Shelby Cobra's need for speed

last updated 8 January 2015

Carroll Shelby is a lucky man, said Jon Wilde in Men’s Journal. The 88-year-old former auto racer and designer—most famously of the Shelby Cobra, which he designed for Ford in the 1960s—came to his love of automobiles in a roundabout way. “I got out of the Air Force in 1945 and kept trying to go into business—trucking, chickens, ready-mix cement,” he says. “Finally a friend from high school had an old MG, and he says, ‘Let’s go to a car race.’ I raced it and I won. I was driving home that night and said, ‘This may not be a way to make a living, but this is what I’ve always wanted.’”

He raced professionally in the 1950s before turning to designing. The Cobra was at one time the world’s fastest production car. “My brand is to build ass-kickers,” he says. Speed, he admits with a grin, has brought him near death “a helluva lot of times.” The most frightened he’s ever been? “Sitting upside down at 125 mph, waiting for my head to hit the concrete. All you can do is yell, ‘Oh, s---!’ and wonder how bad it’s going to hurt. Happened a couple of times.’’ It was enough to put the fear of God in him. “I know there’s something stronger than we are that’s put this thing together,” he says.