Carroll Shelby: 1923–2012
Few men have made more of an impact on American motorsports. I never met him, but like a lot of people, I feel like I did.
By Sam Smith May 14, 2012 4:07AM
The old saw holds that celebrity deaths come in threes. Perhaps. This month, the list is a bit longer. Adam Yauch. Maurice Sendak. Donald "Duck" Dunn. And, of course, Carroll Shelby. I don't like this. It's a given that all your heroes eventually pass, but I can't take so much of it happening in the same month. If Chuck Berry, Dan Gurney, and Pete Townshend go in the next two weeks, I'm moving to a cave in Montana and not coming out.
Still, Shelby? To be honest -- and I say this grateful for every day he walked the earth -- I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. America's most famous independent carmaker and one-time chicken farmer famously suffered from health problems as long ago as the 1950s, most famously when he won Le Mans in an Aston Martin with nitroglycerin pills under his tongue. The heart transplant he received 22 years ago served him well; he was one of the longest-lived American recipients of the procedure, and he managed to cram a surprising amount of life and exposure into the additional time it gave him.
To borrow and distort an old line, Carroll Shelby was a hell of a thing. If you know anything about him, anything at all, I don't need to explain why he was important. If you don't, the past few days have produced a lot of obituaries, and I suggest you read at least one of them. (Start with Autoweek and The New York Times. Then move on to this and this.)
This isn't an obituary. This is just me remembering.
Like most people, I never met Shelby. In my business, this is something of an embarrassment. The man was an industry stalwart for decades; he popped up at vehicle launches, auto shows and races almost constantly, and his involvement in the development of countless production cars meant that one manufacturer or another seemed always to be trotting him out for interviews. To miss him was to be either a newcomer or just plain unlucky.
I've been writing about cars for roughly a decade, and I consider myself very lucky -- I mean, I get to play with cars for a living -- so both of those terms are relative. But I do wish I'd met him. Not because he was perfect or a genius or anything like that. He was a living connection to one of the nation's greatest speed eras, an American story better than half of what you find in books. Like David E. Davis, his public persona had a hint of caricature -- I'm reminded of David E.'s line about people who are actors playing themselves -- but it wasn't fabricated or a put-on, it was just Shelby being Shelby. This is the man who, by his own admission, was a salesman above all. And I mean that as a compliment.
Shelby's accomplishments are legend, and the big ones are the ones that everyone remembers. In the 1960s, he helped Ford win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, developed the ubiquitous Cobra and helped develop the Ford GT40, and launched a series of Ford street cars that continues, in one form or another, to this day. He had his fingers in the muscle-car wars of the Trans-Am. A decade earlier, he won Le Mans at the wheel of an Aston Martin (1959) and turned down an opportunity to drive for Ferrari (what Enzo Ferrari called a "great honor," when Shelby asked him why the gig didn't pay more) because, as he put it, honor didn't pay the rent.
It didn't stop there. In the 1980s, he collaborated on a series of street cars with Chrysler, giving the world the "Goes Like Hell" moniker (on the Dodge Omni GLH) and "Goes Like Hell Some-More" (the Dodge Omni GLH-S). Later, he served as consultant on the first Dodge Viper, a car that many people saw as the reincarnation of the Cobra. A Dodge engineer once told me that Shelby did little on the Viper save signing off on the idea and how the car drove, but it doesn't matter -- marketing was his talent, and he knew the weight his name carried. More importantly, every Viper since has felt like a Shelby -- raw, fast and a little unhinged.
As with a lot of great people, you remember Shelby's resume not because of the accomplishments, but because everything just seemed to fit his personality. Unlike a lot of legends, Shelby always seemed approachable -- watching him in movies or on YouTube, you get the feeling that if you went out to lunch with him, he'd tell you stories. Maybe that's true, maybe not. The feeling is all that matters.
Most of all, I keep coming back to what the Cobra and Le Mans meant to this country. After years of Continental dominance, an American built and sold something that swallowed European sports cars whole. He took Detroit's oldest carmaker to the world's greatest road race, against some of the strongest talent on the planet, and won the thing outright. He and his people reminded us that cool things happen only if you get off your ass. That sometimes, you just have to surround yourself with brains, ask the right questions, and push to make the right stuff happen.
Thanks, Carroll. For everything.
Sam Smith is a journalist, a southerner, and a reformed Alfa Romeo mechanic who spends most of his time mooning over ancient racing cars and small-batch bourbon. A multiple International Automotive Media award-winner, he has written for Automobile Magazine, Car and Driver, and Esquire, among other publications. He once drove 4,000 miles in a weekend for a hamburger and has only been threatened by the German police twice.
Sam Smith is a journalist, a southerner, and a reformed Alfa Romeo mechanic who spends most of his time mooning over ancient racing cars and small-batch bourbon. A multiple International Automotive Media award-winner, he has written for Automobile Magazine, Car and Driver, and Esquire, among other publications. He once drove 4,000 miles in a weekend for a hamburger and has only been threatened by the German police twice.
5Comments
May 14, 2012 7:11AM
May 14, 2012 11:39AM
Sam Smith forgot to mention in his article Levon Helm from The Band as the fourth. I wish I had a GT500 to take out for some tire burning. For those not fimilar with Donald Duck Dunn a studio musician who changed the face of blues with Booker T and the MG's. Plus played with Clapton, Dylan, Young and Blues Brothers.
All will be missed...
May 14, 2012 7:02AM
May 18, 2012 1:07PM
May 18, 2012 8:03PM
Mr. Shelby contributed to the world of automobiles the same way Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, Rembrandt, etc. have contributed to the world of art. Thank you Mr. Shelby. I loved and admired your work. I just wish you could have done a Corvette series like you did for Mustang. But that's okay. Mustang needed the help. (LOL! Just kidding)
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