be made if the police force are going to remain calm.

“You can now travel the mulsanne in a production car capable of greater speeds than the le mans-winning cars of the 1950s”

At the moment the GT40 is such an unknown quantity to the world that it generates respect and admiration at all times. It was truly amazing how often drivers in front would look in their mirrors and give a couple of flashes on the left-hand winker to say they were ready to be overtaken. It was not so long ago that Cisitalia staggered the sporting world with their 1100cc coupé that was only 49 inches high. The 4700cc Ford GT40 is 40 1/2 inches. This is progress, as is the fact that you can now travel the Mulsanne in a production car capable of greater speeds than the Le Mans-winning cars of 1952/53.

Some people have described the GT40 as a crude American monster doing everything by brute force and lacking the sophistication and engineering of a European car. These people have never looked closely at a GT40, for it would be difficult to find anything less American or less crude. The only ‘iron’ thing about it is the basic block and heads of the Detroit-built V8 engine, for the rest it is pure grand prix and the detailed workmanship and finish is such that RAC Scrutineers enthuse over it. The chassis is sheet steel .024 inches thick and welded into a semi-monocoque including the central part of the roof. The nose is a single hinged panel of reinforced fibreglass, as are the doors, which form part of the roof, and the hinged tail section.

 

When the Ford empire set up its small specialised factory at Slough and called it Ford Advanced Vehicles I thought it was a bit of a joke. After a week of motoring in a GT40 I can now appreciate that not only have they produced an Advanced Vehicle, but it is here with us today and is a new conception in GT motoring that must soon become commonplace. Ferrari and Lamborghini are still experimenting with the conception, while Lola is starting again, and Lotus are turning to it, but Ford are now well advanced, as the name board outside the factory in Banbury Avenue, Slough, Buckinghamshire, tells us. The selling price of a road-equipped GT40 is £5900 plus £1353 purchase tax (total £7253) which is just over three-and-a-half E-type Jaguars! Is it worth that much? If you have the money to buy a new conception in road motoring you will not be disappointed; if a Jaguar, Ferrari or Aston Martin satisfy you then the unbelievable qualities of a Ford GT40 will probably be beyond your appreciation. In the publicity material John Wyer says the engine of the GT40 is detuned for road use, but “will give a more than average performance”— the understatement of the year, I feel.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport, July 1966

Ford came to Le Mans in a much more organised manner than in the previous two years and the whole Detroit-supported project looked much more likely to achieve success than previously. There were eight 7-litre MkII Ford racing coupés, three run by Shelby American, three by Holman and Moody and two by Alan Mann Racing and all the cars were prepared to the same specification, differing only in colour, but unlike in previous years this was a concerted and united effort controlled much more strictly by Ford staff.

In direct opposition were two works 330P/3 Ferrari coupés and an open 330P/3, the last on loan to Chinetti’s NART team. Backing up the works Fords were numerous private teams running 4.7-litre GT40 models, and on the side of the works Ferraris were private teams with 365P/2, 275LM, Dino 206 and GTB models, but the atmosphere at Le Mans was much stronger than Ford versus Ferrari, it was America versus Europe, and the United States had added strength in their armoury from a lone Chaparral, while Europe had Porsche to rely on for solid support.

“Unlike previous years, this was a concerted and united effort, controlled more strictly by ford staff”

During practice America showed its strength when Gurney made fastest lap at a staggering 3min 30.6sec, an average speed of 230.102kph (approx 142.8mph) and he was not alone, for the other Fords were right behind him and the Ferraris could only just manage to get in the midst, being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Before practice finished both sides had been struck a severe body blow, for John Surtees had an altercation with his team manager and went off in a huff, just when Ferrari and Europe needed him most, and one of the Ford drivers, the American Dick Thompson, caused an accident and did not comply with the rules about reporting it and was disqualified. As he was co-driver to Graham Hill in one of the Alan Mann cars this was a serious blow indeed, but some rushing around got Brian Muir, the Australian saloon-car driver, over as a replacement. Ford had already had to solve a lot of driver problems for accidents had prevented AJ Foyt, Lloyd Ruby and Jackie Stewart from joining the team as arranged.

Le Mans 1966 race start

The calm before the storm: Ford locked out the top four places in qualifying, with Shelby entries starting first, second and fourth

Getty Images

The days prior to the race had been extremely hot, but Saturday was rather ominous, with gathering clouds and a much lower temperature and 30 minutes before the traditional 4pm start a drizzling rain began, causing a lot of tyre changing, both as regards tread pattern and make. However, the rain did not develop quite as anticipated so that some people were caught out. Henry Ford II was invited to drop the starting flag and send the 55 drivers running across the track to their waiting cars to start the Grand Prix d’Endurance, or 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The line-up was in order of practice times and from Gurney at the head with the red 7-litre Ford there was a long line of very powerful and very fast cars, probably more than Le Mans has seen before, which made one rather apprehensive of some of the tiny cars and inexperienced drivers at the lower end of the row. In the solid phalanx of Ford machinery the Ferraris were fifth, seventh, eighth, 15th, 16th and 17th, with the Chaparral 10th, which was not a very hopeful situation for Europe, considering the cars had not yet started their first lap.

Ford surpasses Ferrari at Le mans 1966

Ford surpasses Ferrari on its own turf, finally

Getty Images

Graham Hill led the opening stage, followed by Dan Gurney, these two running away from the rest of the field, but European hopes rose as three Fords headed for the pits at the end of the opening lap. Ken Miles stopped very briefly to have his door shut, John Whitmore came in to stay for repairs with a broken brake pipe and Paul Hawkins limped in with a broken drive-shaft, which had given him some exciting moments at the end of the Mulsanne straight. Pedro Rodríguez in the NART Ferrari P3 had made a terrible start but recovered quickly and was soon in fourth place, ahead of Mike Parkes, but Gurney, who now led Hill, and Ronnie Bucknum were all out of sight. Miles was travelling very fast and making up time for his stop, and although Ford tactics had called for 3min 36sec laps some of the 7-litre cars were nearer the 33sec bracket.

In the 2-litre category, all-European, Porsche were leading from Matra–BRM, while two of the Dinos had fallen by the wayside and by 5pm the remaining Dino was in trouble and on its way out, so that Ferrari’s small arms had proved quite useless as supporting forces. By this time Gurney was way ahead, with Hill holding second place, Bucknum third, Rodríguez fourth and Miles up in fifth place after lowering the lap record to 3min 33.1sec. Jo Bonnier in the Chaparral was next, then Parkes, Jean Guichet, Bruce McLaren and Lucien Bianchi, so the situation was Ford, Ford, Ford, Ferrari, Ford, Chaparral, Ferrari, Ferrari, Ford and Ford. During the second hour rain began to fall as refuelling stops became due and this caused a minor panic as well as numerous heart-searching decisions about further tyre changing. The yellow Ford of Whitmore/Frank Gardner and the bronze one of Hawkins/Mark Donohue had both been repaired and gone out again, but neither were very fit and were back in the pits when the leaders came in for fuel, which caused something of a shambles due to lack of space and Graham Hill just could not find room to stop and had to go on for another lap.

Denny Hulme and Ken Miles in the pits

Denny Hulme and Ken Miles in the pits;

Getty Images

After this commotion the order was cars number 3, 1, 27, 5, 7, 20, 21, 2, 6, 18, with Richie Ginther doing his best in the P3 Ferrari, but Ford overwhelming by numbers. Denis Hulme took over from Miles and continued the good work taking the lead from Gurney’s partner Jerry Grant, while Brian Muir was doing a remarkable job bearing in mind he had not sat in a Ford GT nor seen Le Mans until the morning of the race. Even before darkness fell the pace was beginning to take its toll and many of the weak as well as the strong had fallen out, Ford number 4 having a broken differential and number 8 being delayed further by a defective clutch-operating mechanism, which put it behind the minimum regulation distance, so it was withdrawn.

“There was shambles in the Ford pit when Hill couldn’t find space to stop and had to go on for another lap”

Two of the small cars, a 6-cylinder ASA and a Peugeot 204-engined CD, caused a worrying diversion by getting tangled up on the Mulsanne straight and catching fire, luckily without serious injury, and before midnight it looked as though the American might was beginning to stumble. Hill walked back to the pits having left number 7 by the roadside with broken suspension, and number 6, the Bianchi/Mario Andretti car, had broken its engine; the Chaparral had gone out ignominiously with a flat battery, but number 20 Ferrari had gone out with a flourish when Ludovico Scarfiotti collected a CD in the Esses and Jo Schlesser had been involved through there suddenly being nowhere for him to aim his Matra without having an accident, which was very hard on the French firm.

Leo Beebe awaits the finish

Ford’s PR head Leo Beebe (white jacket) awaits the finish, and the storm he’d have to deal with

Getty Images

At midnight Gurney/Jerry Grant (Ford), Miles/Hulme (Ford) and Rodríguez/Ginther (Ferrari) had all completed 126 laps, while McLaren/Chris Amon (Ford) were one lap behind, Willy Mairesse/Herbert Muller (Ferrari) were four laps behind and Lorenzo Bandini/Guichet (Ferrari) were five laps behind. Ford’s supporting forces were moving up, but immediately behind them were four Porsches presenting a very solid front, running splendidly and with no troubles at all. One hour later the Mairesse/Muller Ferrari had dropped back a place and there were only 32 cars left running and the cold and damp night was beginning to reach its lowest ebb. It is at this time of the race that unexpected things seem to happen, and true to form trouble struck both camps, with the Rodríguez/Ginther Ferrari going out with gearbox trouble and one of the private Fords of the Essex Racing Team going out with a broken engine.

At 3.30am Muller brought the Swiss Ferrari into the pit with its gearbox broken and the remaining works Ferrari was delayed by a broken brake pipe. As dawn broke the list of runners had diminished to 27 and Fords filled the first six places, followed by the works Porsches, while what Ferraris were still running were either sick or tired. The three GTB Ferraris were still going perfectly, but of course could not hope to match any of the prototypes for speed. As the world of the 24 Hours began to wake up, Ford lost a steady runner when the Guy Ligier/Bob Grossman GT40 went out with engine trouble and Ferrari looked like losing the NART GTB Ferrari as its clutch and gearbox were breaking up.

Carroll Shelby in the pits

Carroll Shelby in the pits. He blamed himself for how the race ended and Miles being robbed

Getty Images

Just after 8am there was strife in all directions, for the sole remaining P3 Ferrari had been suffering from an internal water leak and a slipping clutch, and it finally succumbed, while Dieter Spoerry crashed the Filipinetti Ford GT40 he had been sharing with Peter Sutcliffe and the Belgian 275LM Ferrari staggered to a halt at the pits having been losing water and overheating for a long while, but even more serious was the fact that the Gurney/Grant Ford was beginning to show signs of failing. There were now only 24 cars in the race, and it was barely mid-morning when gloom descended on the Shelby pits as car number 3 came slowly in to retire, having lost its water, overheated, and was unable to replenish anyway due to the rule demanding a certain distance between taking on fluids other than petrol.

The NART GTB Ferrari was disqualified for transgressing the rules when starting away from the pits without a clutch, and although Fords were in the first three places with the only three MkII cars running they were not terribly confident, seeing victory approaching but knowing how things can still fall apart in the last few hours of Le Mans. In order to cut out any possibility of a nonsense the Ford pits got tough and cleared out all the ‘hangers on’ and the myriad of photographers, TV and radio people, who invariably get in the way, and quite rightly so, for they had a lot at stake and had worked fantastically hard to reach this point, a point that was by no means a certain victory. The fact the race was not yet won was brought home when two of the small cars which had been running like clocks suddenly blew up; the second Austin Healey broke its head gasket and an Alpine broke its water pump, the first Healey having expired with clutch issues.

Henry Ford II didn’t care though, he had his victory

Henry Ford II didn’t care though, he had his victory

Getty Images

At noon, with four hours still to run, there were only 16 cars left running, the three Fords, with the McLaren/Amon car now slightly in front of the Miles/Hulme car, the Bucknum/Hutcherson Ford was nine laps behind. Then came a whole row of Porsches making a stupendous impression by the way they were still cracking round and sounding indecently healthy, while the remaining Alpine-Renault Gordinis sounded as if they had only just started the race. Most incredible was the fact that the lone French-driven Mini-Marcos was still buzzing round. By 2pm rain started and everyone began to go very gently, not wishing to make any silly mistakes at this late hour.

Ken Miles and Denny Hulme’s Le Mans 1966

Ken Miles and Denny Hulme’s 7-litre Ford proved a star, with Miles lowering the lap record at one point. Victory would also have made Miles the first driver to win Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans in the same year

Getty Images

With just over an hour left there was horror in the Porsche pits as the Peter Gregg/Sten Axelsson car arrived with a dead engine. This caused alarm for the last thing anyone expected was for one of the very healthy Porsche engines to break at this late stage. The Maranello Concessionaires Ferrari GTB driven by the two well-known F3 drivers, Roy Pike and Piers Courage, had been going like a train, and suddenly a brake pipe was broken and Pike had to stand in the pits and restrain himself while it was mended and the system was bled of air. It made people realise that Le Mans is not won until 4pm on Sunday.

“The Ford pit got tough, clearing out all the hangers-on, from photographers to tv and radio people”

In the final hour the rain ceased but the roads were streaming wet and the big Fords looked like power boats. Shelby still had his two cars running; Holman & Moody their sole survivor; Porsche had five very healthy cars. Alpine had four of its remarkably fast little 4-cylinder prototypes still running, the Mini-Marcos was still going. The only Ferrari survivors were two production GTBs.

Ford cross line at same time. LeMan 1966

A forced finish that paid a heavy price. Ken Miles and Denny Hulme should have won, had it not been for Ford’s demanded photo op

Getty Images

During the last half-hour the two Shelby cars closed up together, Miles waiting for McLaren, who had lost the lead during the final pit stops for refuelling, and the light-blue and the black 7-litre Fords circulated quietly together, gathering up the gold car of Bucknum as they started what was obviously going to be their final lap and a thoroughly well deserved victory for Ford, won through pulverising the opposition, even at the cost of heavy losses to their own forces.

“The McLaren/Amon car must have completed the greater distance, quoted at 20 metres”

The atmosphere was still very wet and damp as the survivors toured round on their final lap, endeavouring to arrive at the finish as near to 4pm as possible. By a prearranged plan the Fords of McLaren and Miles arrived, headlights ablaze, in as near a dead-heat as they could judge, with Bucknum just behind them. It was indeed an impressive and an undisputed victory, but the powerful line of Porsches was something of which Stuttgart could be very proud, the only blemish being that one sick car could not drag itself away on its last lap and had to be abandoned leaving 15 survivors in what was a hard and bitterly fought race.

Race winner Chris Amon in Ford 1966 LeMans

Race winner Chris Amon (NZL) (Right) is driven through Parc Ferme by partner Bruce McLaren

Getty Images

The celebrating in the Ford pit was dampened somewhat when the timekeepers announced that the car of McLaren and Amon had in fact won, a dead-heat being impossible as the cars had started together at 4pm on Saturday with the Miles/Hulme car already some yards ahead on the starting grid. The thinking was that because the two cars had arrived side-by-side on the same lap on Sunday at 4pm the McLaren/Amon car must have covered a greater distance in the 24 hours, the difference being quoted as 20 metres. The over-acting of the Ford executives and Shelby team had backfired on them and McLaren and Amon were received as rather surprised and dissatisfied winners. Colin Davis and Jo Siffert won the Index of Performance with a works Carrera Six Porsche running on fuel injection, and they also won the 2-litre class, having dominated it throughout the 24 hours.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

It started in 1964 and ended in 1969. Between these dates comes not quite the whole history of Ford at the Le Mans 24 Hours, but the only part of it anyone’s likely to want to make a movie about.

The script we know already, or at least we think we do: Henry tries to woo Enzo; Enzo seems flirtatious, receptive even. Henry makes his move, Enzo performs a deft little sidestep, primly announces that he is not that kind of Italian sports car manufacturer and leaves Henry face flat on the floor, picking dust out of his teeth, muttering something about a different kind of interaction, involving his boot and Enzo’s bottom.

1967-Ford-GT-MK-IV-Heritage

Henry leaves, gets the GT40 done and duly uses it to kick Enzo’s ass all the way from Le Mans to Maranello. Ford then duly wins the French classic four times on the trot, while Ferrari would have to wait until 2023 for its next taste of victory. Ass kicked. Job done.

But as I will be by no means the first to point out, history tends to be written by victors naturally inclined to, if not make stuff up, then certainly put their best foot forward; accentuate the positive; put their own, unique spin on proceedings.

But the real story, while a little less flattering for Ford when it is realised the massively resourced factory teams only won twice in the six years the GT40s and their derivatives raced in France, is I think rather more interesting than the wham-bam bare bones outlined above. Not least because it doesn’t start in 1964, nor even with a Ford.

Ford’s-1964-prototype-in-fine-fettle

Ford’s 1964 prototype in fine fettle.

Richard-Attwood-Jo-Schlesser’s

And not so fine, after Richard Attwood/Jo Schlesser’s car succumbed to fire during that year’s race

Getty Images

If Ken Miles was the unsung hero among the drivers in the GT40 story before Le Mans ’66 got made, then to this day the Lola Mk6GT is the equivalent among the cars.

The decision to create the car that became the GT40 was made in 1963 with a view to it being at Le Mans the following year. For a brand-new car from a company with zero experience in building anything like what might be required, it was more of an impossible dream than an ambitious target. The Lola, and its creator, Eric Broadley, saved not only Ford’s face, but its own bacon too.

By the summer of 1963 various design studies had made it clear Ford stood zero chance of getting a new car to Le Mans the following year. But in a moment of true Blue Peter worthiness, Broadley provided one he’d made earlier. The Mk6 was a make-or-break car for Lola and just as it looked like breaking it, it made it – just not in a way that could have been imagined at the time.

Broadley had thrown all the money, time and talent into the project that the then-tiny Lola concern could muster. The result was the first mid-engined sports car to use an American V8 engine, pre-dating even the Lotus 30. It had monocoque construction in an era of space frames, and it was light, slippery and potentially very fast indeed.

But it took so long to prepare for Le Mans that the drivers, Richard Attwood and David Hobbs, had to leave for France without it, Broadley himself driving it down, arriving too late for scrutineering and having to beg not to lose its place in the race. They had no time to set the car up and no spare springs and roll bars with which to set it up. They literally raced what Broadley turned up in, which turned out to have gearing so wrong for the race they were losing 30mph down the Mulsanne Straight. But the car ran well for half the race until the gearbox jammed, putting Hobbs into the wall and out of the race.

But Ford had seen enough, and you only have to look at the Mk6’s specification, let alone its doors cut into almost the centre of the roof to know where the GT40 came from, and how close the relationship was. With Broadley on board joining Brit-abroad Roy Lunn, who’d been working on the GT40 project from the start, and John Wyer coming across with Le Mans-winning experience from Aston Martin, the crucial pieces of the GT40 puzzle, complete with a state-of-the-art donor vehicle, were in place. Work started at Broadley’s place in Bromley, before moving to Ford Advanced Vehicles in Slough.

Development driving was done mainly by Bruce McLaren and despite its accelerated gestation and myriad problems, the first car was still fast enough straight out of the box to qualify second on debut at the 1964 Nürburgring 1000km between two Ferrari prototypes, despite the event being treated more as a shakedown and test session than a proper race.

Richard Attwood Ford-powered Lola Mk6 GT at Le Mans in 1963

The lineage is clear: Richard Attwood and David Hobbs share a Ford-powered Lola Mk6 GT at Le Mans in 1963

It retired with suspension problems. Despite having won five of the previous six Le Mans, Ferrari knew the threat the new 4.2-litre V8-powered Ford posed. As the cars lined up the three GT40s were faced by no fewer than eight Ferraris in the prototype class alone, half of them works entries.

They were right to be worried. Soon after the start the car driven by Richie Ginther and Masten Gregory swept past the Ferraris and started building a commanding lead. But it wasn’t long before things started to go wrong: first the car driven by Richard Attwood and Jo Schlesser caught fire and burned out, then the Ginther/Gregory car succumbed to transmission failure.

The strongest Ford, driven by Phil Hill and Bruce McLaren recovered from an early delay to lie third at dawn, but soon it too was out, leaving Ford with a new lap record for Hill as scant consolation for its considerable efforts. But if the failure in 1964 can be regarded as understandable given the newness of the car and the strength of the opposition, Ford had no such excuse for failing in 1965. It had taken away responsibility for racing from Broadley and Wyer and asked Carroll Shelby to prep the cars for racing, overseen by a new Ford division in Dearborn called Kar-Kraft. And it was Roy Lunn at Kar-Kraft who started investigating how the GT40 might be modified to take the 7-litre engine from the Ford Galaxie.

Carroll Shelby at the start in 1965

Shelby at the start in 1965

Testing and computer predictions suggested the car might be 15 seconds a lap quicker at Le Mans, a 24-hour test at Riverside produced no insoluble problems, so it was decided that a brace of these ‘MkII’ GT40s (some just call them Ford MkIIs) would form the main thrust of Ford’s efforts at Le Mans. Had they instead piled all their efforts into giving the car they already had bulletproof reliability, along with the 4.7-litre V8 now being made ready for customer cars, the outcome of Le Mans 1965 could have been very, very different.

But Ford was not the only top team to trip over its bootlaces. Ferrari did too. All three of Maranello’s prototypes retired, as did both Fords, leaving the race to an utterly unfancied 250LM entered by the US Ferrari importer that had qualified over 12 seconds a lap slower than pole time of the fastest Ford and slower than all but one of the customer GT40s. But by the time the race became an open goal, the Fords were no longer even on the pitch.

“The Lola saved not only Ford’s face, but its own bacon too”

I won’t let Le Mans ’66 delay us here for too long because I’m guessing most of you have seen the film, and despite its many wilful inaccuracies (Shelby catching fire en route to winning Le Mans in 1959, Enzo Ferrari attending Le Mans in 1966, Ken Miles not attending in 1965, and Fiat buying Ferrari that year when in fact it was 1969. Ford’s first failure at Le Mans in ’64 isn’t even mentioned), the essential thrust of the story is already there.

And those who have watched the film will know its tragic ending, where Ken Miles is killed testing the so-called ‘J-Car’ successor to the MkII (so called because it complied with appendix J of the Group 6 regulations for prototypes). I have however always thought it a shame that so little mention today is made of Walt Hansgen.

GT40s being fettled back at base the same year

GT40s being fettled back at base the same yea

Hansgen was a good if perhaps not great driver, arriving too late on the scene but still managing to come fifth in the 1964 US Grand Prix driving for Team Lotus in what was only his second world championship F1 race and at the age of almost 45.

He is also the man Mark Donohue credited more than any other for getting him started. But he was killed in a MkII during the test weekend for Le Mans ’66, losing control in rain and apparently electing to head down an escape road, unaware that it had been blocked off. After that accident Ford installed substantial cages inside the cars, which probably saved the lives of Peter Revson who flipped one testing at Daytona, and Mario Andretti who had an enormous accident at Le Mans in 1967.

“They were the fastest cars on track, and yet they’d still last a full 24 hours”

So Ford had won at Le Mans in 1966, even though the ACO’s reaction to Ford’s plan to dead heat the finish meant Ken Miles was robbed of the chance to become the first person to win the Daytona 24 Hours, Sebring 12 Hours and Le Mans 24 Hours in the same year. But Ford knew Ferrari would not stand still, and once work resumed on the J-car after Miles’ accident, the car’s aerodynamics – thought to be the reason for the crash – were totally revised, and the car renamed the Ford MkIV (following the ill-fated MkIII road car), and wasn’t really a GT40 at all. But in the fourth season of the programme, the car was finally perfected.

As Donohue put it: “They were the fastest cars on the track – except for the Chaparral maybe – and yet they’d still last 24 hours. They were very durable, very powerful, very fast, and about as easy to drive as a big Cadillac.”

Phil-Hill,-Dan-Gurney,-Jerry-Grant,-Dick-Thompson,-Alan-Grant,-Jack-Sears,-Bob-Johnson,-Ken-Miles,-Carroll-Shelby,-Chris-Amon-and-Innes-Ireland-in-1965

Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Jerry Grant, Dick Thompson, Alan Grant, Jack Sears, Bob Johnson, Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby, Chris Amon and Innes Ireland pose for a Shelby team photo in 1965

Three were entered for the 1967 race, Andretti crashing out, Donohue and Bruce McLaren setting off from pole but held back by myriad minor misfortunes to fourth at the flag while the sister MkIV of Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt took the win, four laps clear of the heroically driven 4-litre Ferrari P4 of Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti. Having already won at Sebring, the MkIV’s two-race career was already over.

Ford pits 1966. Ken Miles and Denny Hulme

The Ford pits before the race in 1966. Ken Miles and Denny Hulme should have won aboard the #1 car, but the #2 of Chris Amon/Bruce McLaren triumphed on a technicality

It retired unbeaten and with a unique claim to fame as the only genuinely all-American race car to win Le Mans to this day. That the GT40 – one car, chassis 1075 – won the next two Le Mans says far more about the failures of others than any innate superiority of the – I think I can use the word – ‘legendary’ Gulf-liveried GT40.

There is some debate as to whether this car was actually derived from the Mirage M1 that had won at Spa the previous year, but I don’t believe it is and that can be discussed another time. But the shake up was caused by new rules limiting Group 6 prototypes to a 3-litre capacity. So no MkIVs, P4s or Chaparrals.

“The battle between an F1 driver and a veteran is not an equal one”

Ferrari didn’t take part in the 1968 race while its brand new 312Ps proved woefully slow in 1969, the fastest qualifying behind four Porsches. An even more notable failure came from Ford itself, whose brand new DFV-powered 3-litre P68 or F3L prototype was fast but so terrifyingly unstable it never even got to France in 1968, having already ended the career of Chris Irwin in an appalling accident at the Nürburgring. But perhaps the most significant failure belonged to Porsche whose new 908s took the first three spots on the grid in 1968, but only one making the finish in third place, six laps down on the privately entered John Wyer GT40 of Pedro Rodríguez and the underrated Lucien Bianchi – racing in the production sports car category with its 5-litre capacity limit.

For Porsche, there was even less excuse in 1969, for not only did it have three apparently now-debugged 908s, but also two of its mighty new 917s. But both 917s retired, the car of Richard Attwood and Vic Elford 21 hours into the race with a four-lap lead. By then one of the 908s had already crashed while another succumbed to transmission failure.

Pedro Rodríguez and Lucien Bianchi’s Ford 1968

Pedro Rodríguez and the much underrated Lucien Bianchi’s Ford in action in 1968. They would win by five clear laps

Getty Images

All hope now lay with the last 908, fighting back after losing time with wheel-bearing failure. It came down to a fight between the 41-year-old Hans Herrmann in the Porsche, a Le Mans stalwart looking finally to win the race having made his debut there in 1953, against the 24-year-old Jacky Ickx, racing an old car for a small private team, yet sniffing the most unlikely of victories. Had one of the other drivers available to Porsche – an Attwood, Elford, Siffert or Stommelen for instance – been on board it’s hard to see how even Ickx would have stayed with them in the tired old car. Five years later Ickx wrote about those last few laps in a book called My Greatest Race. In it he said he knew the GT40 was never going to be as fast as the 908 on its own – the cars had qualified in, respectively 14th-16th positions – so he enlisted his rival’s help, making no attempt to stop the Porsche sling-shotting past on the Mulsanne before tucking in behind it and getting towed along at speeds the Ford would never have achieved on its own.

But the move that won the race began all the way back at Arnage corner. On approach Ickx deliberately held back to give himself space, then hurled the GT40 through the corner. If he could just stay approximately in touch until the White House bend – the quickest, most difficult corner on the track, he backed himself to carry so much additional speed through the curve he’d be ahead before the Ford Chicane. He practiced the move, perfected it, and won by about 100 yards, probably less than the distance he’d lost refusing to run across the track at the start of the race.

Jacky-Ickx-and-Jackie-Oliver’s-GT40-Ford-win-at-Le-Mans

Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver’s GT40 scored the final Ford win at Le Mans in stunning fashion

Getty Images

Ford’s final, and least likely victory at Le Mans was his. Strangely enough, the one person not lost in praise for his performance was Ickx himself, who seemed rather dismissive of the whole affair: “First of all, an endurance race is not properly a race. Moreover, the Le Mans circuit is not a driver’s circuit. And again a battle between a Formula 1 driver and a veteran is not equal. I was lucky to be fated with a material handicap to make up for, for there is no glory in triumphing over a much older man…”

For everyone else it was a moment never to be forgotten.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport, December 2004

It’s 6am. It’s dark. It’s cold — and yesterday’s briefing is momentarily forgotten. Where’s the door lock? There isn’t one. Naturally. Plip the fob and the door clicks open. Step two: clamber aboard and fire it up. Key in, press immobiliser button, turn on fuel pump, depress clutch. Er… button next to ignition is the horn. ‘Course it is. Must be the toggle switch marked ‘Ignition’, then. Flick it upwards and… Armageddon arrives early.

Shelby Daytona Coupe interior

Forget fakery or kit-car feelings, the Superformance Coupé is as faithful to the real thing as can be, and even shares the same original designer in Peter Brock

Red bunny eyes widen, pupils dilate as 6.6 litres of barely silenced Roush-Ford V8 erupts into life. And then dies. A bit more gas this time. God, it’s loud.

Parked in a natural amphitheatre, there’s the sudden realisation that half of South West London is now wide awake. Welcome to the deeply anti-social world of the Superformance Le Mans Coupé. Not a car for polite society.

You could call it a replica of the Shelby Daytona Cobra. You could call it an evocation (but only if you were really pretentious). It’s made in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and is a road car rather than a pure racer.

Shelby Daytona Coupe vents

That the project leader behind this new strain is Peter Brock — the man who is credited with designing the ’60s icons — lends it kudos. As does the involvement of Bob Negstad, a man whose part in Shelby American lore has largely gone uncelebrated but who was responsible for GT40 and Cobra 427 suspension. Add in the development testing skills of Bob Olthoff, who won more races in Cobras during the Shelby era than any other driver, and the results deserve to be good.

So who better to prove it, one way or the other, than a man who helped the Daytona lay claim to the 1965 GT world title: Jack Sears. Charming and chatty on the phone, the double British Saloon Car champ was nonetheless a touch guarded about the idea for fear of upsetting his close friend Carroll Shelby, whose only involvement with the Le Mans Coupé thus far was to impound the first one to land in the US. But the lure of 501bhp proves too great, and it’s agreed that he will give us his impressions. Hence the early start for his Norfolk home.

Shelby Daytona Coupe engine

As well as traditional Ford power, you can also opt for a 6.2-litre Chevrolet LS3 crate engine, more commonly found in a Corvette or Camaro.

You can understand his concerns. All too often lookalikes are just that — visual representations of iconic classics which offer little in the way of driver satisfaction. The Superformance takes its style cue from the original Daytona Coupé, but that’s about it. The six factory racers were essentially stopgaps. Hurriedly designed to front up to Ferrari’s 250 GT0, results were instant: Bob Bondurant and Dan Gurney took class honours at Le Mans in 1964, and Shelby narrowly missed out on that year’s GT crown after Enzo used his influence to have the final Monza round cancelled. For 1965 there was no works involvement from Maranello, and the Daytonas, by now run by Alan Mann, won the GT championship at a canter, with wins in all bar two races.

There’s very little commonality between the Le Mans Coupé and its inspiration. It’s larger, with a body made of an advanced variation of glass fibre called ‘Vinylester’ whereas the originals were constructed of ally. The fit and finish is exemplary for a low-volume specialist sportscar. There are neither ripples nor shut-lines you could shove your fist through. It also has a spaceframe chassis with rose-jointed double wishbones at each end; the original Cobra featured a ladderframe and leaf springs.

Shelby Daytona Coupe behind the wheel

Driving experience is pure, even if the car needs some cajoling at slow speeds.

Shelby Daytona Coupe gear box

Power, of course, is from the Blue Oval, if only in part. Based on a 351 cu in `Windsor’ V8, the Roush 402R unit is taken out to 6588cc, and fed by a mammoth four-barrel Holley carburettor. Producing 590lb ft of torque at 4900rpm, and boasting a power-to-weight ratio of 401bhp per tonne, the hypothetical top speed is 205mph.

News of which gladdens Mr Sears. Arriving at the rendezvous point in his ever-faithful Isuzu Trooper, ‘Gentleman Jack’ is precisely that. As the only man to have raced all three iterations of Cobra coupés, he’s manifestly enthusiastic at being able to drive a fourth, admittedly unofficially sanctioned, one. Walking around the car, he’s all smiles, the occasional utterance of “Hmm, yes” punctuated by “It certainly looks the part, doesn’t it?” He seems particularly intrigued by the exhaust arrangement, the side pipes being only functional in part. The outlets are there for show, as gasses are rerouted to the rear of the car. “How clever,” he says.

“It’s a bit bigger than the Daytona and, of course, we were on 15-inch [Hallibrand] wheels back then [the Le Mans Coupé has 18in rims and sticky low-profiles: 255/45 ZR18 front, 285/50 ZR18 rear]. I have to say that they have done a good job with updating the styling a bit. With those larger wheels, it could have looked awful.”

Shelby Daytona Coupe wheels tires

Side exhausts are present, if only for show

Once inside, Sears is equally enamoured. The crackle-black dash is home to white-on-black Stewart-Warner gauges fitted with chrome surrounds, countersunk in line with Single Vehicle Approval regulations. Secondary instruments are sited in the centre console. There’s little in the way of elbow room, but the great man is unperturbed: “That doesn’t worry me. There’s certainly more room than I remember [the wheelbase is 3in longer and you’re not sitting on a chassis rail as with the original]. You have to remember that the Cobras were racing cars. Comfort never really entered into things. You just got on with the job. In here, it’s quite civilised, isn’t it?”

“It’s certainly faster than the old daytona cobra, as it should be. This must have 200bhp more”

He fires it up. A dust storm swirls around the Kamm tail as Sears gently flexes the throttle: “If you think this is noisy, you should have sat in the Daytona. The side-mounted exhausts there were for real and, of course, there was no sound deadening. It also used to get very hot, but for some reason that never really bothered me. Here, you have got air-conditioning.” Trickling though a village, Sears has his first reservations: “The clutch is a bit on the heavy side, but I’m used to driving older cars so that isn’t much of an issue. The throttle, though, is a bit too stiff which makes it difficult to get a clean start: it isn’t easy to modulate the take-off point. It isn’t altogether happy being driven slowly, is it? It seems reluctant to pull below 2000rpm.”

Shelby Daytona Coupe rear

But once we’re clear of trigger-happy Gatsos, into the derestricted zone, Sears plants the throttle. Revs rise, as does your pulse. If the factory performance stats are to believed, the Le Mans Coupé can top 60mph in 3.9sec, and the ton a whisker over 4sec later. If anything, this seems almost pessimistic. Acceleration is as visceral as it is loud.

“It gets up and goes,” says Sears unnecessarily. “It’s certainly faster than the old Daytona Cobra, as it should be. This must have 150, maybe 200bhp more than we had with the old 4.7-litre engine. The chassis seems up to coping with the loads and I like the gear change [it uses a six-speed Tremec T56 unit] which is meaty. Back then, we had to make do with four speeds when the 250 GTO had five. Of course, the Cobra had so much torque it didn’t really matter that much. This does, too. Acceleration really is instant.”

Shelby Daytona Coupe Cobra badge

The small details matter. Shelby and Cobra badging is prevalent wherever you look, and each chassis is both sanctioned to use the Shelby title, and eligible to join the Shelby American Automotive Club Register.

Shelby Daytona Coupe logo

On to some altogether more testing back roads, and Sears is clearly enjoying himself: “I like the steering. It loads up well [like the Ford GT, it uses a Focus rack]. The ride quality is better than I expected. With those wide tyres it does tend to follow the contours of the road a bit, but any performance car would do the same. You can feel the back end move around a bit, but it’s very controllable. The brakes [325mm/305mm ventilated discs front/rear] are excellent: very, very reassuring. It really is quite something to drive.”

The last statement trails away. Smiling beatifically, the Cobra tamer gets on with the job and the next five minutes is spent in silence. As silent as anything this loud can be. The look of relish is writ wide. Once stationary, the huge fans kick in and a still-smiling Sears considers his verdict. It’s a stupid question, but is it anything like the old Daytona? Pause.

“I would have to say no. This is a very different animal. At the recent Cobra gathering over at the Haynes Museum I took out a Daytona and the old Willment Coupé. I suppose that because I drove them so recently the memories are fresh, which makes comparison easier. This is a fun car. I imagine it would be great for driving across Europe. It is comfortable enough and there’s plenty of luggage space. Opening it up on the autobahn would be enormous fun. It’s a very impressive machine.”

Shelby Daytona Coupe front

Subtle design tweaks, like larger wheels and air conditioning, bring the Coupé into the modern world

Indeed it is. Two days and 500 adrenaline-charged miles in this car teaches you to re-evaluate your prejudices against replicas, clones, ‘fakes’ — call them what you will. Expecting unresolved dynamics and bits to fall off, it soon becomes clear that the inelegantly named Superformance is a proper car. Really it is. One that’s searingly fast, with the genuine polish and heightened levels of charisma that many more exalted exotics would kill for.

Starting at £102,000 ($135,000) it’s not cheap, but seeing as only 10 or so are likely to be imported here each year (there is the option of right-hand drive), there’s also the added edge of exclusivity. There are no air-bags, no ABS, no traction control — and it’s all the better for that. Just lose the cup-holders.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport, January 2013

This man is not a superstar. He is not a household name in Europe. But you are about to get a glimpse of why he is part of American motor racing folklore. Say Cobra, say Corvette, and you say Bob Bondurant. But there is much more to this man who was a key figure in the development of one of the great American sports cars.

As a teenager in Illinois he raced bikes on dirt ovals. “You learn a thing or two doing that, I tell ya.” But more from the man himself later. Switching to cars, and moving to the sunshine of California, he hooked up with Chevy dealer Shelly Washburn, winning 30 out of 32 races in Washburn’s Corvette between 1961 and ’63. Then Carroll Shelby called: he had a Cobra on offer, and in 1965 they won the FIA GT Championship, trouncing those “pesky Ferrari GTOs”. Then came Formula 1, Can-Am – and a life-changing accident. That’s the nutshell.

Le Mans 1964, Carroll Shelby Bob Bondurant and Dan Gurney

Le Mans 1964, on the pit wall with Carroll Shelby. Bondurant and Dan Gurney would secure GT class honours in their Daytona Coupé

Getty Images

Bob doesn’t hear too well these days, probably a result of all those exhaust pipes coming back past his seat on their way from big engines. But his memory is sharp, and when it’s not, new wife Pat soon gets him back on track. It was Carroll Shelby’s mighty Cobra that made his name in America, he and Ken Miles doing the bulk of the early testing and development. Their task was to take the Cobras to the Corvettes, and beat them, and Shelby reckoned he’d found the car for the job.

“People said it would never happen, the Corvette was unbeatable, but Shelby had really hit on something. It was lighter for a start, and the brakes were a lot better. The Corvette wasn’t great on the brakes; it weaved left and right, so you closed it down at the end of the straight.” The yankee drawl is now in full flow, Bondurant recalling his early days with a grin.

“Enzo said, ‘I decide when I decide,’ so I guessed it was time to shut my mouth”

“Yeah, I was racing Corvettes, then the Cobra came along and blew us all off, and the writing was on the wall. Shelby had told me he had a Corvette-beater and when I first drove it I realised it handled better than a Corvette. But it was a different driving style – you were in a four-wheel drift a lot of the time. It was exciting to drive, and when we got into the Daytona Coupé we beat the Ferrari GTOs. We’d tried to make the roadster more aerodynamic by tilting the windshield back!” He laughs at the memory. “But that didn’t work, and the Coupé was kinda the obvious next step. The first one was built in California but the rest were made in Italy and the Italian fans weren’t too happy when we beat the Ferraris.

“I remember Dan Gurney and I were seeing 197mph on the Mulsanne at Le Mans in that Daytona Coupé, and when in 1964 Ferrari took the first three places with their prototypes we led home the rest and won the GT class. That was a great feeling. Nobody told me you had to slow down over the finish line at Le Mans so when I came over the line there were all these people coming onto the track – that was a bit scary.

“In ’65 Alan Mann ran the cars and when he met me at the airport for the first race he said to me: ‘You may want to go straight back to California – I have two English drivers, so you’re always going to be coming third.’ I thought: ‘Hey, screeeeeew you’ and sure as hell I went out at Monza and I was faster than both John Whitmore and Jack Sears. In the race I was ahead and they kept hanging out the boards telling me to slow down, slow down. So I slowed down past the pits and then caught back up again. I won the race, beat them both, and afterwards Jack said to me: ‘Hey, why didn’t you wait for us?’ I was taken aback. ‘Wait for you?’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you guys race in Europe, but in America we race to win’. And I beat them a few times after that.”

Le Mans Cobra crew in 1964, Shelby, Bondurant, Neerpasch, Gurney and Chris Amon

The Le Mans Cobra crew in 1964: Shelby, Bondurant, Neerpasch, Gurney and Chris Amon

Getty Images

Bondurant’s speed in the Cobra had come to the attention of Enzo Ferrari, who had not been at all pleased by the pace of the American interlopers. So after the American had won another race, this time at Reims, he summoned Bondurant to a meeting in Modena.

“Wow, the God of racing wanted to see me,” chuckles Bob. “So I went to see him, and there he was behind this enormous desk with a kinda floodlight shining down on him, and John Surtees was there to translate for me. Ferrari asked me if I’d like to live in Italy and I said, ‘Si, if I’m driving Formula Uno,’ and he said, ‘Ah, no, first you drive Prototipo,’ and then he took me into the Formula 1 workshop and showed me his cars, all lined up. I said, ‘When will you let me know about driving for you? In a week, two weeks?’ and he looked at me very sternly and said, ‘I decide when I decide,’ so I guessed it was time to shut my mouth.”

“I always wanted to go up against the best in the world. europe was where you had to be”

A week later Bondurant went to Monza for Formula 3, having found himself a late entry in a Lotus 35 run by John Willment that people told him was underpowered. Amazingly he won. “It was done in heats and we were four abreast through Curva Grande and slipstreaming most of the rest of the way round. Well, it had been pouring with rain and the track was still damp under the trees at the Lesmos. So I took it easy, and got up to second behind Andrea de Adamich. Then he went off through the hedge and I was leading, and I won. I couldn’t believe it. After the race [Eugenio] Dragoni was there – not my favourite team manager – but he must have put in a good word because Ferrari signed me for my first grand prix, at the end of 1965, at Watkins Glen [as substitute for the injured Surtees]. I’d never driven there before. They gave me a Dino with the V8; it felt real good and I got up to sixth, but my goggles blew down in the rain and I had to hold them on, steering with one hand, which put me right back. Ferrari seemed to like what I did, but Ludovico Scarfiotti drove the car in Mexico. It was dry there, and he did a better job. I raced a Lotus 33 for Reg Parnell in Mexico but it didn’t go so well.”

Earlier that year Ken Tyrrell had entered Bondurant for the F3 race at Monaco in a Cooper T76-BMC. “‘You’re not going to be as quick as Stewart,’ he told me, but he gave me the drive and I knew I could learn a lot.”

Bob Bondurant in Formula 1, 1966 Italian GP

Bondurant worked his way into Formula 1, in action here aboard a Team Chamaco Collect BRM in the 1966 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He finished seventh.

LAT

Bondurant took pole for his heat and battled for the lead, in a very wet race, with Roy Pike. “It was pouring down and after about 14 laps I’d passed Peter Revson in a pretty crazy move out of the tunnel and was pushing Pike for the lead,” he recalls. “Then he spun in front of me. I had to put it sideways, and we collided, which was a shame because I knew I could beat Pike that day. I was fired up because in the paddock the day before Pike told me he was the fastest driver out there and he won all the races. Well, I thought, ‘We’ll see about that,’ and we very nearly did. Ken had said to me before the race: ‘If you keep pushing him [Pike], he won’t be able to stand it,’ and Ken was right. In those days, if you won the F3 race in Monaco you were assured of a Formula 1 drive, and that’s what I wanted.”

And he made it, in 1966, with drives for a privately entered BRM and for Gurney’s new Anglo American Racers team. But his best result was a fourth, in the BRM at Monaco, and he finished the year with just three points.

Bob Bondurant PeteLyons

In an Eagle-Climax at Watkins Glen in 1966

“Yeah, I was road racing in the States, did well, but I always wanted to go up against the best in the world. Europe was where every American wanted to be, racing the top guys, and they respected you for that. I had some success and I learned a lot. And I guess that’s how I got into the movies.”

The movies?

“Well I was an F1 driver, right? So John Frankenheimer called up and said he wanted me to teach James Garner how to drive F1 cars for his movie Grand Prix. We had a lot of fun. We used the Jim Russell school in England for some of it – I’m not sure Jim liked me being Garner’s teacher, but we got round it and Garner got pretty good by the end. That sequence at Monaco was very successful, I think. Later on we did some work with Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise.” As you do.

Bob was a guest at the Goodwood Revival for the 50th anniversary of the AC Cobra. Predictably he was in seventh heaven, surrounded by some very familiar machinery along with many of his old rivals and buddies.

Bob Bondurant and Paul Newman

Bondurant coached many celebrity drivers, including Paul Newman

“I guess sports cars were always my big thing and it was just great to be at Goodwood. The Cobra is my car, you know, and I drove car 98, the red one which was the actual Cobra I first won with in the 1960s. The new owner was pretty surprised when I told him. I tell ya, I felt like a kid again – the vibrations, the noise, the feel of those cars. The car wasn’t set up the way I remember it, I told the guys who were running it, and…”

A good-natured jab in the ribs interrupts his flow. It’s his wife.

“Hey, Bob, you aren’t set up the way you used to be either…”

“Anyway, the set-up on the Cobra. Ken Miles and I did so many miles of testing, we knew those cars inside out, back to front. Sitting in old 98 I looked around me, saw Dan Gurney, Jack Sears, all those guys, and I don’t see them how they are now, I don’t see the grey hair and stuff, I see them as I knew them back then. That’s a kinda special feeling. So, yeah, Goodwood was just so great, to be back with those cars and all those friends, to see people like Jacky Ickx, who was a hero of mine.”

At this point wife Pat interjects again.

“His real hero is Juan Manuel Fangio. An entire wall of his office is just covered with pictures of Fangio.”

“You know, he was standing there in Monaco when I crashed with Pike in F3 and after he invited me to do the Temporada Series in Argentina. That was something, especially the old circuit in Buenos Aires.”

Bob Bondurant and Mike Parkes’ Ferrari 330P3 at Sebring in 1966.

Bondurant and Mike Parkes’ Ferrari 330P3 at Sebring in 1966.

LAT

Not everything in the life of Bob Bondurant has been quite so hunky-dory. In 1967 a steering arm broke on his McLaren in a Can-Am race at Watkins Glen. The car rolled; he was badly hurt, and he was told he’d probably never walk again. But while recuperating he had an idea.

“I thought about the teaching with James Garner and reckoned I could start a pretty decent driving school under my own name. So we started at Orange County Raceway and Nissan came in as a partner,” he tells me, handing me a card for the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Arizona, where Chevrolet and Goodyear are now his partners in what is still a very successful venture.

Now 79 years old, Bondurant only recently married the aforementioned Pat.

“Why don’t you tell him about our wedding, honey?” she says to him, but curiously looking at me. And what is interesting about a wedding? Well, it’s about where they got married. We’re back in Monaco again, and Bob is laughing.

Bob Bondurant headshot

“We’d been invited to the race and Pat went looking for a local wedding planner. I said, let’s get married on the track. I always loved the place, so we went to see Bernie Ecclestone. ‘It’ll never happen, Bob’, he said. ‘It just won’t happen, there’s no way’. But hey, the circuit was open to foot traffic on the Friday, so we just did it, got married out there on the track just before Rascasse. How about that? The following day I knocked on Bernie’s door, told him we did it, and he was amazed. I told him, ‘Bernie, you should know racers never give up.’ I had to tell him, the pictures were already in the local newspaper, and there were a lot of people there.”

As he says, racers never give up, and this one shows no sign of giving up any time soon. He has been colloquially called ‘America’s Uncrowned World Driving Champion’ and while that may be something of an exaggeration, Bob Bondurant has rightly taken his place in the USA’s pantheon of top-line international racers across history.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport, June 2019

So many stories, so few of them good. I’ve had countless conversations with people about Shelby Cobras over the years, and what had struck me is that even those who own and love them tend not to hold back when it comes to the car’s shortcomings. It seems their faults are part of their charm. Brutal power and those looks probably help too…

So this is going to be interesting. Thanks to Woodham Mortimer, the car preparer and restorer which bought JD Classics after the latter went into administration, we have two Cobras to try and, no, neither is ‘real’. You’d be amazed how few actually are.

But they are utterly faithful recreations that earn the FIA papers that do not get issued unless the car is as it would have been in period. In every regard that matters – how they look, how they’re built, how they drive, there should be no difference.

I feel a strange sense of trepidation, and not just because the weather is looking malevolent. I’ve been lucky enough to drive race versions of most of the cars that formed the bulk of the opposition to the Cobras in the early 1960s (Jaguar E-type, Aston DB4GT, even a Ferrari 250 GTO) and if there was any fear with those it related to their values. With the Cobra, there’s something else. Something about the car scares me, just a little.

Track day with AC Cobra and Shelby Daytona Coupe

The Daytona Coupé was born from the need for greater straight-line speed. On European tracks the Ferraris would obliterate the Shelbys due to their aerodynamic dominance. The new sleek body, and chance to alter the underpinnings, shifted that balance

Lyndon McNeil

The Daytona Coupé was born from the need for greater straight-line speed. On European tracks the Ferraris would obliterate the Shelbys due to their aerodynamic dominance. The new sleek body, and chance to alter the underpinnings, shifted that balanceBut some things are in my favour: we’re at Silverstone and if I’m going to cuddle a monster, I’d rather do it here. Second, Woodham Mortimer’s operations manager and renowned historic racer Chris Ward and the rest of the team are as relaxed as can be. Besides being shown how to fire each one up there are no instructions: no rev limit or laps, no ‘please look after it’. Just get in and go. As fast as you like, for as long as you like.

I try the red one first. The purpose of this story is to try to understand how the Cobra went from being a rather rough and ready Anglo-American hybrid into something that could and, indeed, eventually did beat the best of Europe’s automotive aristocracy. So it makes sense to start at the beginning.

It does not begin well: I can get in, but there is insufficient legroom for all 6ft 4in of me to operate the car safely. The only option is to pull the seat out and wedge me inside secured by foam and the six-point harness. It is very, very simple in here. Simple Smiths dials, a simple line of switches with labels painted onto the dash. Turn on the master switch, twist the key, apply a little throttle just to prod its four twin-choke Weber 48mm IDA carburettors and with more rumble than thunder, the 289cu in Ford V8 comes to life.

The clutch is heavy but not vicious, the action of the Hurst shifter long but not imprecise. Soon I’m rolling down the pit-lane with the sensation of really not having the slightest idea what’s going to happen next.

There is an interesting little story about the Cobra, worth mentioning here first because I believe it remains little known, but also because it shows just how close the entire saga came to a very different outcome.

The old ‘there’s no replacement for displacement’ axiom was found severely wanting

When he decided to create the car that would become the Cobra, it was not AC that Carroll Shelby rang first, but Aston Martin. It was 1960 and the previous summer he’d won Le Mans in a DBR1 paired with Roy Salvadori. His idea was to take the DB3S – which came second at Le Mans the year before – and slot in a V8. The plan failed because, as John Wyer pointed out, the DB3S was out of production, the race team that made it shut down, and Aston Martin was drowning in orders for its then-new DB4 road car. But I suspect if Shelby had started with a fully developed racing car with an already slippery body rather than an elderly British sports car designed with no thought for frontal area, the issues that made him create the Daytona Coupé might never have arisen in the first place.

So AC was Shelby’s second choice and if for 1963 he hoped the combination of his Old English chassis and all-American motor would somehow vanquish the might of Maranello and its well-developed 250 GTO at the first time of asking, he was wrong.

The Cobra proved that, even back then, there was more to making a successful racing car than simply ensuring it was powerful and light. The ‘there’s no replacement for displacement’ axiom was found wanting.

The Americans were fond of portraying the GTO as state of the art. But it’s not true: there was nothing remotely revolutionary about the GTO’s engineering and in some regards was actually pretty dated even when new in 1962. It still had a live rear axle and an engine so closely related to that in the first ever Ferrari its stroke was the same as V12s made in the 1940s. If anything, it proved what you can achieve not with cutting edge science, but the fabulous execution of very traditional thinking by a company that not only knew how to win, but expected to.

AC Cobra on test track

More than ample power, but wayward handling on a mixed set up made for an unpredictable run in the old school Cobra

Lyndon McNeil

More than ample power, but wayward handling on a mixed set up made for an unpredictable run in the old school CobraThe Cobra came from a different place: a handful of talented, enthusiastic California hot-rodders with a dream of wrecking Enzo Ferrari’s domination. Shelby is known to have loathed Ferrari, and reputedly blamed him for the death of his friend Luigi Musso during the 1958 French Grand Prix by pressurising him to go faster than it was safe to do. For Shelby, it was personal.

His Cobra was light, at around 1050kg. Clearly using a pushrod V8 wasn’t going to get the same horsepower per litre as an overhead cam V12, but the 4.7-litre Ford V8 was good for at least 360bhp, 20 per cent more than the Ferrari engine and backed by an even greater torque advantage.

On paper, it should have been quick. And on tight US street courses, it was. But at faster circuits like Daytona and those it would face in Europe, well… the lead Cobra at a three-hour race at Daytona in 1963 was lapped four times by the winning GTOs. At the Sebring 12Hrs, the best Cobra shipped 11 laps – almost one an hour – to the quickest GTO. At Le Mans it was a dozen laps over 24 hours, but they were much longer laps. The best GTO was over 100 miles ahead at the finish.

Something had to be done if Shelby’s dream of blacking Ferrari’s eye was to be realised. Shelby knew that Ferrari had a rebodied GTO with better suspension and a wider track coming for 1964. So he sat down to consider his options. More power wasn’t one of them – the V8 had been designed as a street car engine and was already on the limit of what could be kept reliable. He could put even more rubber on the road but that wouldn’t solve the Cobra’s big flaw: a lack of straight-line speed.

AC Cobra engine

It’s been estimated that at Le Mans the Cobras, even with factory hard tops, were giving up to 30mph to the slippery GTOs by the end of the Mulsanne Straight.

The answer came from a young designer called Peter Brock, who’d come to Shelby from GM where he’d had a hand in the shape of the Corvette Stingray. He’d always been fascinated by airflow and automotive forms, so suggested to Shelby that he created a new and aerodynamic body for the Cobra. But Shelby was no walkover and some of the older schoolers in the organisation thought the idea a waste of time and money. It was the support of Shelby’s British test driver, Ken Miles, that got the plan the green light. Given that Mercedes-Benz was using windtunnels in the 1930s, it’s strange to think that Brock designed the Daytona Coupé on a large piece of paper stuck to the wall. AC Cars was asked for the chassis drawings but they never turned up – perhaps because AC was miffed by Shelby’s plan to build cars in California rather than shipping chassis from Thames Ditton.

Shelby finally got what he wanted in 1965, with Daytonas romping to GT victory in eight of the 11 races

Perhaps the greatest misconception about the Daytona Coupé is that it was just a Cobra with a different body. It was not: Brock realised he had a golden opportunity to redesign the tubular structure that sat on the main chassis rails, for the Cobra’s other big flaw was that it wasn’t very rigid. Rinsey Mills, Shelby’s official biographer, wrote that drivers reported ‘door gaps altering and chattering when the car cornered hard…’

In the absence of any drawings, Brock took the chassis of a crashed Cobra and went to work, using Miles to determine the ideal driving position, working out where the roof line should be. He worked with Miles on creating a new tubular structure that would transform the torsional rigidity of the car alongside a new central triangulated spine.

Not that this was exactly declared to the FIA. For Shelby one of the big draws of the Coupé was that it would qualify under the same ‘evolution of type’ rules that allowed Ferrari to homologate the GTO as an updated 250 GT when it was not really anything of the sort. The fact is that the Daytona Coupé was different to the Cobra roadster not only in appearance, but construction too.

The first of six cars was ready for testing at Riverside in 1964, with Miles driving. In no time at all the Coupé – designed on paper and with zero budget, using the same engine, suspension, brakes, wheel and tyres– was lapping over three seconds faster than the standard Cobra. With no development, the car did 175mph along Riverside’s straight, which was less than a third of the length of the Mulsanne. The 30mph deficit was gone.

In the first race of 1964 – the Daytona 2000Km – the GTOs locked out the podium. But Bob Holbert put the Daytona on pole, a clear second faster than the winning GTO of Pedro Rodríguez. The car led for over half the race, setting fastest lap in the process before catching fire in a pit stop due to fuel leaking onto an overheated differential. The car retired, but notice had been served. At Sebring the Coupé finished eight laps ahead of the best ’64 GTO, at Le Mans Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant qualified it ahead of all bar the prototypes and then beat all the GTOs to win the GT category.

Daytona Coupe rear

Yet it was still a close season, one problem being the sheer number of GTOs. At Spa a blocked fuel line meant the Coupé came nowhere. Only the roadsters went to the Nürburgring, the best finishing 23rd, compared to second for the GTO, with Ferraris filling the first seven places in their class. Perhaps here the deficiencies of the open Cobra were laid most bare. Ferrari beat Shelby in the championship by just six points at the end of the campaign.

Shelby finally got what he wanted in 1965, with the Daytonas romping to GT victory, taking eight out of the 11 rounds, including Le Mans once more. But, with Ferrari failing to get the 250 LM homologated for GT racing, it was against derisory opposition. If you compare the results of the LM with the Daytona Coupé, there’s no escaping the fact that had it been in the same class, Ferrari would have taken the title again.

Even so, Shelby had what he wanted: the first FIA championship won by an American race team. But by the end of 1965 his eyes were on a different prize altogether, not just beating Ferrari for class honours, but outright with a handy little device called the GT40. He would not have long to wait.

Back in the present and, back in the red Cobra I’m struggling to find confidence. Power is not the problem – in most regards this is a GT40-spec motor with well over 400bhp. We’re using Silverstone’s International Circuit and even given the far slower entry onto the Hangar Straight, it gobbles up gears impressively, at least until it hits an aerodynamic wall at perhaps 130mph. Thereafter it is slow going. But the brakes are excellent for something on old-school Dunlop race rubber.

But in the corners I have no faith in it at all. Chris has warned me the car has more of a wet set up on it and may understeer, but there’s more going on here than that: I can’t gauge how the car will react to steering input, once it has reacted I can’t plot its trajectory too well and it doesn’t want to adjust its line when I come off the throttle. There’s quite a lot of vertical bobbing on its springs too. Every lap is faster than the last, but not once do I feel it is on my side.

I’m not surprised. Imprecise steering and unpredictable behaviour tallies with what I’ve heard. This is what a Cobra is like.

Or is it? The Daytona is waiting. Inside it is even more Spartan than the roadster. In front of me is a distinctly non-period Stack rev-counter and that’s it. If I want any other information, I need to peer at the centre console where there are six far smaller dials and a bank of switches. Ignition, pump and fire.

And now the space between my ears explodes. The car is on straight pipes and everything is shaking, including my brain. It is intimidating and rather wonderful. The engine is the same size as the roadster’s, albeit more powerful with around 440bhp thanks to its Steve Warrior-built motor.

Despite the sound and fury, i get that sense of oneness with it, which is key… i loved it

Before I reach the end of the pit lane, I know this is going to be different. It doesn’t feel like a development of the Cobra. It feels like a different car. There’s no brick wall on the straight. Barely halfway along I’m backing off the throttle to avoid slamming into the rev-limiter in top. Goodness knows how fast it’s going but even on this short stretch, it’s in a different league to the Cobra. Brock clearly had a fine eye for aerodynamics, because it feels rock solid too.

But I notice the changes in the corners even more. It feels like a racing car: taut, precise, and trustworthy. I’m driving with more confidence; soon I’m drifting through Stowe, correcting twitches through the still fractionally damp Club and having a riot.

I come in only because I genuinely fear for my hearing, ram a couple of plugs into my ear and head out again. The next few laps are utterly joyous. It’s still a car you drive with shoulders more than your wrists, but it’s magical. Its front is as keen to find an apex as the roadster’s is to avoid it, its back end so easy to place that you’re happy to make it oversteer everywhere. Above all, despite the sound and fury, I get that sense of oneness with it that, for me, is key to going fast in any car. In short, I loved it.

I don’t know if the night and day difference I felt between these two is exactly as that you’d find in original cars, but it tallies with what I’ve read.

The difference in set up undoubtedly had a role, too. Chris said the secret with the roadster was to be over-ambitious with your entry speed to break the back loose so that it never gets the chance to understeer. Maybe with time I would have tried.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. If I’d had more time, I know I’d have spent it in the Daytona. What I find more surprising is not that it could beat a Ferrari 250 GTO, but that a GTO could get anywhere near it at all.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

1965 24 Hours of Le Mans

1963 LeMans Ferraru 250 GTO Cobra

39PH chasing down the Equipe Nationale Belge Ferrari 250 GTO. The Cobra would finish seventh and secure a class win

1963 Le Mans Cobra

For the Cobra’s Le Mans debut, the works AC roadster was one of two 289s given an extended hardtop in an attempt to persuade the air of La Sarthe to slide smoothly over it. That meant a new shorter bottom-hinged boot and a fuel filler poking through the roof. In the enduro Ninian Sanderson and Peter Bolton took 39PH to seventh place and a class win, scoring a Mulsanne max of 167mph – hardly spectacular but it helped diminish the gap to Ferrari’s GTO and the Lightweight Jaguar Es. Team manager was Stirling Moss, and two Ford men spent the race in the AC pit quietly making notes for next year… After its weekend exercise the rumbling beast was driven home to England.

Thereafter the Willment team turned it from metallic AC green into red with white stripes, installed British Saloon Car champion and frequent Cobra wrangler Jack Sears into the driving seat, sorted its handling and began to score.

Throughout ’63 and ’64 Sears and Frank Gardner rattled the GTOs, Jags and Astons, but 39PH’s extensive career peaked with the infamous ‘black flag’ race at Brands in July ’64, when a furious Sears bullied his way back from an unfair penalty stop through a top-ranking GT field to a sensational win and a new GT lap record. By the time it was ousted by Willment’s new coupé, 39PH boasted over 350bhp and many mods, and at Goodwood with Sears at the helm proved it was capable of mixing it with Shelby’s new Daytona Coupés. Thankfully not much meddled with it in the interim time, this legendary racer was returned to ’64 TT form in the 1970s and has appeared often in the Goodwood Revival TT and other events.

289 Shelby Team car, Mike Bondurant and Holbert

Raced by the likes of Miles, Bondurant and Holbert, the 289 works cars excelled in America

1963 289 Shelby team car

This was the whole point of the Cobra exercise – a light chassis bulging with bhp which would thrash GM’s Corvette at home and Ferrari’s GTs around Europe. The early Cobras may have the ‘small’ V8 – only 4.7 litres – but these team cars, now fitted with rack and pinion steering, would dominate the domestic USRRC scene for three years, in a way the later 7-litre cars never did.

One of six cars prepared for the ’63 Sebring 12 Hours, CSX2129 had a sensational season in the hands of Shelby’s development driver Ken Miles, and Bob Bondurant and Bob Holbert, numerous podiums and class wins helping to collar three US championships and cement the Cobra legend. Especially notable was the second place behind team-mate Carroll Shelby in the Bridgehampton 500, the Cobra duo beating privateer Ferraris and E-types and helping to fuel Shelby’s desire for the FIA GT Championship. But with its dated aerodynamics a roadster would never score on Europe’s longer tracks; it would take the streamlined Coupés for that.

Raced during 1964 by Graham Shaw, 2129 then returned to the works team and was put on display at the New York World Fair. Under further owners it raced into the 1970s, but in the ’90s was restored to its unique works red livery.

Sleeker than the 427, a works team 289 with its narrow arch flares, prop-forward rollbar, quick-lift jack points, twin bullet mirrors and lean-back, or sometimes single wraparound, screen is perhaps the defining image of the racing Cobra.

Frank Gardner at Oulton Park in Willment Coupé

Frank Gardner tears into Old Hall corner at Oulton Park aboard the one-off Willment Coupé, which sadly never made it to Le Mans

Getty Images

1963 Willment Cobra Coupé

By 1963 John Willment’s team was bursting with ambition. He was running Frank Gardner in Formula 1 and, fresh from a Le Mans class win with the hard-raced hardtop Cobra 39PH, he wanted one of Shelby’s new Daytona Coupés for the French event in 1964. When the US outfit wouldn’t sell him one, he looked at the spare chassis in his workshop and decided to build his own.

Helped by drawings Shelby sent, the team constructed an even lower-drag version, with chopped roof, lay-flat rear window and lower tail, on a strengthened chassis packing a 289 with quad downdraught Webers. With its right-hand wheel and Lucas electrics there was no doubting its place of birth. It wasn’t ready for Le Mans, but painted in the Willment red with white stripes and piloted by Jack Sears it won on its debut, the 3 Hours of Snetterton, and went on to a successful tour of South Africa under Sears and Bob Olthof.

Back in the UK for ’65, Frank Gardner ran it in the TT and Sears won the Guards Trophy at Brands, but though entered again it did not make the ’65 French classic it was built for. After Brian Muir took another victory in late 1966 it became redundant, overtaken by GT40s, and was turned into a wild street car.

Thankfully it was rescued in the 1970s by vintage racer Amschel Rothschild before its value as a roadster outstripped its historic importance as a Coupé, and he raced it frequently. After passing through several hands it is now with a private collector and normally on show at the Shelby American Collection.

Le Mans 1964 Daytona Coupes Selby

Slick, sleek and taped for pre-race protection, the Daytona Coupés await the start of Le Mans 1964

1964 Shelby Daytona Coupé

It was Ferrari’s own fault. By squeezing its svelte GTO through a tiny ‘body option’ loophole in the GT regs, it made room for this, the fastest Cobra of all. With Target One, the Corvette, comprehensively licked in 1963, Shelby’s sights switched to the FIA GT title. But for the faster European circuits the roadster’s draggy shape chewed up horsepower – until Pete Brock shaped the streamlined blue beauty dubbed Daytona, which posted an impressive 186mph, a match for the all-conquering GTO.

Best of the GTs at Le Mans, and fourth overall behind three Ferrari prototypes, the Daytona Coupés nevertheless couldn’t topple the Ferrari hordes in ’64’s production class, but a year on, after the FIA refused to homologate Ferrari’s mid-engined 250LM ‘variant’ and Enzo stopped his factory GT efforts to concentrate on his prototypes, the Daytonas finally won the FIA GT title that Shelby craved. At that point the GT40 sidelined the Daytonas, and Shelby agreed with Ford not to race them again.

The only one built entirely in Shelby’s California shop (later cars went to Gran Sport in Italy to be clothed), prototype 2287 raced everywhere from Sebring to Spa, Oulton to Le Mans, piloted by Bob Holbert, Dave MacDonald, Phil Hill, Innes Ireland and Chris Amon – and even LSR hero Craig Breedlove, who set records with it at Bonneville.

Apart from its rarity and racing importance, 2287’s history teems with colour – it appeared in an episode of The Monkees, was used as a road car by infamous music producer Phil Spector and then vanished for 30 years. When it reappeared it was the subject of a major legal battle for ownership, but now resides in the spectacular Simeone Museum in Philadelphia, in astonishing original condition.

1964 AC Cobra 289 Coupé

AC’s own attempt at a Daytona Coupé resulted in arguably the prettiest of them all. However tyre failure wrecked its one and only competitive outing

LAT

1964 Ac Cobra 289 coupé

We have the horsepower, it’s time to slash the drag. That was the philosophy behind the various Cobra Coupés, and this was the prettiest. With Shelby taking the plaudits in ’63, this was a chance for AC itself, which after all built most of the Cobra, to wrest some of them back at Le Mans in ’64.

The first the Shelby team knew of it was the car’s debut at the Le Mans test day that year. Designed in-house by Alan Turner and visibly lower than the Pete Brock Daytona Coupé (which had been kept high due to uncertainty over Le Mans screen height regs), its sleek form promised to be a great leap forward on the Mulsanne Straight. To confirm that, AC took the 289-engined car to the nearest test track, also known as the M1, but the story that the resulting 185mph triggered Britain’s 70mph speed limit is a myth.

At La Sarthe Jack Sears and Peter Bolton were clocked at 183mph, matching the Daytona Cobras despite giving away 30bhp to the Shelby entries, and at one point the car was running in third place – but on Saturday evening a tyre blew, wrecking the car in its first and only race. The ruins languished in AC’s workshop for many years until enthusiast Barrie Bird bought them and undertook the huge task of straightening it out, and after a long restoration it is now a familiar sight at car gatherings.

1965 Cobra 427 S:C

Development of the 427 S/C didn’t go to plan, but it still proved a GT40-beater at Brands Hatch in 1966

LAT

1965 Cobra 427 S/C

Built for FIA homologation to race internationally, the 427 should have been called 390 after the aluminium race V8 Shelby wanted to install, but when those were committed to NASCAR he went with the 7-litre alternative.

To manhandle the iron block (competition and S/C cars had alloy heads) he got AC to bulk up the chassis: main tubes grew to 4in diameter, the width spread and those leaf springs finally went in the skip, replaced by coils and wishbones carrying massive Hallibrand alloys, 11.5in at the rear, which meant spreading the rear wings by a huge 7in. Brake cooling ducts, chin oil cooler and wing filler for the 42-gallon tank shouted its racing plans, but the FIA wouldn’t listen when only 51 had been built in time, 49 short of a ‘production’ model. That put the 427 back in the GT40’s class – clearly pointless. So opportunist Shelby, having only sold 16 competition versions for SCCA racing at home, tacked on a few legalising details, called the result S/C for Semi-Competition, and sold them as “the world’s fastest production car”. Most of the 31 S/C cars saw track action sooner or later, including CSX3006, ordered by a US racer and by mid-66 taken over by the Chequered Flag team in London which made it RHD, painted it white with black bonnet and went racing.

Its greatest event was at Brands Hatch in June 1966, when David Piper and Bob Bondurant triumphed in the rain-soaked Ilford 500 ahead, ironically, of a GT40. It was the only international-level win for a 427. Under different owners 3006 raced into the ’70s before being returned to LHD and its original blue, but during the Noughties was restored to the form of its Brands victory and now belongs to Henry Pearman of Eagle Racing.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport, October 2012

Even now, few cars exercise such huge gravitational pull as a Cobra. This Anglo-American hybrid didn’t scream ‘zeitgeist’ when it rocketed into the public eye back in 1962. There was no great leap forward; no breaking of moulds or pushing envelopes here. To the naysayers it represented some sort of Darwinian fluke – it was a mongrel in their eyes – but in its own rough-hewn manner it worked, and worked rather well. Together, America’s newest sports car manufacturer and Britain’s oldest fashioned an icon.

Except as we all know by rote, little about the Cobra or the man who conceived it was ever straightforward: the legend is true in its generalities if perhaps a mite fanciful in its specifics. First of all there’s the nettlesome question over when is a Cobra a Shelby or an AC? The fabulous example pictured here was built by AC Cars in Thames Ditton, after all, but the model was established by Shelby American in Southern California.

Deciphering the actual and the apocryphal when it comes to the Cobra is no easy task. For all the sub-clauses, codicils, addenda and all, the Cobra wasn’t a huge success sales-wise, but considering it has latterly become the most replicated car on the planet you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Its legendary status merely mirrored that of the man who conceived it – Carroll Hall Shelby.

Here was a man who wasn’t born gagging on a silver spoon. Instead the Texan tried his hand at everything from driving dump trucks to chicken farming, the latter activity ending in insolvency after his flock was wiped out by Lumberneck Disease. Unbowed, he merely dusted himself down and discovered motor sport. From his first tentative (and victorious) outing aboard a friend’s MG TC at Norman, Oklahoma in May 1952, his circuit career in sports cars took off with freight train-like momentum, peaking with that famous win at Le Mans in 1959 alongside Roy Salvadori in the works Aston Martin DBR1. Not that he was in a fit state to capitalise, instead being forced to retire as a driver the following year on being diagnosed with angina pectoris.

No matter, there was always Plan B. On moving to California to act as a distributor for Goodyear competition tyres, this born wheeler-dealer set in motion a long-nurtured objective: he would become a car manufacturer. Not for him rustling something up from scratch, though. Instead Shelby envisaged a large-displacement engine in a proprietary body/chassis. The marriage of 283cu in Chevy V8 power and a Big Healey was reputedly considered but BMC and General Motors were less than receptive to the proposal.

In many ways the cobra represented ford’s opening salvo in sports car racing

No matter, there was always AC Cars. While this venerable Surrey firm has latterly been airbrushed out of Cobra lore, being dismissed as a mere subcontractor in some quarters, the union of the big-hatted American and this profoundly British marque seems, with the benefit of hindsight, entirely natural. The delightful AC Ace had proven itself in competition time and again, initially with the prehistoric John Weller-conceived, in-house-made straight six and later with Bristol and 2.6-litre Ford units. Nor was success limited to Europe, the Ace-Bristol in particular finding glory trackside in the US where it claimed several SCCA titles from 1957-61. However, the market for small-series, hand-wrought sports cars ebbed as the 1950s progressed. Indeed, the Hurlock family-run concern did rather better out of contract work, the company manufacturing everything from fire-fighting equipment to carriages (both railway and invalid).

The Hurlocks were receptive to Shelby’s overture but outside forces would serve to propel the project forward at a giddying rate. And how. While Shelby claimed to have had little time for Enzo Ferrari, it was Henry Ford II whose nose was truly put out of joint by Il Commendatore. In the early ’60s Enzo had supposedly been keen to sell a majority stake in his eponymous firm to Ford. It was he who first made the approach, albeit by the very Cold War thriller method of sending a representative to doorstep the German consul in Milan. Word eventually reached Detroit and Ford’s general manager Lee Iacocca who had already laid down the groundwork for the Total Performance programme: Ford would triumph in everything, everywhere and bask in the reflective glow – win on Sunday, sell on Monday and all that. By taking over Ferrari, or at least the majority shareholding, it could bypass the start-up process.

Except marathon negotiations between the sixty-something Italian autocrat and bottom line-minded Detroit suits ended in disarray. Enzo backed out of the deal. The snub would enrage Ford II, leading ‘The Deuce’ to initiate what in time became the GT40 programme. But in many ways the Cobra represented the Blue Oval’s opening salvo in sports car racing.

One of the Total Performance scheme’s key players was Dave Evans, a man well known to Shelby. The upshot was that a couple of 221cu in (3.6-litre) Ford V8s were dispatched to Shelby’s office, which he rented from hot rodding legend Dean Moon. Meanwhile, back in Surrey AC’s chief engineer Alan Turner set about modifying the Ace’s frame to accommodate the new, larger powerplant, adding among other things an extra 3in crossmember to the chassis fore of the diff and redesigning the rear suspension tower to permit the relocation of the brakes to an inboard position (also necessitated by the decision to use a Salisbury 4HU diff). The first car, referred to in Thames Ditton at least as the AC Ace-Cobra, was tested and ready for shipment by February 1962. Then the engine was whipped out as news filtered through from the other side of the Atlantic about Ford’s new 260cu in (4.2-litre) small-block V8.

Shelby, meanwhile, had been busy acquiring a race shop from Scarab founder Lance Reventlow, who at that time was battling the Inland Revenue Service. In doing so, Shelby inherited the services of legendary fabricator Phil Remington. And it was ‘Rem’ who built the second Cobra and the first to be campaigned. Former Maserati 450S tamer Billy Krause debuted the car at Riverside in October 1962 and proceeded to build up a mile-and-a-half lead over the pursuing Chevrolet Corvettes before hub carrier failure ended play. The Cobra had laid down a marker.

“I managed London to Yorkshire in 2hr 18min, hitting up to 164mph on the ‘Grantham Dip’”

By the time the March ’63 Sebring 12 Hours rolled around, it had been given an upgrade to 289cu in (4.7-litre) power and gained MGB-sourced rack and pinion steering (features subsequently adopted for the MkII road car). Six Cobras were entered, the best result being a lowly 11th place overall and eighth in class. Nonetheless, Shelby American steamrollered its way to that year’s USRRC (US Road Racing Championship) crown for Class A production cars. With Ford backing, it then set about an all-out attack on Europe for ’64 and unleashed the less lovely 7-litre ‘big block’ 427 version that same year. In tandem, Shelby was also engaged in turning Ford’s ‘Pony Car’ into a stud, the Mustang GT350 being one of the few muscle cars that actually lived up to its billing.

In order to compete in the World Manufacturers’ Championship, there was the small matter of meeting the homologation build requirements. In total, 32 ‘leaf-sprung’ factory-built competition cars were built along with a further 31 independent competition cars which were sold to privateers. Rarest of the breed, however, were the five works FIA Cobras which, quite aside from having four gurgling Weber 48IDA carbs in place of the standard four-barrel Holley item, featured bodies made of thinner-gauge aluminium, with flared wheelarches and cut-back doors (as necessitated by the arch extensions). They also had abbreviated bootlids so they could be opened with the works hardtops in situ.

The car pictured features the FIA-spec bodywork but it has a unique twist all of its own. The fact that it’s configured in right-hand drive is a bit of a giveaway. It was originally built for gentleman driver Bruce Ropner who had tried obtaining a car directly from Shelby American only to find that none were available. “Shortly after the Cobra came out I read an article about it and decided I wanted one,” he recalls. “I then wrote to Carroll Shelby who replied with a very nice letter; he told me to get in touch with AC Cars and he would contact them accordingly.” Chassis COB6008 (US cars have the CSX prefix) was built with a special single-seat cockpit with the passenger side blanked with an aluminium tonneau cover. The windscreen could also be replaced with a smaller aero screen. “My father had owned a Jaguar D-type with a similar arrangement. I must admit to being a bit of a copycat in that respect.”

“Each time I approached him, two things happened: firstly, he would put the price up and secondly he would say ‘no’”

There was, however, one slight problem. While the body was shaped like the works FIA-spec cars, AC was unable to source the desired 8¼in-wide centre-lock Halibrand wheels. On collecting the car in 1964, Ropner was obliged to drive it home the 230 miles to North Yorkshire on narrow wire wheels which appeared somewhat inset. The Cobra, registered TWU2, was then dispatched to former Ecurie Ecosse mechanic Wilkie Wilkinson in Bourne. He added wider BRM magnesium wheels – 6¼in x 15in at the front, 8¼in x 15in at the back – along with beefier brakes and four Weber 48IDA carbs. While he was at it, Wilkinson cut two rows of louvres into the bonnet to dissipate heat. “Wilkie had looked after my father’s cars and he certainly breathed on the engine. It didn’t lack for horsepower.”

Ropner picked up the car on a cold wintry day, fat Dunlop R5 race-patterned tyres proving less than ideal on frosty asphalt. “I spun it on sheet ice on the A1. I couldn’t have been doing more than 30mph at the time,” he laughs. His pirouette was witnessed by a policeman who, fortunately, was more concerned with the driver’s wellbeing than with finding a reason to charge him. “He was very nice and jokey about the whole thing but declined my offer to swap cars.”

Ropner campaigned the car extensively in ’64, often in a straight line. “I took part in one of the early Sydney Allard Drag Festivals at Blackbushe and did well in the sports car class. I was second to Ken Wilson’s Lister-Jaguar and would have beaten him had I not had so much wheelspin off the line.” The Cobra would also have an unlikely role in the first major meeting at a new race track built on the grounds of the old Croft Aerodrome. In 1963, Ropner along with friend Keith Schellenberg and business partner Frances Shand-Kydd (mother of the future Princess Diana), began construction of the track and in August ’64 the Daily Mirror Trophy was the banner event. Saloon and sports car star Jack Sears was due to drive the Willment Racing Cobra ‘39PH’, only for its engine to break a rocker and hole a piston in the run up. To learn the circuit, Sears accepted Ropner’s offer to take out his car. He used it for qualifying – with road tyres – but, armed once again with 39PH, he was obliged to start at the back of the grid for the race as qualifying another car contravened the rules. ‘Gentleman Jack’ would tear through the field to win outright.

“The Cobra was a hairy car to drive,” Ropner adds. “It was a rocketship in a straight line but you needed to be careful on the corners. I remember one run in it where I left Hyde Park Corner at 3.40am one Sunday morning and drove it 220 miles up to my home in North Yorkshire. That was on the A1, which was single carriageway back then. I managed it in 2hr 18min, hitting 164mph downhill into the ‘Grantham Dip’. But I became more and more interested in drag racing and, along with Keith Schellenberg and another friend, I imported a proper dragster.” Ropner sold the Cobra to Schellenberg on November 28, 1965 – the same day that it was entered in the Angolan Grand Prix held on the roads of the African port of Luanda in the then Portuguese-controlled colony.

With a quality entry, which included Jo Schlesser in a big-block Ford France Cobra 427 and Denny Hulme in a Brabham-Climax BT8, the 300km race was won by pole-sitter David Piper aboard his Ferrari 365P2. In 12th place was Schellenberg who had been vying for GT class honours with Ferrari 275GTB/C driver Aquilles de Brito. The Portuguese came out on top in ninth place.

In December 1966 Schellenberg put the car up for sale at £1750. Re-registered 131YHN, it then sat at the back of Scorton Garage’s showroom in Yorkshire before it was acquired by dealer Brian Classic in 1984. The car subsequently passed to Michael Fisher, another dealer, who installed a roll hoop and works-style quick-lift jacking points. He also had it resprayed in Viking Blue to ape the Shelby team cars. The Cobra would become a familiar sight in historics with later owners Bill Wykeham and James Lindsay, its current custodian Kevin Kivlochan acquiring the car in 2003.

“I had been aware of the car for some time and over 11 months I tried to buy it off James,” he recalls. “Each time I approached him, two things happened: firstly, he would put the price up and secondly he would say ‘no’. However, I persevered and James told me that he had a list of 20 cars he wanted to own before he died, so I knew that he would one day sell the Cobra. Then one Wednesday he called me and said he would sell the car if I could pay in full by that Friday. Oh, and the price had gone up again! I said that I would come straight away to view the car and do the deal. He then informed me that the car was on a boat to Macau to do the historics race which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Macau Grand Prix. So we did the deal without me seeing the car, on the basis that James and his friend Bill Wykeham would race it and I would own it once it arrived back.

“About a week later, James called to say that he couldn’t go through with the deal; I had now paid him in full so he no longer felt that he was the owner of the car. He asked if I would do the race in Macau with Bill and naturally I agreed. My first real inspection of the car was in the pits in Macau, next to the smallest bundle of tools and spares that I had ever seen…” Kivlochan, a man steeped in Shelby lore (he’s raced six Cobras – five of them at Le Mans – and a Mustang GT350), has since campaigned the car extensively, with the likes of Derek Bell, Stefan Johansson and Richard Attwood sharing driving duties. However by 2009, decades’ worth of racing miles had taken their toll, Kivlochan taking the decision to sensitively restore the old warhorse back to the same spec as it raced in Angola back in ’65.

The beauty of a Cobra is the romance of it; about someone taking on the world armed only with an idea, a ‘never say die’ attitude and more than a little chutzpah. There was something very ‘nick of time’ about how the Cobra came about. Everything was improvisational, with the thrill and risk the word implies. While you can pick away at loose threads of the Shelby story – he was a persuasive showman – his importance is understood by those who embrace his achievements not by those who seek to disparage them. The Cobra is his legacy, and what a legacy it is.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport online, October 2021

The iconic Shelby Cobra was launched 60 years ago and there’s no shortage of stories about the conception and rise of the iconic Anglo-American beast. But before Carroll Shelby orchestrated the installation of a 260-cubic-inch Ford V8 into a chassis built in Thames Ditton by AC Cars, he was responsible for another historic achievement in 1962: he founded the first school of high-performance driving in the United States.

Peter Brock poses with a Daytona Coupé

Peter Brock poses with a Daytona Coupé

A charismatic Texan who often described himself as a failed chicken farmer, Shelby had been one of the first Yanks to race profitably in Europe, notably winning Le Mans in 1959 – while wearing bib overalls – with Roy Salvadori in an Aston Martin DBR1. After a heart condition forced him to retire, he moved to Southern California and chased his dream of producing a sports car powered by an American V8. Meanwhile, he made ends meet with several side hustles. Although his plan to build a race track went nowhere, he was a contributing editor at Sports Car Graphic magazine. He also picked up a few bucks as a distributor for Goodyear. But his most ambitious project involved creating a school for aspiring race car drivers at Riverside International Raceway.

Peter Brock gives instruction

Gives some instruction, despite having a limited racing career himself

The Henry Ford

British formula car ace Jim Russell had opened just such a school at Snetterton in 1956. But there was nothing like it in the States. So Shelby hatched a plan to go into business with Paul O’Shea, an East Coast hot shoe who’d won several SCCA national championships in Mercedes-Benz 300 SLs. There was just one problem.

“You’ve got to understand that both of these guys were top egos,” says Peter Brock. “Shelby thought that O’Shea would be his assistant and run the school for him, and O’Shea thought just the opposite. When reality set in, O’Shea said, ‘F*** you,’ and walked off.”

“When reality set in, O’Shea said ‘F*** you’ and walked off”

Brock would later play an essential role at Shelby American as the designer of the Cobra Daytona Coupé, which trounced the Ferrari 250 GTO en route to winning the GT world championship in 1965. At the time, though, he was working for Max Balchowsky, the creator of Old Yeller [a Buick special], as he pursued his own fledging career as a race car driver. Shelby had run some of his final races in Balchowsky’s surprisingly fast junkyard dog, and he’d befriended Brock while hanging out at the shop. So Brock happened to be at Riverside during Shelby’s comically disastrous meeting with O’Shea.

“Shelby turned to me and said, ‘I don’t have time to do this. Do you want to do it?’” Brock recalls with a laugh. “And I said, ‘You bet!’ because here was a chance to be on the race-track every day.”

Driving School

At the time, Brock had a grand total of about seven races under his belt. Nevertheless, with Shelby’s blessing, he was anointed as America’s first official race car driving instructor, and he established the curriculum for the school without any input from, well, anybody.

“Shelby had nothing to do with it,” Brock says. “In the two years that I worked for the school, I think he came out maybe twice, for pictures.”

Promoted through an advert in Sports Car Graphic, the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving prospered. Brock incorporated valuable driving and pedagogical tips from Cobra star Ken Miles into the instructional program. As attendance climbed, Brock also hired two additional instructors – John Timanus, who went on to become the SCCA’s technical director, and Bob Bondurant, who eventually bought the school and used it as the foundation of his own high-performance driving empire.

Carroll Shelby behind the wheel

One of Brock’s first students was a bespectacled 20-year-old Midwesterner who, like Brock, had made a pilgrimage to Southern California in search of a life in motor sport. As it happened, John Morton already had plenty of experience racing go-karts and jalopies, but he didn’t have an appropriate car for the programme, so he agreed to pay a $500 premium to use one provided by the school.

“Did i learn to drive? No. but i got to drive the first cobra ever made, which was worth the price”

This turned out to be a Cobra. And not just any Cobra. It was the first one ever built – CSX2000, still wearing the yellow paint that customiser Dean Jeffries had applied before the car’s debut at the New York Auto Show in April 1962. By the time Morton drove it, the car was in sad shape, and by the time he was finished with it, the engine had fatally overheated. (In 2016, CSX2000 sold at auction for $13.75 million.)

“Did I learn to drive at the school?” Morton asks rhetorically. “No. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I already knew what lines were and all that stuff. But I got to drive the first Cobra ever made, and that was worth the price of admission.”

While Morton was attending the school, the Shelby American team showed up for Billy Krause to test the first competition Cobra, which was being prepared for its debut in the upcoming Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside. Morton used the opportunity to ask Shelby for a job. A week later, he was pushing a broom at the Shelby American shop in Venice.

John Morton with his Datsun 510

John Morton was one of the school’s early graduates… kind of. Here in Trans-Am action with his Datsun 510

Coincidentally, both Morton and Brock later parted ways with Shelby on less-then-friendly terms. But after a few years on their own, the two of them got back together to campaign a car that was, in many respects, the anti-Cobra. Driving an agile Datsun 510 for Brock Racing Enterprises, Morton won back-to-back 2.5-litre Trans-Am titles in 1971 and 1972. Morton went on to a long career in prototypes and GTs. Now 79, he still races with verve. Brock retired from racing a long time ago, but he continues to build and sell the popular Aerovault, a lightweight enclosed trailer he designed using many of the aerodynamic tricks he once applied to the Daytona Coupé.

The Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving ended up being a footnote in their lives. But it put both of them on the road to bigger things.

×
Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
0

Carroll Shelby’s Legacy: From Cobra Icons to the 2025 Super Snake

Taken from Motor Sport online June 2023

Aston Martin is Great Britain’s most redoubtable and successful marque at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Its 24 pots of various kinds earned since its debut in 1929 includes three Rudge-Whitworth Biennial Cups, two Indices of Performance – all secured prior to 1951 – and 19 capacity class/category wins.Jaguar has won eight since 1950. Admittedly seven of those were awarded for outright victories on distance. Aston Martin has just one such success to its name: 1959.

Huddersfield transmission-and-tractor tycoon David Brown had tried 10 times to win with the company that he had bought for £20,500 in 1947: a quest resulting in three second places – in 1955, 1956 and 1958 – and much heartache.

Carroll Shelby at the wheel of his DBR1

Shelby at the wheel on his way to victory aboard the DBR1.

Getty Images

The cars that bore his name and initials were pretty and nimble but lacked the grunt required by this high-speed circuit. The (originally) 2.6-litre straight-six included in his £50k purchase of Lagonda in 1947 was, according to Stirling Moss, “pernickety”: “I was used to things coming past us.”

Hardly the stuff of Mulsanne Straight lore.

Though the race had come to it with the introduction of a 3-litre limit in 1958, and though the DBR1 that carried it was even prettier and nimbler than its predecessor, its main V12 rival still came sailing past. The same would be true in 1959. Despite 400rpm extra due to improved but unlovely aerodynamics — deeper, flared front wings; removable spats over the rear wheels; a tonneau across the passenger seat; and higher, more rounded rear bodywork – DBR1’s top speed was reckoned by some to be as much as 15mph shy of that of Ferrari’s Testa Rossa.

The pressure was on.

Carroll Shelby and Salvadori confer on the pit wall

Shelby and Salvadori confer on the pit wall while Parnell holds the trumpet to bark orders

Getty Images

“David [Brown] had made it very clear that this was possibly our last shot at it,” said chief designer Ted Cutting. “Not his last shot, you understand — ours.”

If Aston were to win, it would be by rigorous application of strategy and tactics formulated by shrewd general manager John Wyer and implemented via the loud hailer of respected team manager Reg Parnell.

The former was convinced that the Ferraris would fight among themselves. To make doubly sure he asked Moss to be his fox to the Prancing Horses.

“I was allowed to drive as hard as I could. I planned to take more out of myself than the car”

“I don’t think Stirling ever thought that he was going to finish that race,” said Cutting. “That wasn’t his job. There was a distinct feeling among us that the Ferraris had a flaw that season — overheating — and we wanted to take advantage of that.”

Moss begged to differ: “Wyer gave me carte blanche to drive as hard as I could while sticking to the rev limit; I planned to take more out of myself than the car. There’s nothing worse than loping around Le Mans. I wasn’t, though, planning on retiring.”

A broken valve sidelined him after five hours. He had done his utmost – bolting from the run-and-jump start – but even the sublime Moss had had to give best to a Jean Behra driving seemingly in a fury: the Aston gained another 350rpm in the stampeding Ferrari’s slipstream.

Running start, Stirling Moss made a superb getaway

The classic running start. Moss made a superb getaway

Getty Images

Wyer refused to panic, and wry smiles and knowing looks were exchanged – Moss was by now in his civvies on the pit wall – when the leading Ferrari pitted after 129 laps, its left-hand exhausts emitting smoke, its cockpit smeared with oil.

What was concerning, however, was that the remaining works Ferrari appeared to be wise to Wyer. Even when carburetion problems dropped Phil Hill/Olivier Gendebien from third place to eighth during the fourth hour, they, too, had refused to panic. The winners of 1958 recovered gradually as midnight came and went — and took the lead when Roy Salvadori pitted his Aston just before 2am because of a mysterious vibration.

“The mechanics could find nothing wrong,” said Salvadori. “I was told to carry on for several more laps until the car became eligible for refuelling [30 laps had to be completed between liquid ‘refreshments’]. By this time it was so bad that I thought the rear end was about to fall off, and I lapped at a crawl.”

Carroll Shelby with Salvadori. David Brown holds champagne

Shelby grabs a smoke at the race finish, with Salvadori catching a lift right behind. David Brown had a firm grip on the champagne.

Getty Images

He feared the usual gearbox issues – a DB product, embarrassingly – but in fact his right-rear Avon had lost a chunk of tread.

“Almost 2ft of it,” said Cutting, who had skipped the race in order to concentrate on Astons’ nascent Grand Prix car. “When finally they decided to have a proper look and took the spat off, it became clear that the tyre was ruined.”

Up to 15 minutes had been lost – but it could have been so much worse. Plus, a soothing Wyer told the fretful Salvadori, that final Testa Rossa would retire. Just stick to the plan.

Salvadori and co-driver Carroll Shelby drove as hard as they dared, but the fundamentally faster Ferrari continued to edge away — the Aston suffering a misfire at half-distance — and its lead at one point stretched to four laps.

“Carroll and I had the right mental approach,” said Salvadori. “We decided to put all our effort into late braking and fast cornering in order to save the engine and gearbox.”

The car, in fact, was healthier than its drivers: Roy, recovering from flu, was being increasingly hampered by a foot cooked by a rerouted exhaust; and Shelby, suffering the lingering effects of dysentery, was racing with a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue.

“If you did what Wyer asked, he’d never complain. but he was unforgiving if you didn’t listen”

“I’m not sure he knew what the problem was,” said Cutting of the heart problem that would cause Shelby to hang up his helmet at the end of 1960. “He probably thought he had indigestion. If he did know, he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t want to miss out on this golden opportunity.”

The endgame began not long after 11am. Gendebien, normally so mechanically minded, had missed his water temp creeping off the dial. Overheating V12 misfiring, he pitted and harassed mechanics increased the fuel pump’s pressure to strengthen the mixture. One more lap. No joy.

Next they poured water on the pump to cure potential vapour locks. Another lap. Still no joy. (One of the copper rings sealing a combustion chamber had burnt through.) Unable even to check the radiator’s level amid a 30-lap stint, retirement was forgone.

Aston Martin’s Carroll Shelby and Salvadori ably managed

Never fastest, still first: Aston Martin’s plan was to simply out-last the competition, which Shelby and Salvadori ably managed. Here Shelby heads past the pits with just minutes of the race to go

Getty Images

With team-mates Paul Frère/Maurice Trintignant now riding shotgun two laps down, Salvadori circulated 40sec slower than his earlier pace – oil usage was becoming a worry – and hopped out (literally) with two hours to go. He had driven for the maximum 14 hours permitted. His foot forever bore a scar to prove it.

The garrulous Shelby in his trademark pinstriped bib-and-braces — his “Arkansas dinner jacket”— and the buttoned-up, hawkish Wyer made for an odd couple, but they got on well and trusted each other.

“If you did what [Wyer] asked, whatever happened, he’d never complain,” said Shelby. “But he was unforgiving if you didn’t listen.”

This was no time to break that bond. The fastidiously briefed Shelby jumped in. And at 4pm most of the rest of the team – the besuited Brown perching between Salvadori and Moss — jumped on the parading victorious Aston.

×