Mustangs and Tigers and Cobras and Dares: 'All I wanted to do was beat the Corvette,' legend says.

SARATOGA SPRINGS – His name is Shelby.
Carroll Hall Shelby was born on January 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas. Among car enthusiasts, he is a living legend. To the general public, his name may be something of a mystery.

The achievements of Carroll Shelby, however, lie in the revving of engines between the coolest of cars and the fastest races.
On a cold and snowy Wednesday night, Shelby charmed 400 automobile enthusiasts at the Saratoga Automobile Museum, many of whom came armed with cameras to record the evening.

They paid $50 apiece to hear Shelby reminisce about his career as a race car driver, and as a builder of some of the racing world's most memorable cars.

The man who has spent the past half-century in the race car industry came to town by airplane. The method of travel is not as strange as it sounds.

'Ever since I was three years old, there have been three things I cared about: airplanes, automobiles and locomotives,' said Shelby, who celebrated his 82nd birthday last week. The museum's galleries showcased some of the more popular cars with which Shelby has been associated.

A white 1964 Ford Shelby Mustang sat along one wall, a bright red 1966 Sunbeam Tiger sat across the room on another. Next to it were a bright yellow 1967 Ford and a 1966 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe - one of six of its kind in the world - and with an unusual history.

'That car there,' Shelby said, 'I sold to a nut case named Phil Spector.' He described how Spector, a renowned record producer in the 1960s, got so many speeding tickets driving the sleek and sharp-looking car that he eventually had to sell it to an associate, who gave it
to his daughter, after which it was stored away in a garage.
It remained hidden for decades. The value today is $4 million.

Moderating Shelby's discussion were Brock Yates, editor-at-large for Car and Driver Magazine, and Ken Gross, whose duties as auto editor have graced the inside pages of Playboy Magazine for 16 years.

Shelby served as a flight instructor and test pilot during World War II. He returned home to Texas and began a series of unfortunate ventures as a dump truck entrepreneur, an oilfield roughneck and a chicken farmer until turning his passionate racing hobby into a successful career as a driver in the 1950s.
Health reasons forced Shelby to retire from driving and the renaissance man of the automotive industry was born.

'My real ambition was to build my own race car,' he told the crowd at the museum, and set clear goals to beat the competition.
His name marks the vehicles he created, the Shelby Cobra and Shelby Mustangs, achievements that made him a household name as a manufacturer both of racing and road cars in the 1960s.

He told the crowd assembled at the museum that the road to creation of the vehicles began with a simple question in which he challenged himself.

'All I wanted to do was to beat the Corvette," said Shelby. "And we did that." After that he set his sights on the Ferrari, in the process speeding down the road of immortals.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
Published in The Saratogian, Jan. 20, 2005