All language subtitles for Shelby.American.The.Carroll.Shelby

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[Shelby] Perseverance is
the most important thing in life.

Believe in what you want to do
and go do that,

and don't let anybody sidetrack you.

[announcer speaking indistinctly]

[engine revving]

[announcer] The 1959 Le Mans race
one lap out,

Moss on the Aston leads the two Ferraris

of Gendebien and da Silva Ramos.

And Shelby rides again.

The tall man from Texas is in the saddle.

[engine revving]

Through the long night they drive,

in a solitary high-speed world of sound,

broken only by routine stops to refuel.

[Shelby] Twenty-four hours is a long time.

So it's a lot of luck.

[vehicle rumbling]

[Shelby] First pains I had in my chest,

and I knew something was wrong.

[Baime] This is Le Mans,
the biggest race on the planet,

the most grueling race on Earth,

and Shelby has this condition
that's a secret even from his team,

that he could literally die at any moment.

[announcer]
The leader returns to the race.

[Shelby] I was forced to drive
with a nitroglycerin pill.

When I would have the pain in my chest,

I'd pop one of them
and slow down for a couple laps.

[Baime] As we get deeper
into the 24-hour race,

Shelby's heart condition is getting worse.

If the danger of the race
doesn't do him in,

his own heart might.

[light music playing]

[Shelby]
I was raised as a Southern Baptist.

Boy, I wasn't allowed
to drink a Coca-Cola.

I was only allowed to drink
water and milk on Sunday.

My father was a rural mail carrier
that drove pretty fast,

and I remember when I was three years old,

I'd stand up and I'd say, "Whip it,"

and he did, and I would say,
"Let's go faster, Dad.

Let's go faster, Dad."

I've been interested
in racing all my life.

When I was very small,

my father used to carry me
to all the races.

He was interested in them.

The only automobile racing
we had was on the half-mile dirt tracks.

That was back during the Depression.

He was encouraged in this
by his early life,

and he said he always enjoyed that speed.

I think he liked to go fast.

It was something that was on the edge,
and he liked to be on the edge.

[Shelby] I got my driver's license
at 14 years old,

and the first thing I do
is take my dad's '34 Dodge out

and get caught by the cop
for driving 85 miles an hour.

[Baime] Shelby grew up
during the Great Depression,

so he was used to life being tough,

but when he gets to be a teenager,

the world faces the biggest challenge
that it ever has.

[mid-tempo piano music playing]

[Baime] World War II had begun.

[gunfire]

[explosions]

[Baime] After graduating from Woodrow
Wilson High School in Dallas, he enlisted.

Young and fearless,
he wanted to go fight the Nazis.

[military drill music playing]

[Randall] As far as his involvement
with World War II,

he was a member of the Army Air Corps
back in World War II.

He was training other pilots.

Carroll loved speed, and whether
it's in a car or an airplane,

he just loved speed.

He loved flying
as much as he loved racing.

[Baime] He was born loving
anything that went fast.

The Army also saw that he was
a pretty good leader.

The Army recognized
Shelby's greatest skills

and utilized both of them.

After World War II was over,

Carroll married his high school sweetheart
Jeanne and started a family.

This was life-changing
in more ways than one.

For the first time in his life,
Carroll Shelby raced a car.

[Shelby] I had a high school friend
named Ed Wilkins.

We built a go-kart
with a Maytag washing machine engine

when we were
in junior high school together.

And the first race car
I ever drove in my life

in an organized race was his MG.

It was in Norman, Oklahoma.
It was in a little MG TC.

[upbeat race music playing]

I won that race,

and I went to another race
in Oklahoma and drove a Jaguar

and won that race,

and a friend of mine
had an Allard with a Cadillac engine,

and I started driving his car

and won three or four races in it.

[Aaron] I think he realized then
there was something to it.

He didn't make the money back then

that you could make racing cars
today, obviously.

It was not very lucrative
from a salary perspective,

but he was good at it.

[Patrick] I don't think my dad
ever had a real job.

It was just
one entrepreneurial aspect after another.

He got in the dump truck business,
gravel trucks,

and then the last thing he did
was the chicken farm.

[Shelby] I was vaccinating my chickens,
and my wife called me and said,

"You're supposed to be
in Fort Worth, Texas.

The race starts in an hour and a half."

I jumped in my pickup truck;
I didn't have time to change.

I got to Fort Worth
just in time to start the race.

[indistinct chatter]

I won it in these overalls,
and they put pictures of me

on the front page of the Fort Worth Press.

I thought, "Hey, this is pretty good."

[Aaron] Chicken overalls was a win
to start with,

but he realized it gave him a brand.

He really, I think,
then continued to do that,

and it built his persona.

And it didn't take
but about another year or so

for a couple other rich guys
that had cars to call him up and say,

"Hey, we want you to drive our car."

His progression was
very astounding on how fast it happened,

but that was due to his aggressiveness.

He could sell anything in the world.

He sold his racing
to whoever could afford it.

[announcer] A 4.5-liter Ferrari is
the entry of Guiberson.

Carroll Shelby is the driver.

[Baime] Shelby's winning on the track
was equaled by his success on the farm.

His first batch of chickens
had netted him nearly $5,000,

a tidy sum for that day.

He thought he was on the road to riches.

[Shelby]
I was stickin' a needle in these chickens

to keep 'em from getting
Newcastle disease.

All the chickens died eventually,
and I went broke.

[Baime] Shelby lost 20,000 birds
over a two-day period.

He was instantly bankrupt.

[Michael] There was probably one or two
little survivors poking their heads out

but not a going business at that point.

It was... they were all dead.

[Shelby]
Growing up in east Texas as a kid,

very poor circumstances,

living through the Depression,

you realize the world
turns upside-down every day

on somebody that was on top of it.

He didn't really know what he was gonna do
from day in and day out.

Particularly
after the chicken business went under,

that was a big, big shift for him,

and he was struggling
to find something else to do.

I think he had learned,
at that point in time,

that he wasn't gonna work
for somebody else.

That wasn't really his personality.

He needed to find something
that he could do on his own.

[Shelby] I'd always wanted
to be a racing driver.

I was 29 years old, and I said,

"To hell with it,
I'm going out and do that."

[Baime] Racing came naturally to Shelby.

In 1953, he raced nine times.

He won five races and was second twice.

[announcer] Watch car number 20
take the curve on the inside

and leave the others behind.

That's Carroll Shelby,

and that bit of driving
sends him to the front.

[Patrick]
My dad never made much money racing,

and he knew that it was
the way it was gonna be.

It was lean.

Nobody thought back then
of themselves as being poor.

You just didn't have any money that week.

One time, he brought home a pickup truck

full of canned beans that
we lived on for a long time.

But when he started racing,
he found out he's good,

so that's when he decided that
he would make a name for himself

and then use that name
to go develop other things.

[Baime] Shelby wanted to parlay
winning on the track

into a bankable enterprise off the track,

and by 1954, it was paying off.

He was attracting the interest
of the biggest players in the world.

[Aaron] He wound up, in 1954,
going over to Europe for the first time,

and raced with Aston Martin at Le Mans.

[uplifting music playing]

He started winning races,
and he really made a name for himself.

There was never really a question of,
"Could he win the race?"

It was like, "Well, if he didn't win,
then the car must've broke."

[Michael] And when they said
you could go to Argentina,

I mean, I think he turned
Heaven and Earth up

to figure out how to get
a plane ticket down there.

Then he came back, and he went to Mexico.

[Shelby] Mexican road race in 1954,

I was driving Austin-Healey.

Panamericana was probably
the greatest road race that's ever been.

Started at the Guatemalan border
and wound up in Juarez.

It was a couple of thousand miles,

and nobody could learn
the course completely.

[Baime] This race paid over $117,000

with a big chunk of that
going to the winner.

Shelby knew a win here
would take care of his family for years.

The Carrera Panamericana
had to offer huge prize money

because it was one
of the most dangerous races in the world.

Nine drivers
were killed the previous year.

[Shelby]
Actually, I was going along pretty good.

I was keeping up with the Ferrari's

and ahead of all the Lincolns in this
little four-cylinder Austin-Healey,

and I screwed up.

[somber music playing]

[Aaron] The car flipped over.

Cars could not withstand sudden stops.

Fatalities would happen.

[Michael]
No seatbelts in that point in time,

so he was thrown out of the car.

[Shelby]
I hit so hard, and the hickory handle,

the knockoff handle, broke my elbow

and chopped up a little bit.

Racing was easily the most dangerous sport
in the world at that time.

[Baime]
Shelby knew the danger of the sport.

He'd lost many friends already,
but racing was in his blood.

The sport killed a lot of drivers
for far too many years.

Every year, you would accept

maybe one in four drivers
to have a huge accident

and some of them to die.

[Shelby] The Grand Prix, as a circuit,
I think they lost half of the stars

of the racing here
in the United States that year,

and it was not uncommon for us to lose

four or five drivers a year
back in the '50s.

[Jones] Fire is racing's worst enemy,

but you gotta keep goin',

hope like heck some of that stuff
don't happen to you.

[Laban] The one group of people
who just accepted it

as part of the job
were the drivers themselves.

[interviewer]
But is it scary enough to stop driving?

[Shelby]
No, I won the next race at Riverside.

-[engines revving]
-[action music playing]

[Randall] After breaking his arm,
he used to drive with a cast on

and tape his arm to the wheel
so he could have good grip.

That shows his true grit,
that he'd have the broken arm

and still continue.

[announcer] The starter unfurls
the checkered flag,

and at the finish, it's Carroll Shelby

blazing past, the winner
of the Torrey Pines feature.

Carroll Shelby pushes his Ferrari
and is showing the way.

Ten laps remaining,
the drivers increase the tempo

and push their cars
to the limit of man and machine.

[Chance] Drove big 4.9 Ferraris

and he drove giant 5.7 Maseratis,

and he drove the Birdcages,

and he won, and he won, and he won.

[rhythmic drumbeats]

[Chance] And he wore his bib overalls,
and he was a showman.

There was an article
in one of the London papers

that talked about the ten-gallon hat man

coming over to challenge the stars.

And here was this big man
with his Stetson hat on,

I mean, he looked every inch

the big man in the desert
hunting out the baddies,

and everybody sort of was impressed

with the way he drove.

[Shelby] To win, you've got to have
a perfect mental attitude every time.

When you go to a race,
if you're not mentally up for it,

you're not going to win
no matter what car you have.

[Baime] From 1955 to 1957,
Shelby drove in 81 races.

He came in first place over half the time.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Baime] He won Sports Illustrated's
Driver of the Year Award twice.

As a driver, he was considered
one of the best to ever compete.

[Chance] He's the most underestimated
winning driver,

both in terms of European fans
and American fans, in my view.

He's the most underrated driver.

[Baime] Shelby raced all over the world,

winning wherever he went,

but racing in Europe for him
meant something different.

He was studying the cars.

[Shelby] The reason I wanted
to go to Europe

was because I wanted to learn
how Ferrari, Maserati,

Aston Martin, all those teams
built their cars

and ran a little automobile company.

[Laban]
Carroll Shelby made two trips to Ferrari

in the mid-1950s,
essentially as a customer.

[Baime] Shelby and a partner started
a business with the idea of importing

the most successful
European sports cars of that time.

So of course he wanted
to include Ferraris,

which had dominated
the global racing scene for a decade.

Both times,
Enzo Ferrari treated Shelby like dirt.

I think Carroll watched
Enzo Ferrari pretty closely,

and I think he learned a lot from that.

He may not have
particularly got on with Enzo.

When it came to Ferraris,
though, Dad was never a big fan.

Enzo wanted nothing to do with him.

I don't think he liked the cowboy hat
and the overalls and stuff.

He didn't understand that, Enzo didn't.

So, Carroll Shelby told Ferrari
that one day...

he'd come back and kick his ass.

[Baime]
Shelby wouldn't have to wait that long

to go to battle with Ferrari.

At the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans,

the biggest race in the world,

Shelby's driving an Aston Martin,

and he's battling with Ferrari
for the outright lead in the race.

[Patrick] And it was during the night,

Dad just methodically started moving up.

He certainly wasn't
the fastest on the track,

just plugging along kind of like
a tortoise and the hare.

[announcer] Shelby now drives Aston #5
through the esses.

And with eight hours still to go,

Ferrari #14 leads Aston Martin #5
by three laps.

Shelby is battling with Ferrari

in the greatest, most grueling
24-hour race in the world,

and he's about to score
the biggest victory of his life.

As he speeds his green Aston Martin

around the eight-and-a-half-mile circuit,
his heart is starting to fail.

The pain is excruciating.

[Shelby]
I knew that I had hereditary problems,

and my father died
at 46 years old with it,

so I figured there was nothing
that could be done.

[Baime] The pain grew so great,

Shelby would sometimes
double over in agony.

The only relief is temporary

and came in the form
of nitroglycerin pills,

which he'd place
under his tongue as he drove.

By doing this, he was somehow able
to continue racing for hours on end.

Shelby and Salvadori
kept the pressure on Ferrari,

and as the race wore on,
the usually reliable Ferrari

started to break down,

and the Aston Martin was closing in.

[engine revving]

[announcer] Whilst at Mulsanne,

Shelby brings the Aston
onto the same lap as the sick Ferrari.

[applause]

[announcer]
And now the Ferrari's race is run.

Gendebien brings his crippled car
into the pits to retire.

Now the winner pulls in to be submerged
beneath a seething mass eager to acclaim

a resounding victory,

a victory as richly deserved
as it was long awaited.

[Baime] To do what Shelby did,

be part of a two-man team,

race 24 hours with a heart condition
and come out on top

on the world's biggest stage in racing,

this is a feat
that will never be duplicated.

[Aaron]
It was probably the peak of his career.

Finally his doctor told him,
"You can't keep racing cars.

It's gonna kill you."

[Baime]
Shelby tried to keep racing in 1960,

but he realized
he needed to stop for good.

[Shelby] Race driving wasn't
very profitable back then,

and I didn't have any way
to make a living.

I'd had a very unfortunate divorce.

I started all over with not a dime.

A race car driver that retires
with heart problems,

he's very quickly forgotten about.

[Baime] With his racing career over,

Shelby had already been planning
his next endeavor.

[Brock] Carroll was trying several things.

He didn't know for sure what
he was gonna do in his life,

but one of the things that he could do

was he thought he would start
this school for race drivers,

and I became his first paid employee,

you know, with the driving school.

[Shelby] Most people who enjoy motor
racing find the more they learn about it,

the more interesting the sport is to 'em.

I don't know anybody any more qualified

to pass along some of these fundamentals
than our own Pete Brock.

[Brock] So Carroll asked me to run
his driving school out at Riverside.

During the off time,
I started working for Carroll

on a secondary business.

[Shelby] In 1960, the doctor told me
I had five years to live, maybe.

I figured, "So what?"

I might as well try to build a car
that I dreamed of.

[uplifting music playing]

[Shelby] About all I had was a dream.

It was to build a sport car

that more people could own
and enjoy driving;

and second, they could race
under American colors

and maybe prod the old established names
a little bit.

The Corvettes were winning everything,

and I said,
"Carroll, it's never gonna help it."

He said, "Yes, it is."

[Agapiou] Corvettes were the prominent car
in racing at that point.

And Shelby definitely--
yeah, he definitely wanted

to beat the Corvettes,
there's no doubt about it.

[Baime] He knew if he wanted
to make a name for himself,

as a car manufacturer,

he had to build a Corvette killer.

[Aaron]
Carroll was an entrepreneur at heart.

He just did what he wanted to do,
and he woke up every morning with ideas.

He'd always dreamed about it,
even when he was in Europe the first time,

a European lightweight chassis

with a light American V8 in it.

Ray Brock with Petersen Publication

came to me and said,
"Ford has a new small-block V8,

and you might put something
together with 'em,"

and I also knew that AC
had lost their deal with Bristol Engine.

Carroll went over to AC and went in there

with his great ability
to sell things and said,

"Ford Motor Company is behind me,

and we're gonna build
all these sports cars,

and would you guys supply us
a couple of chassis for nothing?"

Shelby was a great character.

He wasn't overburdened
with a great deal of honesty.

One of the nicknames we had
for him was "Billie Sol Estes."

My dad used to call him "Billie Sol"
after Billie Sol Estes,

the guy that
sold a bunch of stuff he didn't have.

[Gurney]
Billie Sol Estes was another Texan,

managed to sell
nonexistent tanks of fertilizer

to the government,

and he made a lot of money doing that.

[Ford III] Carroll Shelby shows up
to Ford Motor Company

and knocks on the door
and gets a meeting with Lee Iacocca

who was running sales
and marketing for us at the time.

[Shelby] I went to Lee Iacocca and said,

"If you'll loan me $25,000,

I'll build you a car
that'll blow the Corvette off.

It's all it'll cost you."

He says to Lee,
"Listen, I've got these chassis and bodies

from AC Cobra over in England,

and I want to put a Ford engine in 'em,

and I want to go race 'em
all over the world."

[Shelby] I didn't have any money,
but Ford didn't know that,

and AC Cars didn't know that.

He knew how to connect with people,

and he used that to his advantage.

[Shelby] Between whipsawing both of them,

I wound up with a chassis
and four or five engines from Ford.

And he was still talking
as they pushed him out the door,

you know, and finally, Iacocca said,
"Just get that guy outta here,

give him a couple engines and some money,

and let's see what he can do."

[mid-tempo music playing]

[Shelby] I wanted to build my own car.

The only people in America
that could do it at the time

were the hot rodders,

and it started here in California.

Shelby was smart to move to California

and tap into all the hot rodders,

the fabricators, the mechanics,

the welders, the painters.

Everybody had a race car in their garage

or a hot rod or something at home.

[Randall] You didn't want a car
just like everyone else's,

so you wanted to customize your car,
you wanted to change the wheels

or put an extra carburetor on it.

[Baime] Across the country,
people were hot rodding their cars

to make them go faster,
to make them look cooler.

Young people were literally marching
in their towns

demanding that their town
build them drag strips.

[announcer]
He's on it, and into the three quarter,

he's really coming on and into the traps

with a top time of 170.45 miles per hour.

[Baime] The epicenter was right
in Southern California.

[Shelby] Lance Reventlow had put
a group of people together in California

that had built a car
that looked like it might be successful.

The first American car
that really competed

against the Ferraris
and the European cars,

so I decided that I had to come out here.

[mid-tempo music playing]

[Shelby] I got a couple
of engines sent out

to Dean Moon's shop in Los Angeles,

and we started working on 'em.

[Baime] The AC chassis
had also arrived in Southern California.

The public relations manager for Carroll

asked me to come down to Dean Moon's
in Santa Fe Springs

and take some pictures
of a car being built.

[tools whirring]

[metal clanging]

I walked in the shop and I go,
"What the hell is this?"

Nobody knew if it was running or not.

The chief engineman for Dean Moon

built the engine, got it running...

[engine turning over]

[engine starting]

[Shelby] We started putting
whatever carburetor, manifold on it,

and got the engine up
to about 265 horsepower.

[engine revving]

[Bondurant] Carroll took it for a spin...

[engine revving, rumbling]

...and said, "Where's the Corvettes?"

[Gurney] I liked driving
the Cobra Roadster very much.

It sort of flouted all the rules.

It was still light, good brakes on it,

and the engine had
a broad range of torque in it,

and they were just a lot of fun to drive.

[Baime] Across the county in Venice,

Lance Reventlow and his Scarab racing team
were moving in the opposite direction.

While the car was competitive,

Reventlow had had his fill
of the high cost of racing.

[Holman] If you look at the core
of the Shelby American team,

they were the team
from Lance Reventlow's Scarab effort.

[Morton] And Carroll took it over
when Reventlow quit racing,

and some of the people
just stayed with the building.

[Shelby] Out of that came the best guy
that I ever ran into, Phil Remington.

I don't think there was anybody
that could do what Phil could do.

[rattling]

[hammering]

Remington is one
of the few figures in racing

who's become a legend who's not
a race car driver or constructor.

Well, the guy was a fabricating
engineering genius, self-taught.

He had the ability,
when something broke on the cars,

he could build a fix or weld a fix

or machine fabricate it
right then and there.

The guy was just amazing.

He had seven ideas,
and he only needed one,

but they were all pretty good.

[Friedman]
And he taught a lot of the young guys

how to do all this stuff

and fabricate and everything else,

and the guys who worked under him

can't say enough about him.

We all looked up to Remington;
we all learned from Remington.

Oh my gosh.

The guy's amazing.

To build up the financial strength
of his company,

Carroll wanted to create the impression

that Shelby American was
bigger than it really was.

There's a slight problem:

Shelby only has one Cobra.

[Randall] Carroll was a salesman.

He could bend the truth a little bit

in order to get done
what needed to get done.

During that whole time,
he's building a relationship

with Motor Trend,
Car and Driver, Road & Track,

and so when his car was completed,

he had 'em all lined up to go test it.

[Baime] To seem like there were
more Cobras than just one,

Shelby had his only car
painted a different color

each time a different member
of the press came to test it.

[Friedman] So one would have a yellow
car, one would have a blue car,

one would have a red car,

and, "Oh, God, we got an exclusive!"

So every magazine would think
it got something special.

[Baime] Shelby was really
in the right place at the right time.

He had all of these young people,

these hot rodders who knew
how to make cars go fast,

who knew how to fabricate,

and he had Phil Remington,
who was this technical genius.

All of that together,
you had an amazing company.

[Shelby]
It was really a very interesting time.

We had a lot of spirit around the place.

[Brock] You gotta realize,
we're a very small group.

We're like about eight guys total

which we had a Frenchman, we had a Swiss,

we had Japanese, New Zealand,
and Australian guys there.

[Shelby] And all these guys
worked together amazingly well.

[Agapiou] They were all a little bit
of road racers, hot rodders.

It was a great shop to work in.
It was like one big family,

abusing each other. [laughing]

There was a lot of nicknames, yeah.

We hired a shop foreman
named Carroll Smith.

"Scatter-Shit" was his nickname.

[Kretzschmar]
Ken Miles, we called him "The Hawk."

And some people called him
"Sidebite," you know,

'cause he talked
out of the side of his mouth.

It was a good day for Ford.
I'm very happy for the Ford Motor Company.

I'm very sorry indeed for Dan.

You really had to listen close
to understand what he was saying.

Gordon Chance was "Ricky Nelson"
'cause he looked just like Ricky Nelson.

[Chance] "Ricky Nelson,"
"The Teenage Tuner,"

and isn't this all funny?

Well, Remington, he was twitchy.

His nickname was "STP,"
"Super Twitch Phil."

That stayed with him, that did.

We were a ragtag bunch of crazy guys,
kind of out of control.

I remember they had a cage,
like an aquarium, with a live cobra in it,

and a real cobra snake.

He always had fireworks, Charlie did,

so he'd throw fireworks from time to time.

They'd put 'em in the engine room
and fire 'em in a pipe there

at the guys working
on the engines and shit like that,

and it was really echoing in there.

[explosion]

[Clinard] Ferrari was contentious.
He pitted people against each other.

It was not a happy place to work.

At Shelby American,
Carroll Shelby was a team leader;

he was a team builder
just through his personality.

It was a happy place to work.

Being an employee at Shelby's,
back then in the beginning,

it was like working
almost in a hobby shop.

It's the kind of job that,

even though it was good, hard work,

you wanted to go to work.

Carroll would come down through the shop,
and he would give you a compliment.

"That's a nice weld."

You felt so appreciative.

It made you want to, you know,
work harder and even do better.

Guys would come back after dinner,
and I'd come back with 'em.

I wasn't gettin' overtime.
I wasn't even working.

I just came back to watch.

He knew how to connect with people,
all kinds of different people.

It really didn't matter
what your background was

or what your profession was.

[Friedman] If he liked you,
you could do no wrong,

and if you did your job,
you could do no wrong.

If he didn't like you, watch out.

Watch out.

In less than ten months,
Shelby created his vision:

a car that would be the envy
of everyone on the street

and possibly one that could win
on the track.

But Shelby knew,
in order to sell these cars,

he had to beat the Corvettes.

[Grant] The Corvette was the car to beat,

and that was our primary challenge
with the Cobra.

[narrator] This Corvette was developed
by Chevrolet engineers,

headed by Zora Arkus-Duntov,

internationally known designer
and racing driver.

Had the first head-to-head
competition at Riverside.

Obviously, all the top West Coast
Corvette drivers were there,

including Bob Bondurant
and Dick Guldstrand and Dave MacDonald.

And Billy Krause shows up
in the first Cobra.

[Brock] Billy Krause, one of the top,
top road racers

at that time, very, very race savvy.

There were no competitive cars
to the Corvettes at that time to speak of,

until the Cobras got going.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Krause] The first time we showed up
at Riverside with a Cobra,

nobody knew what to think.

After a few laps,
they figured it out pretty quick.

MacDonald and I were up toward the front.

I knew I had to beat him to win,

so I wanted to measure
the Cobra against the Corvette

knowing he was gonna drive
the heck out of the Corvette.

I didn't have to guess
if he was trying or not

'cause I knew he was.

[Brock]
Krause, he went out and led immediately,

and it showed that the car was
way, way ahead

of whatever Corvette was doing.

[Lerner] As soon as it appears
at Riverside in its first race,

it dominates the Corvette,
makes it look second rate.

[Krause] Actually,
I was surprised how easy

it was to beat the Corvette
with the Cobra.

I was at least a half a lap ahead.

Coming out of turn nine,
which is a banked turn,

all of a sudden, it went boom,

and then the wheel and tire passed me.

I said, "This is not good."

The Cobra was handily leading the race
and broke a stub axle,

and the Stingray won.

[Lerner] But everyone knows that the Cobra
is gonna dominate thereafter.

[Krause] The other drivers pretty much
avoided me afterwards.

They were jealous, I mean,
what else can I say?

My dad was so impressed with that Cobra.

So quick, so light,
much lighter than the Stingray,

and he knew the writing was
on the wall from that race.

Shelby didn't win the race,

but he proved that the Cobra
was going to dominate the Corvette.

[Ford III] It was a recognition that
Carroll, along with Ford,

had found something special.

We had our first true competitor
in the racing car business in a while.

And like Carroll Shelby the driver,
Shelby Cobra started to win.

-[heroic music playing]
-[engine revving]

We're running 35, 40 hours on the cars
without even overhauling them now,

which is phenomenal.
That's even better than Ferrari is.

They've been reputed to be
the most reliable cars,

and I think we even got them
beat on that now,

so I'm not worried one bit
about the 500 miles.

In fact, I wish it were 1,000.

[announcer] Carroll Shelby and his Cobras
win the Manufacturers' Championship.

Cobra creator Carroll Shelby
has realized his ambition.

We won the Drivers' Championship,
the Manufacturers' Championship,

and of course, the USRRC Championship.

He was doing really what he wanted to do:
beat the Ferraris, the Corvettes,

the Porsches, and everyone else.

When we were able to run with 'em
and actually beat 'em,

it was a huge accomplishment,

and it meant a great deal to Shelby,
to Ford Motor Company.

[Baime] Henry Ford II, Chairman
of the Ford Motor Company,

knew the value of winning races,

but his desire was to win
at the highest level.

That meant competing and winning
at the biggest race in the world,

the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

You need to understand the magnitude
of winning Le Mans during this period.

It made celebrities out of the drivers
who won and the manufacturer.

[Oliver] Major manufacturers
get in long-distance racing

because it's an arduous race,
and it enhances the brand.

I mean, if Ford can win
at Le Mans reliably,

that says something about the engineering.

[Nader] There was a marketing arm
of each auto company

that's obsessed with auto racing

as a marketing technique to sell cars.

They would say,
"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday."

We didn't have that performance
component of our brand

that customers wanted.

[Baime] Ford had the Galaxie,
Ford had the Thunderbird,

but when it came to a plausible race car,
Ford had nothing.

[Laban] Henry is at a motor race,
sees a Ferrari win, and says,

"We need those red cars."

[Baime]
His solution to win Le Mans quickly

was to simply purchase Shelby's rival,
Ferrari.

Since Shelby's win
in an Aston Martin in 1959,

Ferrari had dominated,
winning every 24 hour contest since then.

For speed and endurance,
Ferrari was without equal.

There was a lot of effort put
into making this deal a reality.

And we'll try to accommodate
your desires as best we can.

My father thought that this
was gonna be a done deal.

Ford Motor Company was gonna walk away
with an incredible brand.

But I said, "No, I don't want to sell it."

[Baime] Enzo Ferrari was playing
Henry Ford II

so that he could get a sweeter deal
from an Italian company, Fiat,

a deal which he would eventually take.

[Ford III]
My father was extremely disappointed.

That's when he decided, "All right,

we're gonna beat you,
and we're gonna beat you

at your own game, in your backyard."

[Baime] Ford began construction
on a race car with an unlimited budget.

The GT40 was being designed
for two reasons:

win Le Mans and humble Ferrari.

Shelby had not forgotten
about his vendetta with Enzo Ferrari,

and he wanted to take him on at Le Mans,
but he knew he didn't have the car.

No matter how good it was
for short track racing,

it was not gonna be
a suitable car for Europe

'cause it simply didn't have
the top speed.

[Shelby]
We wanted to go international racing,

and the old 289 Cobra

was about as aerodynamic as a shoebox.

[Brock] The tracks we ran
over in this country didn't run over 150,

155 miles an hour anyway.

So it'd run up to 155 miles
an hour and just stop.

It was like pushing a brick
through the air.

[Baime] Shelby knew that Cobra
did not have the aerodynamics

to blast 200 miles an hour

down the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans.

[Shelby]
We knew that we had to do something

as far as body style was concerned.

So I had a young man named Pete Brock
that had worked at General Motors,

and I said, "Pete, you think we could
build a streamlined version of a Cobra?"

I said,
"We can design a completely new body

for the existing Cobra chassis,

and I think that
we can make 'em go faster."

But I said, "It may not look like anything
you've ever seen before."

And he said, "Aw, hell,
I don't care what it looks like.

Is it gonna go fast?"
And I said, "I believe it will."

[down-tempo music fades]

[hopeful music playing]

[Brock] The actual idea
for the new shape of a body

had been developed
in the late 1930s in Germany

by a guy named
Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld.

The idea for it has never been
really tried in modern competition.

Extending the length, cutting it off,

and fooling the air that was
flowing over the back of the car

into thinking
that it was gonna go that far.

It might look so different that there'd be
a lot of resistance for it,

and I knew that
because I knew what the history was.

Builders at that time, including BMW,

they'd had focus groups,
and the cars looked so strange

that everybody rejected 'em,

so the idea went away.

World War II comes along.

-[gunfire]
-[ominous music playing]

Factories were bombed out.

All of that information was lost.

[gunfire]

But when I was at General Motors,

I found in their library
a technical paper on their studies,

and it showed what
the aerodynamic improvements were on it.

And I couldn't read all the German,
but I could understand the numbers

on the coefficient of drag improvement.

These ideas could be applied to the Cobra.

I presented the idea to the crew,

because they were gonna
have to build the car.

All the enthusiasm I'd had
stopped completely

because I showed people
what I thought the car would look like

with a strange looking car
with a chopped off tail.

And the main resistance
came from Phil Remington,

who was our chief engineer,

and the guy was my idol.

This is the greatest fabricator,
race car builder in the world.

And I thought, "Well, boy,
if I get Phil behind this deal,"

you know, "it's gonna be a slam dunk."

I mean, he thought it was a
stupid looking car, and it wouldn't work.

And of course all the guys in the shop
followed him and said,

"We don't want to work on it either."

[Agapiou]
I mean, everyone was abusing him,

saying it wasn't gonna work
and this and that,

and especially the upper echelon.

When I looked at the Pete Brock coupe,

I thought,
"You know, that thing's gonna be

200, maybe 300 pounds heavier,

and it's gonna bog down the engine,

and I don't expect it
to be a big success."

[Agapiou] But he had Shelby on his side,

and that's all that--
that's all that really mattered.

[Shelby] So I didn't really know
anything about aerodynamics.

It looked pretty good to me.

Aeronutronic, a Ford defense company,

had some really good PhDs and some people
that understood aerodynamics.

They came up and looked at it and said,
"Hey, that thing ain't gonna work."

[Brock] Told us if we extend
the tail out about three feet to a point

that we'd be much better off.

Common acceptance of what
aerodynamic efficiency was

was to have this
teardrop-shaped automobile,

but it really wasn't very efficient.

That created turbulence all over the body.

Fortunately, our top driver, Ken Miles,

he had seen what the Germans had done

and knew that they were onto something,

and he convinced Carroll
that we should go ahead with the project.

So he said, "OK, go ahead and do it."

I said, "OK, what's our budget?"

He says, "Well, we don't have any money."

He said, "You can have
Skip Hudson's old crashed car."

The body was damaged,
but the chassis was still OK.

[Baime] Brock had his opportunity,
but what he didn't have was time.

Shelby American wasn't just racing.

It was producing Cobras for street use,
and demand was high.

Shelby gave Brock a drop-dead date
to finish the car.

[Brock]
We had a 90-day window to build this car

from the first sketch
to the completed running car

to get it ready for Daytona.

Took a jigsaw and just cut out
all those patterns

and then put it together
like a big ice cube tray.

[ominous music playing]

And made the book so we could really see
what the car looked like full size.

As it started taking shape, though,
people started believing in the car.

[Brock] Once the car started going,

well, they all dived in,
and everybody contributed something

to make the car right.

[Patrick] Phil Remington and Ken Miles

and John Olson and Donn Allen,

they all put together a chassis

and we built the first body.

[Kretzschmar] It looked kind of funny
with a chopped-off tail,

and everybody didn't think
it would do that well.

[Brock] We got the car done
and took it out to Riverside.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Baime] Pete Brock had defied everyone
with his design,

and now was the moment to see
if it would succeed or fail,

because the stopwatch doesn't lie.

[engine revving]

And it was 25 miles an hour faster
down the back straightaway of Riverside

than a regular Cobra.

[Brock] Right out of the box,

the car was three and a half seconds
faster than anything we'd ever run.

[Agapiou] Ken was amazed how fast that car
was down the straight at Riverside.

[Shelby] It ran pretty well.

It would run 170 miles an hour
down a straight

on 350 horsepower.

[Agapiou]
Painted it and put a stripe on it.

It was incredible design
that Pete had come up with.

Carroll said, "Let's get this thing
back to the shop.

We'll try to get it ready for Daytona."

[Baime] Shelby named the car
for the race he was preparing it for,

the Daytona Continental.

So, since that day, it's always been known
as the Cobra Daytona.

[Brock] When we got down to Daytona,

Carroll had assigned Bob Holbert
and Dave MacDonald to drive the car.

The main competition against the Cobra
was the Ferrari 250 GTO.

An American car challenging them
was unusual

and certainly put some feathers
the wrong way

in the European racing elite.

[Baime] Enzo Ferrari
and his team knew very little

about the new American race car
with a strange body,

but they were about to find out.

When the race started,
the Daytona Coupe and the Ferrari

were battling for the lead.

[Brock] Holbert goes out,
he's running against the Ferraris,

and he comes back and after
a couple laps, he says,

"This is too easy. Christ," he says,

"I can run off
and leave these guys easily."

[engine revving]

[Baime] After 110 laps,
the Daytona Coupe had built

a ten-minute lead on the entire field.

The Ferrari continued to lose ground.

At that point,
we did some testing on fuel.

The car was 25% more efficient
than the roadsters.

For endurance racing,
the fuel economy was even more important,

because if we could go three more laps
each time Ferrari pitted,

that's the way you'd win the race.

The Daytona Coupe was so much faster than
anything there, it was just incredible.

There was nothing there
that could even go near us.

[engine revving]

[Brock] By the seventh hour
of the race down there,

we were so far out in front,

there wasn't any question,
we had the race won.

[Agapiou] They came in for a pit stop,
put the fueler in,

it burst out the other side,
out the vent can,

and ran down and caught on fire.

[explosion]

There was a point there it looked like
the car was gonna explode.

[Kretzschmar]
One of our boys from New Zealand

was absolutely engulfed in flames.

[Agapiou] We're trying to put Olson out.

Meanwhile, he's screaming, you know,

"I dropped my wallet,"
so we got his wallet for him.

[Brock] And Carroll was so angry
with the whole situation,

and he said, "We're done."

And the mechanics were saying,
"Carroll, we can get the wiring fixed.

It doesn't matter. We'll lose
all these laps, but the car is so fast.

We can get out and win the race."

[Baime] Shelby puts his foot down
and retires the car.

[Brock] So the car didn't win it,
but we did set the lap record on it.

And then we went to Sebring.

[announcer] Shelby's Cobras,
led by the Number 10 Daytona Coupe,

caused a stir
as they moved through inspection.

[Brock] The reaction after Daytona
was rather mixed,

because obviously we'd shown great speed,

but the car had also proven
pretty vulnerable with it blowing up.

[announcer] The reigning Ferraris.
They dominate the prototype class

with two four-liter
and two three-liter cars.

They'd been champions
of the world already since '62,

and we're already
into the beginning of '64.

They'd won everything all through '63.

So they were very, very confident.

I mean, the Ferrari factory team
had pretty much ruled the roost forever.

[Baime] When you think of Ferrari
and what Ferrari means,

you would think that the founder
of that company

would be extraordinarily wealthy,
but he never was,

because every lira
was always spent on racing.

Carroll Shelby had already decided
what he thought about Enzo Ferrari.

[Shelby]
I never saw anybody with an equal race car

that I didn't figure
that I could hold on with.

It would be great for motor racing

if American cars could beat
the Ferraris once.

[referee] Six, five, four...

[announcer] They've broken on five,

earlier than they've
ever jumped the gun before.

[indistinct shouting]

[announcer]
Penske gets away just in front of Holbert.

[Agapiou] The race started,
and we just went away with it.

We're just killing
the Ferraris and the Porsches,

and not just GT cars
but prototypes as well.

[Brock] It didn't take long
for people to understand

that the car was gonna be
really, really fast.

[Agapiou] It was absolutely amazing,
a group of guys from Venice, California,

who'd come down and beat all
those high-end manufacturers.

[announcer] True to his hopes, Carroll
Shelby, with the Ferrari GTOs,

taking the Manufacturers' Championship
lead at the same time.

Holbert and MacDonald led the GT winners.

[Brock] By the time that Holbert
and Davy won at Sebring,

I think Ferrari had some concern.

[Shelby] We dominated.

That's when we decided to go to Europe

when we saw that we could beat the GTO
in a 12-hour race.

This was also now starting
to be very personal between Ferrari

and Carroll Shelby.

[Brock] I mean, all the American guys
wanted to go to Indy.

That was their goal.

Carroll's goal was to go back
and beat Ferrari's ass,

because he had been insulted
by Enzo Ferrari at one time,

and he wanted to go back and show
what Americans could do.

[Baime] And he held a press conference,

and he looked people in the eye,
and he said,

this is a quote, "Ferrari's ass is mine."

[Brock] We knew that we had a car
that would beat Ferrari,

so we scraped a little money together
with a little help from Castrol

and our sales of the Cobra
were making a little money,

so we put it together on
a very scrimpy budget

and went to Europe.

[Baime] Of all the races in the world,
there was none bigger than Le Mans.

To win Le Mans,
it meant that you were the best.

[Baime] Since its inception in 1908,

no race was more prized or coveted.

For an automotive manufacturer,
it proves their endurance

more than any other race can possibly do.

Commercially,
it is the most important race

to win in the world
for a car manufacturer.

You win Le Mans, the whole planet knows.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Brock] There was a tremendous amount
of publicity,

the fact that Ford Motor Company
was gonna enter the Le Mans race.

[Baime] It had taken nearly 14 months,

but Ford's entry, the GT40,
was ready to race at Le Mans

and ready to put an end to Ferrari's
dominance at this race.

[Brock] Millions of dollars had been
devoted to this project.

It was getting tremendous,
tremendous publicity,

you know, with the Ford PR campaign.

This title, the GT40 was really
representing a big change in motor racing.

My father was surprised about the car.

[Randall] I'm not sure if people had
seen a car that was so low.

It was clearly a very dynamic design.

[Baime]
Although Shelby was using a Ford engine,

that's where the relationship stopped.

All Ford ever cared about was their entry,
the GT40.

[Brock] Nobody was looking at the Cobra,

and we've got two Daytonas
in the GT class.

In sports car racing,
there's always been a class structure.

At the top of the totem pole
is the prototype class.

Anything went,

and you could build as many
as you wanted of them

or as few as you wanted.

You could just build one car,
and it would just be a prototype.

And the next class down
was typically the GT class,

and now it's the so-called
production-based class.

The GT class has a lot
of value for a manufacturer,

because it's based on the cars
they sell on the street.

[Baime]
The stage is set for a war of speed.

The Ferrari P Series versus the Ford GT40.

The Shelby American Daytona Coupe
versus the Ferrari 250 GTO.

Each manufacturer had poured everything
they had into their cars.

Le Mans always had hundreds
of thousands of spectators,

but this year, it was overflowing.

Ford's debut at Le Mans
drew millions of eyes

to that race around the world.

[announcer]
The Le Mans 24-hour race at last,

and three gleaming Ford GTs are present.

At 4:00 p.m. the starter drops his flag
and runs for safety.

[Baime] In the opening laps,
the GT40 is furiously fast.

There's a helicopter camera car
following it.

Its top speed is incredible.

[Attwood] The cars were fast.

Richie Ginther was particularly quick
and was challenging the Ferraris,

which was really his job
because he was the lead car.

[announcer] Richie Ginther has taken
the lead on the second lap

in the white Ford with the blue stripe.

The American racing colors
are in front at Le Mans.

[interviewer] Do you reckon
you've got anything up your sleeve

that you can pull out a little bit more?

I can pull out 15 seconds
any time you wanted it,

but we're trying to finish in 24 hours.

You mean they won't let you
pull out for 15 seconds?

[Baime] In the GT class,
both Cobras are outpacing the Ferrari GTO

as well as staying with the Ford
and Ferrari prototypes.

Shelby American's first showing
is going strong,

until an improper starting
of a dead battery

leads to the disqualification
of car number six.

Only one Cobra remains,

the one driven by Dan Gurney
and Bob Bondurant.

Losing one of the coupes is a serious blow
to Shelby and the team

and seriously hinders
their ability to win the race.

Ford's first casualty is Richard Attwood
from Britain.

[Attwood] We'd done maybe
two or three hours into the race,

and I saw some flames starting to lick up
into the engine bay.

It was burning fairly well when I got out.

There was a "whoof" underneath the bonnet.

[Moss]
It's known as the grand prix of endurance,

and I think that this is the thing.

It's a great endurance on the driver
and on the car.

And this is a combination
that I think wears out

a lot of people and a lot of vehicles.

And this is, I'm afraid,
what's gonna happen now.

We're starting 55 cars.

I don't think more than 15 or 20
are going to finish.

[Baime] During the 11th hour
of the race, troubles brew for Ford.

Richie Ginther's GT40 is retired.

Thirteen hours into the race,
Phil Hill goes also.

[Baime] By morning, with every GT40 broken
and out of the race,

the Ford execs were forced
to pay attention to the Daytona Coupe.

It was now winning the entire race
in both classes.

The Daytona could genuinely beat Ferrari.

[Shelby] When you had long straightaways,

we'd just blow the Ferrari off
in the weeds.

It wasn't even close.

I don't think that
the European racing world

was expecting much
of a challenge from America,

and they thought that they probably had
the grandfather rights to dominance

at these prestigious events like Le Mans.

And then the first place car
all pulled off.

[announcer] Here's a car that's
been having

a good deal of trouble during the night,

the John Surtees, Lorenzo Bandini car.

In and out once more
and back on the course. There he goes.

And I was thinking,
"Are we gonna win overall?"

[Shelby] We were leading there
for a little while overall,

and there wasn't anything
that could have beat us.

[Brock] They're competing
against one of the lead Ferraris,

and they run those guys into the ground.

[engine revving]

We'd gotten a rock
through the oil cooler in the front,

and it had a little pinhole, and it was
spitting oil out all over everything,

so they had to drive it really gently.

Now stay ahead of the Ferrari.

We'll use the brakes instead of more RPM.

Yeah, OK.

[Shelby] The thing ran the last four
or five hours at 300 degrees.

It never missed a lick. How 'bout that?
Amazing.

[Baime]
The oil leak prevented the Daytona Coupe

from winning Le Mans outright,

but Shelby and his team
still won the GT class, beating Ferrari.

For the first time in history,
an American car had won at Le Mans.

[Grant]
Carroll obviously was very pleased.

On the other hand,
his eye was on the goal,

and that goal was to win the championship.

Until we achieved that goal,
he wasn't about to celebrate early.

[somber music playing]

[Ford III] The first time that
they raced at Le Mans, cars didn't finish.

The GT40, for a number of mechanical
reasons, they weren't strong enough.

[Baime] So once again,
Ferrari wins Le Mans in 1964,

first, second, and third.

Henry Ford II is not pleased.

He wanted somebody who had demonstrated
that ability to win.

Ford has always known,
and the whole industry's always known,

that Shelby's the guy who can get it done.

[Ford III] Carroll Shelby had won
Le Mans as a driver,

had won Le Mans as a manufacturer
with the Daytona Coupe,

and it was after '64 that
he brought in Carroll Shelby

to help develop the cars.

[Shelby] Here's something else
that we're excited about.

It's this new Ford GT.

It was designed and built
by Ford engineers

as kind of a laboratory on wheels

to test new ideas

and prove Ford's capabilities
in open competition.

We've been given the job of testing
this new car and racing internationally.

The biggest concern for them
was endurance.

These 12-hour and 24-hour races are,
you know,

demanding beyond reason.

Carroll Shelby knew the task before them.

[Grant]
I can remember one of the two GT40s

actually came into our shop.

They still had wire wheels on 'em,
and they were overheating,

and so Phil went to work on that.

Phil Remington was pretty much responsible

for all of our successes
in racing over there.

In spite of his reluctance
to build a Daytona,

he was still, I think,
the most critical guy in the team.

When Shelby got the cars,

the first thing we did
was put Halibrand mags on it,

bigger tires,
and so that put more stress on it.

But they even had problems
with the suspension

even before they put the bigger tires
and wheels on it.

Changed the suspension geometry,
they changed the engine.

A lot of the subsystems,

braking subsystems
and everything was redesigned.

[Baime] Not only did Ford
entrust Shelby and his team

with redesigning the failed GT40,

Ford also had an additional product
that needed Shelby's attention.

When Carroll was successful
with the Cobra,

Ford came to him and asked

about doing something to the Mustang
that they had just introduced.

That was the start of the GT350.

[Ford III]
The Mustang, when it was first conceived

by Lee Iacocca and everyone else
at Ford and my grandfather,

it was really just a way to get
younger customers into the showroom.

It was almost sort of a housewives' car
in '64.

[narrator] A beautiful day.
A Mustang day. Ford Mustang.

Practical enough for this family of five,

yet beautiful enough to be honored
with the Tiffany Gold Medal for Excellence

in American Design.

[Ford III] And then, you know,
along comes Carroll Shelby.

[Shelby]
The Mustang was very, very popular,

but it was a secretary's car,
a little six-cylinder engine,

and they wanted to put a V8 in it.

They wanted a sportier version
that had wider appeal,

especially to the performance enthusiasts,

and I thought, "Man, you can't make a mule
outrun a racehorse."

The Mustangs were a real transformation,

and that was when the shop
became really super overcrowded,

and they realized they had to do something
and get a bigger shop.

Well, they moved from that small shop
at Princeton Street,

and they moved to the airport.

[light music playing]

♪ I've got a destination ♪

♪ And I'm on my way ♪

♪ There's no hesitation ♪

[Kretzschmar]
I don't know how Shelby slept.

He had his tire division going,

he had the race shop going,
had the assembly line going.

He had a parts division
shipping parts all over the world.

There was 250 people working there.

It just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Guys on the assembly line
were 17, 18, 19 years old.

Guys in the parts department
were 18, 19, 20 years old.

Guys in the race shop,
half the guys were in their 20s.

The oldest guy there was Shelby.
He was 40.

[Baime] At this point,
Shelby felt he could do no wrong.

From the evolution of the Cobra
to the Daytona Coupe

to taking over the GT40 program,

his rise from broke, retired driver

to auto CEO was meteoric,

and Shelby was good at making sure
everybody knew about it.

[Holman] Carroll Shelby
was a promoting genius.

He took his assets and made
the world know about them.

We got tickled because he always had
a photographer there to take pictures,

and Carroll Shelby's picture...

-[shutter clicks]
-...was to be in the front page

of any paper anywhere he was.

-["Every Little Movement" playing]
-♪ Every little movement ♪

♪ Every little thing you do ♪

♪ Is a sleight of hand ♪

♪ That commands my heart to love you ♪

[Holman]
He was to do something noteworthy,

and his press agent
was to get it in the paper

so that Carroll Shelby's legend moved on.

In Carroll's case,

if another mechanic had their picture
in the paper and Carroll's wasn't,

that mechanic could lose his job over it.

He was there to promote Carroll Shelby.

Few people realized,
back when all this was happening,

Ford had taken over Shelby American.

[narrator]
Ford in California is represented

by these sleek racing cars.

They're the products
of Shelby American Incorporated,

builders of the world champion Ford Cobra

and the Mustang GT350 sports car.

[Holman] And it became a division
of Ford Motor Company,

and so the other side of it was
he was the factory team.

He was their boy.

They owned him.

[Shelby] I was having to build Mustangs,
having to build Cobras,

having to try to straighten
the Ford GT program out.

It was too much for me.

[Morton] The whole atmosphere changed.

It went from a cool race shop

to a, you know, to a corporate entity.

[down-tempo music playing]

[Marietta] Got a little bit more sterile
when we moved to the airport,

because now there were more rules.

It was just a different environment.

Uh... It was so big.
We went from 10,000 square feet

to probably like 40,000 square feet,

so things got spread out,

and you weren't as close to the guys
that you worked with before.

[Baime] Shelby American
was experiencing growing pains.

It was no longer a little shop

filled with badass car guys
and hot rodders.

It was a professional operation.

The quality of the work
continued to be unmatched,

starting with the reimagining
of Ford's Mustang.

[Shelby] This GT350 is a racing version
of Ford's Mustang 2+2.

We set the cars up for racing

by installing special components,
racing shocks and so on.

We converted the Mustang fastback
into race cars.

The bodies came from the factory

and put lighter aprons
and Plexiglas windows,

made the cars lighter.

We modified the engine,

and also welded in override traction bars

to make the suspension stronger.

In the assembly line,

they built those GT350s
that were strictly for the street,

and we sold them
to the customers for $5,900.

And then in the other hangar,
they built R models...

and they were strictly for the track.

[engine revving]

Mustangs really weren't a big deal
until they started racing them.

That really put the Mustang on the map.

They shipped over more rally cars
and race cars

to enter events in Europe in '64.

And the Tour de France,
they won the event, first and second.

It was an important victory,
the Tour de France, for the Mustangs

because they had, at that point,
not won anything in America.

[Baime] The victory proved to Ford brass

that this former secretary's car,
the Mustang, could be fast;

it could be a winner on the track.

But Shelby had ambitions elsewhere,
and he made that clear.

[Shelby] I don't give a shit
about the Tour de France anyway.

It means a lot
to a lot of people over there,

but it wasn't as high
on my priority list as Daytona...

[engines revving]

[Shelby] Sebring...

...Le Mans.

[Baime] And at the end of 1964,

Carroll Shelby really wanted
just one thing.

He wanted to beat Ferrari
for the World Manufacturers' Championship.

[Laban] With one race left at Monza,

the Daytona was gonna win
the Manufacturers' Championship,

beating Ferrari the way Shelby
had always promised he would.

Ferrari had just a couple of points
more than we did,

so it all came down
to the last race at Monza.

And by then, we had four cars,

so we were gonna go to Monza
with four Daytona Coupes.

We would have absolutely crushed Ferrari.

Enzo Ferrari sees the writing on the wall.

There's no way he's gonna let that happen.

Ferrari protested the fact

that he wasn't allowed
to run the cars he wanted,

and eventually, the race itself
was cancelled.

So no points can be awarded,
and the Cobra can't win.

Ferrari wins again.

So, Ferrari won 1964 by politics,

not by being the fastest car.

[Baime] For Shelby,
the 1965 season was looking to be

the most stressful thing
he had ever faced.

The Cobra and the GT40 are both competing
in the same endurance races.

Ford executives are putting
tons of pressure on Shelby

to make sure his focus is on the GT40.

Two months before Daytona,
the car is not even close to ready.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Agapiou] Ken Miles was the test driver,
really.

He basically tested
and developed most all the cars.

He was an engineer
prior to going to Shelby's

and prior to opening his own business.

[engines revving]

Ken Miles drove it first.
He didn't like it at all.

I hopped in, and I drove it,
and it didn't handle great.

It was not as aerodynamic
as it needed to be.

Remington made new bodywork for it.

They adjusted the ride heights
and suspension,

changed the shocks on it,

and stiffened it up.

Then we put a stronger motor on it

so it could go quicker.

Each time that they worked on it,

it got better and better and better.

[engine revving]

[suspenseful music playing]

We have high hopes
for all of these cars this year.

We hope that by racing with Ford,
we can make this an American year.

Very soon now, we'll be racing these cars

against the best competition in the world.

The Ford GT,
after running experimentally last year,

now begins its first full racing season

with its American debut
at the Daytona Continental.

[announcer] Forty-three cars,
29 from Europe and 14 from America,

will start the 2,000-kilometer
Daytona Continental.

[Baime]
So the GT40s show up at Daytona in 1965.

Shelby's had less than two months
to turn these cars into winners.

[announcer]
The cars move up tight behind the pace car

for the running start.

Number 77 Ferrari,
the fastest qualifier on the inside.

Number 72 Ford GT, the second fastest
qualifier on the outside.

And the race is on.

-[engines revving]
-[suspenseful music playing]

[Baime] At the beginning of the race,

Bob Bondurant in the GT40
flies by Surtees in a Ferrari.

[announcer] Bob Bondurant
zips into the first turn,

opening up Number 72 Ford GT.

[Bondurant]
By the time we got to turn two,

I was doing 200 miles an hour,
and I pulled Surtees 18 car lengths.

That car felt great. I was like, "Yes!"

We fixed it and it worked.

[Agapiou]
With all the changes that Remington made,

they got the car moving very quickly.

[Ford III] This race was the first race
that GT40s finished.

-[vibrant music playing]
-[announcer] The last lap.

The Americans have won.

They've overthrown the Ferraris.

[Baime]
This was a magnificent win for Shelby,

and you can say that this victory,

maybe even more
than his Le Mans win as a driver,

this is really the win
that puts him on the map.

Not only had the GT40 won,

Shelby American cars
took the top four spots,

with the Daytona Coupe
taking first and second in the GT class.

[indistinct dialogue]

The next race for the factory
team was at Sebring.

-[suspenseful music playing]
-[engines revving]

[Baime] With the GT40
and four Cobras running strong,

Shelby is delighted
with how the team is performing.

[engine revving]

-[Kretzschmar] Then the rains came.
-[thunder crashing]

[mid-tempo music playing]

[announcer] It's the worst deluge
ever recorded at Sebring.

You'd take a tire off and change it,

and if you didn't grab it,
it literally would float away.

[upbeat music playing]

[Agapiou] Phil came in,
and he's up to his waist in water

because it couldn't drain out
the coupe fast enough.

He was trying to get out of the car,

and Shelby's going,
"God dammit, you stay here."

And he's pushing him on the shoulder.

And I had gotten a little hammer
and a giant ice pick,

and I'm smashing holes in the floor

to drain the water out.

Meanwhile, Phil was screaming
'cause he thinks

I'm gonna hit him
in the balls or something,

'cause I'm-- with the hammer,
'cause I'm right between his legs

with the hammer and the ice pick.

He's yelling, "Watch it, you.
You're gonna castrate me."

So he's trying to get out,
and Shelby's pushing him back in,

saying, "God dammit, Phil,
get back in the car.

He's not gonna hit you
where it hurts." [chuckles]

What a funny pit stop that was.

[announcer] Suddenly, the 12-hour
Sebring Grand Prix of Endurance is over.

Number 11 Ford GT is first
in the Grand Touring Prototype class.

If we're successful at Daytona
and we're successful at Sebring,

my family and I will be there in June.

[Baime] By the time Ford is getting
its cars ready to ship to France,

suddenly people are starting
to describe Ferrari as an underdog.

Ford is expected to win.

[Shelby] Well, we did all right
the first couple of times out.

The field of cars were very impressive
at Daytona and Sebring.

Now we're getting ready
for the big ones overseas.

Monza, Targa Florio, and Le Mans.

In the weeks to come, we hope
to continue our string of victories.

[announcer 1] This is the year
of Ford's great challenge

and American invasion
on the supremacy of the Italian giants.

[announcer 2] The pre-race drama
had centered

on the strongest ever
challenge from America.

Their declared intention: to beat Ferrari.

[Agapiou] In 1965, it was starting
to get really serious.

[Brock] Shelby had won a year earlier
in the GT class with the Daytona Coupe,

but Ferrari had still won
overall with the prototype.

Prototypes are the cars that compete
for victory overall at Le Mans,

and that's all anyone really cares about
is who wins the race overall.

Henry Ford II even made the trip
to Le Mans for the first time

to watch his GT40s make history.

The car worked fantastic.
I was third fastest qualifier.

Ford debuted the GT40 in 1964.

There's a huge audience.

But now in 1965,
there's an even bigger audience.

For the first time at Le Mans,

an American car is actually favored
to win.

-[suspenseful music playing]
-[indistinct chatter]

[announcer] Chris Amon's first away
in the Ford seven-liter,

followed by Bob Bondurant,
Bruce McLaren, and Surtees.

[engines revving]

[announcer] At the esses,
the seven-liter Ford GTs

are pulling away from the Works Ferraris

as the leading Ford
sets a blistering pace.

Bruce McLaren in one of the 427s

and Chris Amon in the second 427.

By the time they're at the end
of the straight,

the Ferraris aren't even in sight.

[Shelby]
Ford had really built some good engines,

and somebody at Ford
decided to replace them

just before Le Mans.

[Baime] The night before the race,
the heads of Ford's Special Vehicles Unit

ordered Shelby to replace his engines
with engines prepared by the Ford factory.

They wanted to be able
to tell Henry Ford II

that they had won Le Mans
with Ford factory engines,

not the ones from Shelby American.

[announcer] But now the McLaren,
Miles Ford, is in gearbox trouble.

Already, the Ferrari grip
on the race tightens.

[Shelby] What happened was
they got some new head bolts,

and they didn't check 'em out,
and all the head bolts stretched.

[announcer] By midnight,
with the race only one-third through,

the Ford challenge had been shattered
by Ferrari.

[Bondurant] All the cars broke.

Ford made the decision
to tell Shelby

to take 'em all out
and put in Ford engines.

[Shelby] It didn't work out.
That was a disastrous race.

[Bondurant]
If I had not have changed the engine,

I would have won.

[Agapiou] Again, the Fords broke.

They made simple engineering mistakes,
and Ferrari didn't.

[engines revving]

[Laban] Only one Ferrari prototype
finished the race,

but that was enough to win it,
and Ferrari also won the GT class,

and they finished one, two, three overall.

Not even Shelby's Daytona Coupes
managed to finish the race.

[Baime] The press called it murder,
Italian style.

[Ford III] It was the second year for
my grandfather of utter disappointment,

and I'm sure he probably questioned,
in his mind,

whether this was all worth it.

[Shelby] Henry Ford and Edsel
were at Le Mans.

They looked around
at their father and said,

"Is that the best we can do?

Ford Motor Company
bring 200 people to Le Mans

and fall on our face like this?"

[Agapiou] Ford, with millions
and millions of dollars

going down the tube again,

start to look bad.

This was humiliating,
and Henry Ford II was pissed.

Despite the GT40s' disastrous performance
at the 24 Hours of Le Mans,

not everything is lost.

Shelby American actually
has the Cobra Daytona Coupe

in a position to win
the World Manufacturers' Championship

if the car can win
at the 12 hours of Reims.

[Brock] All of our Daytonas were given
to the Alan Mann racing team in England

to run them.

My father got the Daytona Cobras

because Shelby, at that time,
had a lot on his plate.

[Baime]
The race at Reims started in darkness.

And soon enough, the team
of Bondurant and Schlesser

and the Cobra Daytona Coupe
were winning the race handily.

No one could keep up with them,

and anyone that tried found themselves
destroying their car in the process.

The Ferraris were just outgunned by
Shelby's engineering and Brock's design.

Jo Schlesser, my co-driver,
we both wanted to win that championship.

We were running nice and strong,
crossed the finish line,

and we knew we just won the race

and won
the World Manufacturers' Championship.

First time any American ever won it.

That was the last time
any American ever won it.

[Baime] Schlesser and Bondurant
had carried out Carroll Shelby's mission.

They "beat Ferrari's ass" on his own turf,

and they did it with six races
left in the season.

Shelby crushed Ferrari.

[Bondurant] That's the one race,

the championship that
Carroll Shelby wanted the most.

He was so proud when we won
the World Manufacturers' Championship.

[Kretzschmar] That was a big deal

because that was basically
a hot-rodded Cobra,

that was a 289 passenger car motor.

It was a home-built car,
and they won the World Championship.

Carroll Shelby finally met his promise
to whip Ferrari's ass

and loved it ever afterwards.

[Shelby] When we won it in '65,

it was probably the greatest day
of my life up till that time.

Ferrari personally took it very hard

that Shelby beat him with the Daytona.

Reims is the capital of Champagne,
so we celebrated immensely.

[laughs]

[somber piano music playing]

[Baime] But there was little celebrating
going on back in Los Angeles.

Henry Ford II's dissatisfaction at Le Mans

had reverberations that were shaking
the foundation of Shelby American.

The decree comes down from Henry,

"Put that shit to the side
and start getting these GT40s done

and do it right now."

And that crushed Peter, clearly.

[Baime] The Daytona Coupe
was no longer needed,

and neither were its workers.

[Agapiou] Definitely they got rid
of a lot of people,

'cause when I came back,
a lot of the crew were missing.

They were gone.
I mean, they just weren't there anymore.

Anyone who worked on the Daytona Coupe
kind of got their walking papers.

Jack Balch had said, you know,
"We don't need you anymore."

And I thought,
"Well, they can't do that to me.

I'll go over everybody's head
and talk to Carroll."

He just looked at me, said, "Sorry,"
and kept walking.

[Brock] When I got back from Europe,

there was a total stranger
in my office there,

and I could see that there was,
you know, not much future for me in there.

Shelby didn't really fire me

but, you know, it was obvious that
they didn't need me around there anymore.

[Baime] And there was one more casualty
that no one could have foreseen.

My father had
five remaining Daytona Cobras

at the end of the '65 season

and had no way of getting them
back to Shelby really,

and Shelby wasn't interested and said,
"Dump them in the North Sea."

[Shelby] After we won
the world championship,

we didn't even think they were worth
hauling back from Europe.

We were through.

[Holman] And Carroll said, "They're
not worth the freight to ship back.

If you would, just put them on a barge,
take a customs guy out with you

and just dump them in the English Channel

because I'm not willing to pay
the freight on them."

Once something was done,
that was history for him.

He's looking for the next thing
that's happening.

[Holman] And Alan Mann
couldn't bring himself to dump them

in the English Channel.

[dramatic orchestral music playing]

And so, my father shipped them
back to Shelby at his own expense.

[Holman] The cars were loaded up
as deck freight,

exposed to the weather and conditions
and shipped back to California.

[Patrick] He didn't like it,

but he was ready to move
on to something else.

[Holman] Henry Ford II
was not the chairman

or the president of Ford Motor Company.

He was the emperor.

He really wanted to win races,

but he didn't care
about second place at all.

If you called him up and said,
"Well, we got second,"

you might as well not have
even finished the race.

[Shelby] I was with Don Frey and Leo Beebe
when he called us in,

and he had the name tags made in '65

where it says, "Ford wins Le Mans in '66."

"You want a job next June, don't you?"

Henry Ford had given him a business card

that Henry had written on the back of it,

"You better win."

There was a big Ford meeting in 1965

about how they were going to win Le Mans,

and it was decided that certain teams
would have certain responsibilities,

and they would all prepare cars
independently

and run them at the event.

Ford decided to expand its operation.

So,
instead of just having Shelby American,

they also hired Holman & Moody,

who was already running
their stock car operation,

and Alan Mann Racing

which had just won the GT Championship
with the Cobra Daytona Coupe.

[Baime] The vice to win
was tightening around Shelby.

Not only was his job on the line,

Ford had added two other teams
to put even more pressure on him.

So, there's competition all along,
not just Ford-Ferrari.

It's Ford within Ford.

Everyone worked extra hard, extra testing

to make everything really work.

If the engine blew,
they just lost their job.

[ominous music playing]

We knew we had some brake issues.

A heavier car, you just have to understand

that, you know,
it's not gonna stop as easy

and especially Le Mans
because of the Mulsanne Straight.

So you got 3.2 miles,

and the brakes would go from 1,200 degrees
to zero every single lap.

I don't think they had the material

that would withstand,
you know, the repeated cycle.

[Holman] Kinetic energy at the end
of that 3.5-mile straight

was so high from the brake temperatures

and so forth that the brakes would have
probably lasted two or three hours

and that would have been all.

[Brock] Phil Remington figured out

how to make a quick-change brake setup
on the Shelby American GT40.

He changed the discs and the calipers

and the whole braking system on it.

The fact that we could change
the brakes in one minute

was the key.

[ominous music playing]

[engine revving]

[announcer] Racing for the flag
in the 24-Hour Daytona Continental.

[Baime] Ford had five GT40 MKIIs
in the running

led by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby

and Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant.

[announcer] Miles takes the lead,
quashing the last Ferrari threat.

[Baime] For the first time,
Ford wins 1-2-3 at Daytona.

[announcer]
This is the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Can the Fords win two in a row,

and can Ferrari come back
after a rather dismal start

at the beginning of this year?

[engines revving]

[announcer] It's neck and neck now.

Mark, Miles, Gurney
close enough to cover with a blanket

as they roar through the Websters.

Team manager Carroll Shelby
keeps a paternal eye on the situation,

tells Ken Miles to lower
his lap times and catch parts.

[Baime]
The GT40s and the P Series Ferraris

battle each other all race...

neither giving in an inch.

[announcer] So, with night full on,
it's Ford, Ford, Ford.

Sebring is another 1-2-3 finish
for the Ford GT40s.

All that's left is Le Mans.

[Shelby] You'll probably see us around
as a competitor at Le Mans

for a long time to come,

and I'm talking about as a real threat,

where it's taken us
about three or four years

to get onto the type of racing here

and the type of race
that this particular race is

which is the only one like it
in the world.

[Patrick] My brother and I,
in 1966 summer, were in Europe,

and Dad invited us to Le Mans.

We were not under the impression
of the pressure he was under.

If he had lost,
he was gonna be in trouble.

[Baime] Shelby knew he had
to stay ahead of the other GT40 teams.

And then there was Ferrari,
who would do anything to win.

I learned that Enzo Ferrari
wanted to meet me.

[ominous music playing]

[Bondurant] So, I went down and met him.

[Ferrari speaks Italian]

[Bondurant] And he said,
"Would you like to run with us?"

I said, "Yeah, I would."

[Baime] Ferrari had stolen
Shelby's world-champion driver

right out from under him.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Edsel] '66 was a great year for the GT40.

We won Daytona 1-2-3.
We won Sebring 1-2-3.

I went to Le Mans with him in 1966.

He had a smile on his face
the minute we got on the airplane.

I mean, he was really excited.

He was going over to beat the Europeans

on their own turf.

[Lerner] Even though I'd say
they were the odds-on favorite,

they had a history of failing
at Le Mans the past two years,

and, in fact, they'd never had
a car finish at Le Mans.

[Surtees] We had a strategy,

and we thought the only way
we would beat the Fords

would be if we could go along,

and from the very start of the race,

we could drive it like at Grand Prix,

because the drivers
in the Fords were all racers,

and they wouldn't just hold back.

They would have a go,

and there's some possibility
that we might be able to break the Fords.

[suspenseful music playing]

[cheering]

[Agapiou] Ken and Gurney were the rabbits,

so their job was to go out
and break the Ferraris.

When the race started, Ken Miles
didn't get his door closed correctly.

He got a terrible start.

And I thought, "Oh, this ended
right from the beginning."

[Shelby] Ken Miles, he was
the ultimate long-distance racer.

He could go very quickly if he had to.

[engine revving]

[Miles] Race, race, race.

His deal was competition.
He just loved to compete.

[Agapiou] The next 20 laps or so
were just incredible.

Ken was hauling ass.
I mean, he was just going so quick.

He wasn't backing off for anything

'cause it was his job
to break the Ferraris.

[suspenseful music playing]

[announcer] The MKII, driven
by Ken Miles and Dennis Hulme, is leading,

but it has been a battle all along

between car number one
and car number three,

Dan Gurney and Ken Miles,

and the Ferrari being driven
by Rodriguez and Ginther.

[Agapiou] Dan Gurney's car died
at about the 11th hour.

Ken is still really hauling ass.

I mean, he was just doing a great job.

We're still running away with the race.

[Baime] The Ferraris are dropping out.

[Agapiou] Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon,

they were running several laps back
but still running really strong.

A few hours from the finish,

it looked like the car
wasn't gonna break anyway.

-Ken was gonna win the race easy.
-[engine revving]

[Baime] Miles is now in first place,

and he's lapping at amazing speeds,

faster than they told him
he should be going.

Miles has won Daytona.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Baime] Miles has won Sebring.

So, if Ken Miles wins Le Mans,
it'd be the Triple Crown.

No driver had won
the three premier

long-distance
endurance races of the year.

The word came down,
presumably from my grandfather,

that he wanted this 1-2-3 finish.

[engine revving]

[Agapiou] A lot of it was people
were saying that Miles wins again,

and Ford wanted "Ford wins again."

Henry Ford told Carroll, he said,
"You got to slow him down."

[Agapiou] He's leaning on the pit
while waiting for his stint on the drive,

and that's when he first told me,
"They want me to back off."

[engine revving]

[Agapiou] They talked
to the Le Mans officials

saying that we can do a dead heat

which still meant
that Ken had to slow down

to let Bruce catch up, which he did.

[heroic music playing]

[Bondurant] Ford won 1-2-3.

And Henry Ford was so happy
he beat Ferrari.

[Ford III]
It was a relief for a lot of people

because this was a Herculean effort
to make this program a success.

[Shelby] I felt wonderful about us
winning one, two, and three.

If our people at Shelby American

hadn't developed a way
to change the rotors

in 20 seconds,
we would have never won the race.

We would have never blown
the Ferraris off.

That quick-change brake system
was a huge jump,

and that would never
have come out of corporate.

They would have never allowed it.

It was a shock, of course,
but that's auto racing.

One day, you lose.

[dramatic music fades]

[Agapiou] And when it came to the finish,

it was actually considered a dead heat,
but when Ken came out of the pit lane

to head for the circle, they kept
waving him off, yelling in French,

and we didn't know what was going on.

And then the FIA got involved and said,

"Well, just so you know..."

[referee] If there is a dead heat
across the finishing line,

the car that started farthest back

on the starting line must have covered
the greatest distance,

-so number two becomes the winner.
-[crowd chatter]

There wasn't gonna be a 1-2-3 finish.

Bruce was gonna win.

[speaking French]

[crowd cheering and applauding]

[Shelby] We made a horrible decision
with Ken Miles

and seeing the three cars
come over exactly together.

It was good politically
for Ford, so I couldn't argue with it.

Besides that, I worked for Ford,

and I'm not gonna go against Henry Ford.

[Agapiou] Ken ended up
getting cheated out of it.

[Bondurant] And it broke his heart.

[Shelby] I wish Ken Miles had won it
because he earned the win of the race.

I've always felt guilty about that,
but you can't change history.

That's what happened
and we'll have to live with it.

[Lerner] When they win the race,
Henry Ford is asked,

"Well, what happens now?"

Henry Ford says, "Well, we're gonna
come back next year and do it again."

[ominous music playing]

[Chance] At the latter part of '66,

Carroll Shelby, Phil Remington,

and the Shelby experts
were making a faster, quicker MKII-B.

[Ford III]
So my grandfather was determined

to make sure that people knew
that this was not some kind of fluke.

And so, development of the cars,

that continued in '66 with the J-Car.

It was a prototype that they had used

this kind of honeycomb pattern.

So, they sent it out to testing.

[engine revving]

[Chance] The car was being tested
by Ken Miles.

[engine roaring]

[somber music playing]

[Chance] The car broke.

He was doing 180 miles an hour.

It careened wildly.

It was unsurvivable.

They pointed to where
he was laying in the dirt,

and I could see
he was in pretty bad shape.

And then I started to go over there,
and they said, "Don't go."

[Shelby] I've never had a loss
that hit me as hard

as when we lost Ken.

[somber music continues]

[Shelby] Not only a friend
but he was a good engineer.

He was a good test driver.

As good a race driver as I ever knew.

And I can't say what a void
I felt when we lost him.

[somber music continues]

The loss of Miles was difficult to bear,

but losing Shelby,
that would destroy the company.

It was 1966.

This was six years after Shelby
was told by doctors

he only had five years left to live.

[Shelby] Jesus Christ, they told you
you weren't gonna live

five years in 1960, and every five years,

there's a new pill or a new operation.

He, in my opinion, knew more
than a lot of his doctors.

At his bedside,
there were stacks of medical journals,

and he would read
those things voraciously,

looking for something that could help cure
whatever ailment he had.

[Shelby] The doctor said,
"You had 40 heart attacks."

I used to get an angina attack.

I'd just sit down
and rest for five minutes.

And he said,
"You were having a heart attack,

all those... probably 40 times."

[Shelby]
And I'm a walking chemical depository.

At this point,
Shelby had routinely cheated death,

which was good news for Ford Motor Company

because they needed him now
more than ever.

[Lerner] In 1967,
when the season began at Daytona,

Ford showed up with, you know,
a full array of upgraded MKIIs.

[Chance] Ferrari wanted revenge after '66,

and he-- he brought, like, six cars.

[in Italian] Ferrari came to me
and told me:

"Mauro, the P3 lost.

Can you improve the P3?"

[in Italian] If we win, we'll come

to the wrong evaluation

of the factors that determine victory.

If we lose,

the reasons are always very clear.

Every time we lose,

we learn how to build new cars.

Ferrari shows up with a brand-new car.
It's called the 330 P4.

It's just... it's beautiful;
it looks stunning.

It's got a new engine that's derived
from their Formula One engine,

and it just kicks ass.

It's easy to think of the GT40
as being the iconic car of the time,

but the Ferraris
that were racing against them

were, in their own way,

the most sophisticated
sports cars ever built.

This was gonna be
a real showdown and a real race.

-[suspenseful music playing]
-[engines revving]

[engines roaring]

Ford had all these entries,
and they were all big blocks.

They started coming in one after the other

with broken transmissions.

[Baime] Only one out of six GT40s

finished at Daytona in 1967.

Ferrari won the 24 Hours of Daytona

with a 1-2-3.

[Lerner] Early in the career, they had
not been as durable as the opposition.

This is the first time the Ford
had ever been slower than the opposition.

Something needed to be done,
and it wasn't clear

how to make the MKII decidedly faster

in a short period of time.

[Shelby] Ah, we had a pile of crap.

One of them killed Ken Miles
out at Riverside.

They really needed a lot of development,

and we jumped in
and did in about three months

what it had taken Ford a couple years
to screw up back there.

[Baime] Shelby and his team
had to come up with a solution quickly.

There was no wind tunnel at the LAX shop,

but there was one in Dearborn.

Shelby knew what he had to do.

[Lerner] Phil Remington returned
to Dearborn

with two of his chief fabricators,

and they took the first J-Car chassis,

and they took it into the wind tunnel,

and they started literally
cutting away at the bodywork

to try to improve
the aerodynamics of the car.

They came up with a shape

that was so dramatically
different than the J-Car

that they dubbed the new car the MKIV.

And they went out and tested that,

and it proved to be faster
right out of the box

than the existing MKII.

It was decided to race the MKIV
at Sebring,

and if it did well at Sebring,

they would go ahead
and take that to Le Mans.

After Daytona,
Enzo Ferrari's P4s were so dominant,

he didn't even bother
sending them to Sebring.

The competition would be
between the old GT40 MKII-B

and the brand-new MKIV.

[announcer] By the Esses,
the Fords have gobbled up

the quick starting outfit,

and McLaren has assumed command
with Foyt second.

We go out there, and we're running seven

to ten seconds a lap faster.

[Baime] By nightfall,
the redesigned GT40 MKIV

is a full 12 laps ahead of the Ford MKII.

[Andretti] We raced it at Sebring
the first time and won,

and MKIV became the envy
of the competition.

[announcer] It's race week, and along
with nearly every Jean Barme

in the south of France

comes the world's finest racing machinery.

[Lerner] It would be the first time
that the MKIV and the P4

would face each other on the racetrack.

[announcer]
Ferrari has three of their factory P4s

in the top ten, and they finished 1-2-3

in the only other 24-hour race
of the season at Daytona.

The candy-colored Fords are the fastest

with six of the top ten
starting positions.

-[suspenseful music playing]
-[indistinct chatter]

[Chance] And as the race progressed,
the Fords took the lead.

The Ferraris were not too far behind.

[engine roaring]

[announcer] Now, from the air,
we see Gurney quickly accelerating

to become the leader on the 48th lap.

Foyt begins his two-hour stint
behind the wheel,

his first appearance
in competition at Le Mans

and with only ten practice laps
under his belt.

A.J. Foyt, the rookie
everyone was worrying about,

has charged into a seven-lap lead.

Fifteen cars have already dropped out

trying to keep up
with the bright red Ford.

[Baime] Ford was ecstatic
about the MKIV's performance,

but they kept a watchful eye on Shelby.

[Nowland]
Mr. Ford had his sergeants with him,

but they would come through
every two or three hours

and that happened all night long.

[Agapiou] I was in the pits
performing a pit stop.

I turned around to dart around
the other side of the car,

and I bashed into this one guy
standing there.

I said, "Move out of the way!"

I went to Al Dowd,
our team manager, I said,

"Can you get all these fuckers
out of the pits?"

I said,
"There's a great big guy down there.

I bashed straight into him.
What's he doing standing in our pits?"

-[playful music playing]
-Turns out it was Henry Ford. [chuckles]

And I thought, "Oh my God,
what have I done?"

So, I went and apologized, and he says,

"Don't worry, son," he says, "It's OK.

I shouldn't have been there.
I shouldn't have been in your way."

[announcer]
Roger McCluskey and Jo Schlesser,

both in MKIIs,

complete a five-car team
of Fords that are leading the way.

At 3:30 in the morning,
the whole complexion of the race changes

when Andretti spins his car,
bounces off the wall,

and stops in the middle of the track.

Seconds later, McCluskey
and Jo Schlesser spin out

trying to avoid Andretti.

No one is injured,
but all three cars must be retired.

[Laban] Ferrari hadn't given up,

and Ford did everything they could

to help Ferrari stay in the race.

They lost three cars in one accident.

[suspenseful music playing]

There was only one Ford left,
and that happened to be ours.

[announcer] Two factory Ferraris
are in hot pursuit,

now in second and third position.

Less than four hours to go,
Dan Gurney drives

the number one Ford for his last shift

before turning it over to A.J. Foyt

waiting in the pits,
who is scheduled to finish the race.

[engine revving]

[announcer] The Ferraris begin
to pick up the pace,

hoping to push the leading Ford
into a breakdown.

The Ford was
about three miles an hour faster

than the Ferrari.

Even though he was in the draft,

I could walk away from him down
the straightaway a little bit.

Ferrari were always fairly close
to the pace but never close enough.

[Laban]
It was the steamroller again. Ford won.

[announcer] There's the checkered flag.

-[heroic music playing]
-[crowd cheering]

[announcer] And Gurney climbs atop
the Ford MKIV.

It's an all-American win.

Fully American ethic
from tires to drivers to the car.

Gurney did a beautiful job

of not showing
Foyt how fast the car would go,

and Foyt did a fabulous job
in driving within his limits,

realizing that 24 hours is a long time,

taking care of the engine,
taking care of the gearbox.

[Baime] Ford went on to win
the 24 Hours of Le Mans again in 1968.

And again in 1969.

[Laban] Only two makes ever won Le Mans
in the 1960s.

Ferrari won the first half.

Ford won the second half.

[Baime]
In 1968 and 1969, the GT40 won Le Mans

without any factory support
from Ford or Carroll Shelby.

[announcer speaking indistinctly]

[Baime] By the end of the 1967 season,

Henry Ford II had achieved
what he set out to do:

dominate Le Mans and dominate Ferrari.

Racing hadn't had the effect
in terms of sales

that he had hoped for,

which made it easier
to terminate the racing program

and everything that was related to it.

[Holman] They shut Shelby down
in August of '67.

And when the shutdown came,

Ford just shut his operation off.
They just closed it.

[Patrick] So, by 60, late '67,

Dad didn't have any production cars there.

[Shelby] I was out of business at Ford.

It's almost surreal because there was
no real activity going on in the shop.

He really wasn't doing that much at all.

[Baime]
And then, seemingly out of nowhere,

a new opportunity shows up for Shelby.

The Sports Car Club of America
is gaining notoriety.

Major manufacturers
are now fielding teams.

Porsche, Triumph, Datsun, Toyota,

they were all in.

Unfortunately,
Shelby was a little late to the game.

He had a connection
at the Toyota factory team.

The only problem was
Toyota had already signed on

with his former employee, Peter Brock.

Peter got the job
of running the Toyota GTs.

Shelby got the deal out from under him.

So, Shelby became the Toyota team

with the 2000GT.

[Brock] I was really pretty upset
that he had gotten

the Toyota program
after they had originally given it to me.

After he'd been rejected
by the American Datsun,

Peter approached Datsun Japan

'cause he wanted to beat Shelby's Toyotas.

I ended up running against Shelby.

The competition was so stiff
on the West Coast

with the Triumph team and the Porsche team
and our team

that Shelby didn't really have a chance

at getting too many points
of winning anything

on the West Coast.

He tried to sneak off
to Stuttgart, Arkansas,

or someplace else to pick up
some cherry-pickin' points

in a region that wasn't too strong,

and my guys in his shop
would call me and say,

"We're going to Stuttgart."

And we'd load up and go to Stuttgart
to race against him

to make sure
that he didn't get any points.

We won pretty much every race that we ran.

[Brock] Shelby didn't qualify
for the national championship

in his first year.

And Toyota was so embarrassed,
they quit racing.

And then, we went on to win
all the championships with the Datsuns.

For Shelby, the racing business
had given him so much,

but now all it did was take.

Abandoned by Ford,

humiliated by his old employee,
Pete Brock,

and having achieved everything
he ever wanted to,

Shelby knew what he always knew

and that was when to move on.

[engines revving]

[Shelby] After we won Le Mans...

after we won the world championship...

I lost all interest.

There weren't any interesting cars
you could build.

It just got to be too much.

We were ready to fold our tent.

[Shelby] That little company
had a heart and soul

that no company that I've ever known

or seen around racing had.

It's, uh, it was something that
nobody was paid a lot of money.

Nobody gave a shit
how many hours they worked.

Just get it done.

There will never be
another little company like that.

[Baime] With Ford losing interest
in racing

and the entire industry
focused on emissions

and safety at the expense of performance,

Shelby decided to withdraw completely
from racing

for the next decade.

The automobile industry was putting
all kinds of demands on safety.

Dad wasn't wild about taking a Cobra

and running it into a wall
to see what it would do.

Kind of took the fun
out of the game for him.

[Shelby] Uh, you had to fool
with environmental problems,

emissions, and so forth
that we had to clean the environment up,

but there was nothing to do.

Performance went away.

We were introduced to the dismal '70s.

Shelby's frustration
with government interference

in the auto business made him
want to take a break from racing.

This gave him time
to pursue other ambitions.

Carroll had a propensity for women,

and he liked to be married
for some reason.

We don't know exactly
how many times he was married,

but it was probably north of seven
and south of ten.

Every time my brother
and I went out to California

and went into his house,

there was somebody else new there,

and they were all knockouts.

I was the photographer
at one of his weddings

that he denied ever took place.

He married a girl in Nassau.

Every time I mentioned it,
he said, "Dave," he said,

"I never married her."

But I said, "Carroll,
you want to see the pictures?"

I think Carroll was married
between five and seven times.

It was probably more than that.

At least, the ladies thought
they married him,

if that tells you anything. [chuckles]

He took her to a friend of his,
a justice of the peace in San Diego.

He wasn't a justice of the peace.

But she still got a divorce.

[Patrick] Nobody knows how many times
he was really married.

When he and Ford split up
in the late '60s,

he didn't look back. He was going on
to his next project.

As an entrepreneur,
he got into many different businesses.

He started
the Carroll Shelby Chili Company

along with
the International Chili Society.

[Shelby] I had 200,000 acres of rocks
down in West Texas that I'd bought,

so I needed to sell it,
and I didn't know what to do with it.

I went to a friend of mine

who was in the PR business
in Dallas, and he says,

"We're going to have the first
world championship chili cook-off."

[Shelby] It was only meant to be
a one-time event.

Lo and behold, it took off,
and it's gotten so big,

there's chili cook-offs
all over the United States.

[Oliver] He was just able to take an idea

and promote it and make it work.

[Baime] Shelby had left
the automobile business behind,

but the automobile business
had not forgotten about Carroll Shelby.

So, in 1982, an old friend comes calling.

Iacocca decided he needed
to jazz up Chrysler a little.

[Baime] In the early 1980s,

Chrysler was desperate
for a performance product.

[Shelby] Iacocca called me one day
and says,

"Hey, I need some help."

We put this thing together
and we sold 8,000

of those things the first year.

[Baime] The innovations
that Shelby was making

under Iacocca's leadership at Chrysler

were boosting the company's bottom line.

Shelby and Iacocca
were working on what would become

Chrysler's most exciting
performance vehicle ever,

but halfway through the design of the car,

Shelby's old nemesis caught up with them.

His heart was failing,
and this time for good.

[Aaron] When he was with Chrysler,

his health was going down pretty fast.

And his doctor said he needed a new heart

if he was gonna continue on much longer.

[Shelby]
It finally got so bad in about '86

that I have to sleep sitting up in bed

with my lungs filling up, and I was told

that I'd have to, uh, have a transplant
if I was to survive.

[Baime] Without an appropriate donor,

this was a man who was
coming to grips with the fact

that he was probably about to die.

And here comes the 34-year-old
in Vegas somewhere

that falls over with an aneurysm.

He's brain-dead.

[Shelby] My coordinator,
she came in and said,

"Shelby, I think we might
have found you a heart."

There will never be words

that are any sweeter than that.

[Patrick] So, Dad gets
a 34-year-old heart.

Not a 60-year-old, not a 70-year-old.

A 34-year-old gives him a new heart.

[Aaron] And it really just gave him
a new lease on life,

and it allowed him to want
to go function and succeed

at some other projects
that he had in mind.

[dramatic music playing]

[Shelby] We're coming out
with a very interesting car

called the Viper
that I just drove last week.

-[crowd applauding]
-I can tell ya for sure

that it's a worthy successor to the Cobra,

and it's a hell of an automobile.

I think the name Viper
was Chrysler's version of Cobra,

you know, a snake.

[Baime] Shelby was healthy again,

and he brought to the Viper the same
enthusiasm which he used decades earlier

to charm the world with the first vehicle
he ever sold.

Chrysler's homage to Shelby was a hit

and a fitting end to his reunion
with his old friend, Lee Iacocca.

[Baime] Back to his old self,
Carroll set out to do something

he'd never done before.

Carroll began to dream
of building another original car.

[Shawn] He really wanted to produce a car

that had the same kind of impact

that the Cobra did back in the day,

and I think one that
he could look at and say,

"I made this. It didn't come
from another company.

We produced this."

No one was designing
and building their own car

from the ground up
as an independent company.

And so he started designing
the Series One in the early '90s.

We just put down some designs.

He got a deal with Oldsmobile,
so he used their engine.

[Shelby] I went on to build
the best sport car

that I ever built out in Las Vegas.

It's a beautiful car, it really is.

It cost him a lot more money
than he made out of it.

[Shawn] It's a good example
of Carroll putting everything he has

into a project, which he's done,
I think, throughout his life.

[Baime] In true Shelby fashion,
Carroll put everything he had

into the Series One.

[Shawn] Unfortunately, as can often happen

when you leverage everything that you have
towards a particular business,

he faced some struggles
that nearly wiped him out.

[Baime] Carroll had survived
the pursuit of a dream

that would prove costly.

[Baime] Luck was in the cards for Carroll.

He would have the opportunity
to end his career

the way he started it:
by returning to Ford.

Edsel Ford was instrumental
in that, quite frankly.

He'd known Carroll
since the '60s, and they were close.

[Edsel] My father decided that
I should work for a summer,

so he said to me, "You know, Edsel,

you've got to figure out
where you want to work."

I said, "I want to work
for Carroll Shelby."

[Ford III] He hired my dad
as like an intern for the summer

'cause I think my grandfather
probably made him,

but my dad loved it.
And-- And I think, in many ways,

Carroll was
like a father figure to my dad.

I reached out to Carroll, and I said,

"You know, we got to get you
back in the family."

In 1962, he had to come with them

and sell them the ideas,
and he had spent his lifetime

coming to and selling his ideas.

To have somebody come to him and say,

"You've got the name,
you've got some of the expertise,"

really kind of put
a half a step in his walk.

[Shelby] I never dreamed
that I'd still be in the business

and working with Ford again
at 82 years old,

and I couldn't be happier.

[Aaron] Ford was introducing
in '05 and '06

the new Ford GT which was, again,

a retro view of the GT40
back from the '60s.

And so, you know, Carroll was there
for the introduction of that.

And then shortly thereafter followed

the new Shelby Mustang
that Ford produced in 2007.

[Baime]
Millions of car fans were psyched to see

the Shelby logo on Ford cars again.

[engine revving]

[Edsel] He came back, and I kept on
asking him, "Are you happy?

Are you happy with where you are today?"

And he always said, "Oh, yes."

He said, "This is where
I always wanted to be, Edsel."

It was always meant to be
that Carroll Shelby

would always be somehow connected

with the Ford Motor Company, always.

[Shelby]
I couldn't be happier than to be with Ford

and know that I'm going to be there
the rest of my life.

[Michael] In the last year of his life,
he said,

"I want to drive down to the lake

and the timberland one more time."

And he said, "I want to drive.
It's important that I drive."

This was the lake
that he had built, a 30-acre lake.

But he drove all the way around that lake

and all the way around the property,

and he got to see a thousand-acre property

and a 30-acre lake.

[somber music playing]

[Michael]
Going back to the house, he said,

"This is probably the last time
I'll drive down here to the lake."

Every American kid who grew up
loving cars lost a giant today,

and for some of us hardcore car guys,
he was a hero.

His name was Carroll Shelby.

I really enjoyed...
I loved Carroll Shelby; I really did.

He was... he was a magical person,
just magical.

This guy is such an icon,
such a hero to so many people.

[engine roaring]

[Neale] I think he appreciated
the good things

that happened to him,
but they weren't given to him.

He sure worked at it,
and I admired that a lot.

[Michael] He could bounce back
from almost anything.

I saw him do that over,
and over, and over again.

And if he had a bad race,
it was the same thing.

He'd put it behind him. "You know,
you had a bad play, but that's OK.

The next play is gonna work."

Well, I think when you say "Shelby,"

I think you think of the Cobra.
That car was so dominant.

[Agapiou] Mainly 'cause it was built
from a bunch of hot rodders

into a world championship winning car.

I feel privileged that
I was there when it started.

[Chance] He has always given
everybody else credit,

and he's never ever tried
to take credit for something.

And when he came to the shop,

he was a father and a friend
and a fun guy.

[Clinard] An inspiration.

He provided the vision
on how things could be done,

and Ford said,
"Yeah, we trust you. Go do it."

I just think it's fantastic
that the Shelby name

continues to move forward,
especially with the Ford brand.

I know that that was one
of Carroll's biggest wishes,

uh, before he passed away.

They appreciate the brand

and the man more than that.

[Michael] Come out of a little bitty
Leesburg, Texas,

son of a rural mail carrier,

and be a powerhouse in a huge industry...

That's how I'd like to think
of my dad from now on.

[Shelby] But I want to be known
as someone that loved what I did,

that loved my family.

I think the most important thing in life

is never give up

and never forget
how thankful you should be.

[engine roaring]

[tires screeching]

[mid-tempo music playing]