Carroll Shelbys Whore side

My neighbors machines....He also has a 350 and a 500...all signed by Carroll Shelby.
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It has always been my contention that guys who had their original glove box doors devalued them by having Shelby sign them... Because the "unmolested by Shelby" ones are so much more rare!

 

Heck - BOTH! How cool would it be to have a car AND some chili to be named in honor of you???

BOSS, baby...BOSS!

 

Agreed! I love me some Omni GLH with a side of chili!!!

 

I owned a CSX. For the six months it ran well it was a blast.

Shelby has been raped by replica builders. Hard to see him as a whore.

 

You really do wonder how many are fake signatures. But, in his case, he is a true Shelby guy, knew the Shelby family growing up and is active in COCOA. He races his machines. He just raced at the Indy Vintage races and Fontana.

Not to worry though, his 2 Panoz racers are "unmolested by Dan Panoz"....

 

There was nothing pitiful about the Shelby Dodge cars produced in his Whittier Skunkworks. They were(and are) fast cars that handled well and returned great fuel economy.
I have owned quite a few of them(as well as a number of Ferraris) and still own an 86 Shelby GLHS. I have pictures of me leading my run group in the Porsche owner's club in my Shelby Dodge. It was no different than the legendary Shelby Fords in the sense that it was delivered incomplete by Chrysler to Shelby's facility and modified by his crew to become a Shelby. Mine is one of 500 built and has been tearing up auto-X's and track events for decades. Most recently it attended the SAAC national convention at Fontana Speedway and had no difficulty running in the fast group amongst Cobras, GT350, GT500s and the like. It is a great car. Mr Shelby himself transported my GLHS in the company 18 wheeler(along with GT40, Cobra and others) to his Terlingua Reunion Event. He commented on how the little GLHS was still his favorite of all the street cars he ever produced. I was honored that he signed my Dash.
Your comment to open this thread illustrates just how little you know about the man or his Shelby Dodges.
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I have so many stories to tell about the Aries K-Car my parents had. I think my father purchased it for my grandfather, but man was it ugly and crude. It whistled / whined when you started it up, and it did it until the car was warm. White with a red interior, just what an 18 year old needs when picking up chicks - only the AMC Gremlin (or maybe a Yugo) was cooler.

One of my favorite experiences with that car was the day I took it to Old Bridge Township Raceway Park (aka "Englishtown"). On Friday evenings, they would do a "run what ya brung" night, so I took my parents' white with red interior Dodge Aries K 2.2L WAGON (and my helmet) to the DRAG STRIP.

Mind you, I'm racing jacked up, border line street legal Mustangs, Camaros - I think there may have been a Grand National or 2 as well. Car ran somewhere around 22 seconds in the 1/4 mile, but I did win a race by cutting a better light and not breaking out (handicap racing on a dial in, not heads up).

You can imagine the snickers from the dudes in the stands, gambling $1.00 here and there. I cherish that memory - the car was SO terrible, so nerdy, so weird - that it ROCKED. The turbo minivan guy is my idol...that's ass kicking right there.

Looked something like this:
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Its not a stretch to imagine that at all-remember the 80s were dark times for performance. Ferrari did follow some legendary cars with the 308,Mondial 2vs-quite a step back from the glory days,eh? BTW, the Shelby GLHS had all of those Ferraris covered on the racetrack. It was faster, handled and stopped better-and returned far better economy-even though it did look like the box the Ferrari was delivered in.

 

That is what he would like you to think. If you do research on how much of the money from his charity actually did anything, I think you would be shocked.

 

Well, if they aren't step backs-then the Shelby GLHS must be legendary as they were faster on track than said Ferraris. He didn't dilute anything. He took what was available at the time and did exactly what he said he'd do-build reasonably priced Shelbys that would outperform the high priced marques on the track. Another infamous test pitted the GT350 against the GLHS-the GLHS was faster.

 

the test
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Back in the day, with a little tickering, the GLHS put out almost 200 HP. The 0-60 was 6.5 vs the Mondials 6.8. Not bad for a little box from a struggling company.

Rumor has it, GLH stood for "Goes like Hell and GLHS is "Goes Like Hell S'More".

 

Relevant to your interests:

 

You are correct about them being legendary for the simple fact that they broke the mold of the attitude that surrounded compacts in that day and age and even today.

Bash the car not the legendary Carroll Shelby.

 

You can say same for Porsches 912 & Cayenne
AM's little Toyota turd
Ferrari California

Etc, etc, etc

 

I think if you frame the GLHS like the earlier Sunbeam Talbot Lotus it looks better.

 

That's not a rumor, that saying is straight from the man's mouth.

 

Show me any "charity" that really does anything with the money it gets. They are all shell games. Trashing "Carrol Shelby, as the original poster did, gains nothing. Carrol did more for racing and car guys then 100 others of the same era. So what if Chrysler wanted one of the best car guys to help them out in a pinch, he helped them sell cars. A hell of a nice guy. Was Enzo that way?

 

I never thought of him as a hell of a nice guy. He did some amazing things behind the wheel, made some great cars and built championship winning teams. The guy got results. He also let his reputation get him in over his head and let his company get away with some shady business practices for a long, long time. I don't know if it was him driving those practices or not but his name was on the company and he was still involved so I have a tough time separating the two. My thoughts are beyond the GLH/GLHS cars, and have more to do with the way he treated people that he did business with.

 

I don't get the point in trashing Shelby. The list of people we can trash that ran companies is very long. From Steve Jobs, Bill Gates to J.P Morgan, Blankfein, to Henry Ford, DeLorean, to Boyd Coddington to Martha Stewart. The list is endless.

I know many COCOA members that knew him well and look on the brigher side and his legacy. Time to let this one go...why beat up a legend at this point in time.