Shelby American, Inc is an American motor company founded by the late Carroll Shelby in 1962. In 1965 Shelby helped and built the first car they would make with ford, the 1965 Shelby GT350, which had instant success on the track. Shelby would develop their car, the car that would be a success amount the sports car crowd, the legendary the Shelby Cobra or AC Cobra because they would barrow a few chassis and body frames from AC.

Shelby would not just focus on their cars but would work with the Ford Motor Company to make a performance Ford Mustang called the 1965 Shelby GT350 and later the 1967 Shelby GT500, which were an apparent success. The Shelby GT350 has a 289 cubic inch V8 4 barrel carburetor and had 360 horsepower. In contrast, the GT500 would have a 428 cubic inch V8 and has another engine option, a 428 cubic inch V8 Cobra Jet and the car had 355 horsepower. For the year the vehicle was created, a lot of horsepower would be handling behind the wheel of that car.

In 1965 Shelby and Ford would partner to win at the race of all races, Le Mans. Ford and Shelby would not win a race till 1966 with their GT40’s that they partnered with each other to succeed. When they went to Le Mans, they brought Professional drivers like Ken Miles and Bruce McLaren, yes the McLaren we all know drove Ford before making his car brand, and Ken Miles would test the later Ford GT, but sadly died during the tests due to breaking failure. The partnership would later end in 1969 and would not partner till 2005.

Sadly, we lost Shelby’s founder, but Ford Motors is partially in control of the company today, making new GT350s and trucks like the Ford Raptor and the F-150 Super Snake. I think the Shelby Motor Co. is in good hands because its partnership is legendary since it started.

Fun fact one of my favorite Shelby cars was the Shelby Daytona because the story goes that when they were making the car, they had a professional in aerodynamics come and look at the vehicle. He said it was not going to go fast due to drag, but they did not listen to him and had the idea of putting yarn all over the car to see if the air is flowing smoothly, and they had Ken Miles go for the test drive, and it went faster than they thought.