Shelby | Shelby |
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| Friday, 17 November 2006 | ||||
      
 Many have said that Carroll Shelby was the greatest single influence on America’s racing posture in the post-1945 period.
He refurbished the image of American road-racers in Europe and with no engineering background, he created a race car which ended Ferrari’s domination of the World’s Manufacturing Championship. 1962 - Carroll Shelby creates the first Cobra In 1962 he created the legendary 289 Cobra that sent every other race car into oblivion. Cobras became synonymous with winning in SCCA competition and giving the Ferrari fits in GT class in international competition. Simply put the Shelby Cobra is an American original. Bred on the race tracks of the world and proven on the streets. In 1965, Shelby Mustang made its debut sparking a significant battle by Detroit for horsepower and bravado, the first “Pony War" was set. Over the years Shelby Automobiles has seen many iterations of performance including the fast and nimble Series 1 and involvement in the Dodge Viper, the Ford Cobra Concept and Daytona-inspired GR-1 concept. In 1964, Carroll Shelby was asked to enhance the performance of the new Ford Mustang, and the legendary GT350 was born. Initially just for racing, the 1965 GT350 R Model began its dominance on American racing circuits and making a name for itself by winning the SCCA B production championship in 1965, 1966 and 1967. Ford wanted to put a version on the street known as the GT350 The GT350 was essentially a de-tuned and reworked R Model and it catapulted Mustang into the world of high performance. It became one of the most popular and recognizable brands in the automotive industry. The performance evolution continued with the famed king of the road, the GT500. For several years production continued and in 1969 Carroll and Ford went their separate ways. Ford evolved the Shelby program into the Boss 302 and Mach 1 Mustangs of the early '70s. Then in 2004 Carroll Shelby and the Ford Motor Company renewed relations. Ford's GT felt the influence of Shelby, and Ford built prototypes for the new Cobra and the Daytona Coupe-styled GR-1 based on the GT chassis. Shelby built a prototype Expedition as well. 2005 - Carroll Shelby introduces the '07 GT500. Today Ford and Shelby are working together on Mustang projects again. The new Shelby GT500 will be hitting the market in the summer of 2006. We were the first to tune Mustangs and with the great new 2005 and later versions you will be able to get a host of authentic performance and accessories from Shelby Automobiles again. We have everything to make your pony run, stop and look like a REAL Shelby. Shelby is about performance. We offer many performance upgrades including the 350+ horsepower supercharger package for 6-cylinder Mustangs to over 500 at the rear wheels for our V8 supercharger packages; Signature Borla exhaust systems, Shelby branded brake kits and much more. If looking cool is in the cards we offer several different components including our new hoods, fascias and our unique Shelby American Racing wheels. Each component comes with a certificate of authenticity, our way of making sure you know Shelby is behind the products we sell. We test and abuse every component before it shows up. Located at the phenomenal Las Vegas Speedway we have the advantage of testing the latest components in our back yard. Carroll Shelby ended his illustrious racing career in 1960 and was looking for an opportunity to stay with the thing he loved most, cars. He found out that AC Motorcars of England was having trouble with their engine supplier and he knew Ford was developing a new V8 260 c.i.d. engine, so in 1962 he put the two together and created the Cobra. After a few were built Ford completed the 289 V8 and Shelby switched to the bigger engine after building 25 cars and began his race team. Later a more aerodynamic version, the Cobra Daytona Coupe, would beat Ferrari on the European tracks and win America its first and only FIA World Manufacturer's Championship in 1965. Never satisfied with the performance of the 289, the Shelby team developed a larger engine bay design and inserted Ford's 427 c.i.d. V8 engine to create the legendary CSX3000-series Cobra 427 S/C. The Cobra officially went out of production in 1967 as Shelby's attention was diverted to other projects like the Mustang GT350 and GT500. The Cobra became the most replicated design in automotive history with literally hundreds of companies capitalizing on the tremendous popularity of the design. Later when Carroll asked some of them for a small percentage to be donated to his Children's Foundation he was turned down and decided to get back into the Cobra business again. Carroll had long dreamt of having a manufacturing facility near a track where his products could be put to the test during development, and in 1995 he found it at the newly-built Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Shelby American began production of the new line of 427 S/C Cobras, the CSX4000-series, and later branched out to include the 289 FIA (CSX7000-series), the 289 Street (CSX8000-series), and a few special-edition production Cobras. In 2003 Carroll started building the CSX1000-series aluminum body Cobras again. That same year Carroll took the company public (NASDAQ: CSBI) and created Shelby Automobiles, as we're known today. Source: Shelby Views: 22119
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