Carroll Shelby

[daveh]

Carroll Shelby of car fame died a few days ago. The best known of his cars over here was probably the AC Cobra.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Shelby

[grenouille]

As a student, the AC Cobra was my dream, after 50 years it still stayed as a dream. I remembered at that time someone with a Tojero, it did resemble a tame Cobra.

Hye

[Steeler Fan]

May 15, 2012 4:47:05 GMT -5 daveh said:

Carroll Shelby of car fame died a few days ago. The best known of his cars over here was probably the AC Cobra.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Shelby

The car world has lost a great man. Not only was he a genius as far as car design he had a great financial mind also. I read a story that at the time the Cobra was being made he registered extra frames, getting them VINs. Then years later he was able to sell them as original 60's Cobras.

[Deleted]

I rode in an AC Cobra (the 289 cu. inch model) They wouldn't let me drive it. But the drive scared me to death. It was one of two times I went 150 mph in a car. The other was in a Sumbeam Tiger (Sunbeam with the 260 cu. inch Ford V8--I actually got to drive it).

Shelby tried the 289 cu. in. GT 40 (used a Lola body) at Le Mans but the engine was stretched too far to be reliable. Later GT 40s had the 427 cu. Inch Ford. With the 427, Ford won Le Mans four years in a row 1966-'69--finished 1 2 3 in 1966. Allegedly Enzo Ferrari used his clout to ban the big block Ford. And ended the GT40s dominance.

[Randy]

We discussed Shelby passing on my other forum, I was really surprised to see it here. He was the worlds' longest living heart transplant recipient. Closest I ever got was an Austin Healy with a engine kit that had a 289 Hi Po and a Borg Warner T-10.

[daveh]

He was the worlds' longest living heart transplant recipient.

His transplant gave him pretty much a normal life span, but he wasn't the longest living. At the back of my mind I remembered someone in the news a couple of years ago who "held the record", so I looked it up - Tony Heusman, 31 years transplanted. He died of cancer in his early fifties. There are certainly some still alive who received theirs before Shelby his, but information is a little sketchy

[Randy]

Says 32 years on ESPN...I don't write the stories, I just read them.

[daveh]

Randy,

That's the trouble with the news and the internet. We can only believe what someone else tells us and we rely on that information being accurate. Even multiple accounts do not necessarily point to the truth as each account can be based on one false report. Having now looked up several sources it would seem that someone at ESPN isn't too good at maths. The Carroll Shelby timeline at www.carrollshelby.com/#/1990-2004 gives the date for his transplant as June 1990 i.e. 22 years, all but a month.

Dave.

[Berndt]

Beautiful cars ... legends ... I wish, I would have had the chance to drive one of those.

[nikkortorokkor]

My own nugget of info, which I hope is a fact rather than an ESPN-type factoid, is that Caroll Shelby 'couldn't understand' the public's obsession with the Cobra versus the Tiger, with the latter being, in his eyes, the all-round better (practical) car.

Actually, I think he knew full-well why the public loved the Cobra - hence the extra frames he registered as per the story above. His comment, if he truly did make it, is more a musing on our taste for the irrational. Who wants a practical male status symbol? It's really a bit of an oxymoron, isn't it.

The AC Cobra was arguably the world's first supercar, with all the silliness that implies. The Tiger, on the other hand, with its Grand-Tourer roots, remained a car one could (if very lucky) drive down to Monte Carlo with girlfriend, luggage and camera (a Leica, of course) safely stowed.

Sadly, unlike Wayne, I can speak only theoretically about the merits of a Cobra versus a Tiger. But dreams are, indeed, free; so lets all our favorite deity that we had Caroll Shelby to fire up those dreams for as long as we did.

[Deleted]

When the Tiger came out you could by one for less than $4,000. Today it's hard to touch one for less than $80,000 (restored). It was one of the few cars an "average" person could buy off a showroom floor that could be blown up in high gear. The Tiger wasn't around too long. Chrysler bought Roots, the U.K. company that made it. The Chrysler people couldn't stand selling a car with a Ford engine and they didn't have s suitable powerplant so they stopped production.

[daveh]

The AC Cobra was arguably the world's first supercar

I would certainly argue with that. Even ignoring all earlier makes, the Jaguar E-type surely beats the AC Cobra to the supercar title (not that I was the biggest fan of the E-type).

[Deleted]

Dave. You are probably right but the Cobra would beat the Jag in a physical match up.

[daveh]

Wayne, the AC Cobra was faster, but I'm not sure what that actually proves. Th D-type Jaguar was probably faster than both in their first configurations. However, my point was that supercars started well before the AC Cobra and it was just that the E-type was of a similar era, though beating the AC Cobra to the market place by a few months. I bet ThrustSSC beats them all over a measured mile - by about 1,075 mph.

[nikkortorokkor]

Dave, it is inevitable that we're going to argue over a term as imprecisely referenced as 'supercar'. I thought that we were really both being anachronistic, as I was sure it was a very late-sixties word which really came into vogue in the 70s. Well, Wikipedia came to the rescue, and traced a far older etymology:
'An advertisement for the Ensign Six, a 6.7 L (410 cu in) high-performance car similar to the Bentley Speed Six, appeared in The Times for 11 November 1920 with the phrase "If you are interested in a supercar, you cannot afford to ignore the claims of the Ensign 6."'

Also, in the US, supercar predated the term musclecar, to describe the big engine, mid-sized car so beloved by some gentlemen here.

But I think it is fair to say that supercar had, by the late seventies, come to mean something reasonably specific:
'During the late 20th century, the term supercar was used to describe "a very expensive, fast or powerful car with a centrally located engine", and stated in more general terms: "it must be very fast, with sporting handling to match", "it should be sleek and eye-catching" and its price should be "one in a rarefied atmosphere of its own".'

The D-type is clearly not a supercar because it is something else - a sports racing car. Likewise, Thrust SSC is a record-breaker. I'd also argue that the E-type was not a supercar for two vital reasons: firstly, it was 'affordable' and secondly, like the Tiger, it was 'practical'. As has been pointed out by the irreverent trio on Top Gear, as well as many motoring books, while not cheap, E-types were not out-of-reach exorbitant. They were giant-killers which achieved huge popularity. In short, they were too successful (and good) to be true supercars.

Just a thought.

Michael.