All language subtitles for Shelby American (2019) (Shelby.American.2019.1080P.Webrip.X264-Rarbg.m4v) (ENGLISH)

And Shelby rides again,
a tall man from Texas

on a long night they drive,
in a solitary high-speed

world of sun, broken only
by routine stops to refuel.

24 hours is a long
time, so it's a lot of luck.

The first pains I had in my chest,
and I knew that something was wrong.

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.

Melina returns to the race.

I was forced to drive
at Nitroglycerin Field.

When I would have the
pain in my chest, I'd pop

one of them and slow
down for a couple of laps.

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.

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
just whip it in the head.

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.

He was a great driver.

The only automobile racing we
had were 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.

I got my driver's
license at 14 years old.

The first thing I'd do is
take my dad's 34 Dodge out

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

Shelby grew up during
the Great Depression.

And 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.

World War II had begun.

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

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

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.

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
Jean 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.

I had a high school
friend named Ed Wilkins.

We built his old car 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 MGTC.

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.

I think he realized then
there was something to it.

He didn't make the money back
then that you could make money.

He could make racing
cars today, obviously.

It was not very lucrative
from a salary perspective.

But he was good at it.

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.

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.

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.

Chicken overalls was a win to start
with, but he realized it gave him a brand.

He then continued to do
that and it built his persona.

And it didn't take but about another year
or so for a couple of 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, how fast he happened.

But that was due to
his aggressiveness.

He could sell
anything in the world.

He sold his racing to
whoever could afford it.

A four and a half liter Ferrari is
the entry of Gordy Guyberson.

Carroll Shelby is the driver.

Shelby's winning on the
track was equaled by success.

A success on the farm.

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

A tidy sum for that day.

He thought he was
on the road to riches.

I was sticking a needle
in these chickens.

Keep from getting
Newcastle's disease.

All the chickens died
eventually and I went broke.

Shelby lost 20,000 birds
over a two day period.

He was instantly bankrupt.

There was probably one or two
little survivors poking their heads.

But not a going
business at that point.

They were all dead.

Growing up in
East Texas as a kid.

Very poor circumstances.

Living through the depression.

He realized the world
turns upside down

every day on somebody
that was on top of it.

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

Particularly after the
chicken business went under.

That was a 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 going to
work for somebody else.

That wasn't really
his personality.

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

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.

Racing came naturally to Shelby.

In 1953 he raced nine times.

He won five races
and was second twice.

Number 20 takes the curve on the
inside and leaves the others behind.

That's Carroll Shelby.

And that bit of driving
sends him to the front.

My dad never made
much money racing.

And he knew that was
the way it was going to 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 was 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.

Shelby wanted a 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.

He wound up in 1954 going
over to Europe for the first time.

And raced with Aston
Martin at Le Mans.

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 have broke.

And when they said
you can go to Argentina.

I mean I think he turned
heaven and earth to

figure out how to get a
plane ticket down there.

Then he came back
and he went to Mexico.

The Mexican road race in 1954
I was driving an Austin Healey.

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

I started at the Guatemalan
border and wound up in Juarez.

It was a couple of thousand miles and
nobody could learn the course completely.

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.

Actually I was going
along pretty good.

I was keeping up
with the Ferraris.

And ahead of all the Lincolns in
this little four cylinder Austin Healey.

And screwed up.

The car flipped over.

Cars that could not
withstand sudden stops.

Fatalities would happen.

No seat belts at that point in time
so he was thrown out of the car.

It's so hard the hickory
handle, the knock off

handle broke my elbow
and chopped up a little bit.

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

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.

The Grand Prix 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 fifties.

Fire is racing's worst enemy.

But you gotta keep going.

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

The one group of people
who just accepted it

as part of the job were
the drivers themselves.

But it didn't scare you
enough to stop driving?

No, I won the next
race at Riverside.

After breaking his arm, he
used to drive with the gas on

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

That shows his true grit.

He'd have the broken
arm and still continue.

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.

He drove big 4.9 Ferraris.

And he drove
giant 5.7 Maseratis.

And he drove the bird cages.

And he won and
he won and he won.

And he wore his bib overalls
and he was a showman.

There's an article in one of
the London papers that talked

about the 10 gallon hat man
coming over to challenge the stars.

And here was this big
man with his Stetsna hat on.

And he looked every inch.

The big man in the desert,
hunting out the baddies.

And everybody was impressed
with the way he drove.

To win, you've got to have the
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.

From 1955 to 1957,
Shelby drove in 81 races.

He came in first place
over half the time.

He won Sports Illustrated's
Driver of the Year award twice.

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

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.

Shelby raced all over the
world, winning wherever he went.

But racing in Europe for him
meant something different.

He was studying the cars.

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.

Carroll Shelby made two trips to Ferrari in
the mid-1950s, essentially as a customer.

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 thing.

Enzo Ferrari was
never a big thing.

Enzo wanted
nothing to do with him.

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

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.

And it was during the night, Dad
just methodically started moving up.

And he certainly wasn't
the fastest on the track.

Just plugging along, kind
of like a tortoise in the hair.

Shelby now drives Aston No.

5 through the essence.

And with eight hours
still to go, Ferrari No.

14 leads Aston Martin No.

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.

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.

The pain grew so great, Shelby
would sometimes double over in agony.

The only relief was temporary and
came in the form of nitroglycerin pills,

which he'd replace 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.

Whilst it will stand,
Shelby brings the

Aston onto the same
lap as the sick Ferrari.

And now the
Ferrari's race is run.

Jean de Vienne brings his
crippled car into the pits to retire.

Now the winner falls in to
be submerged beneath a

seething mass, eager to
acclaim a resounding victory.

A victory as richly deserved
as it was long awaited.

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.

It was probably the
peak of his career.

Finally his doctor told him, you can't
keep racing cars, it's going to kill you.

Shelby tried to keep racing in 1960, but
he realized he needed to stop for good.

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.

With his racing career over, Shelby had
already been planning his next endeavor.

Carroll was trying
several things.

He didn't know for sure what
he was going to 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, at the driving school.

Most people who enjoy
motor racing find the more they

learn about it, the more
interesting the sport is to them.

I don't know anybody any
more qualified to pass along

some of these fundamentals
than our own Pete 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.

In 1960, 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.

The

second, I could race
under American colors and

maybe pride the old
established names a little bit.

Because the Corvettes
were winning everything.

And I said, Carroll is
never going to help it.

He said, yes it is.

Corvettes were the prominent
car in racing at that point.

And Shelby definitely, he definitely
wanted to beat the Corvettes.

There's no doubt about it.

He knew if he wanted to
make a name for himself as a

car manufacturer, he had
to build a Corvette killer.

Carroll was an
entrepreneur at heart.

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

He had always dreamed about, even when
he was in Europe the first time, a European

lightweight chassis with
a light American V8 in it.

Ray Brock with Peterson Publications came
to me and said, Ford has a new small block

V8 and you might put
something together with them.

And I also knew that
AC had lost their deal.

A 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 going to 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 Billy Saul Estes.

My dad used to call him
Billy Saul after Billy Saul

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

Billy Saul Estes was another
Texan who managed to sell

non-existent tanks of
fertilizer to the government.

And he made a lot
of money doing that.

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.

I went to Lee Iacocca and
said, if you loan me $25,000

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

That's all it'll cost you.

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 them

and I want to go race
them all over the world.

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.

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.

And finally Iacocca said, just get that
guy out of here, give him a couple of

engines and some money
and let's see what he can do.

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.

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.

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 towns
build them drag streets.

He's on it and in the
three quarters, he's really

coming on and in the traps
with a top time of 170.45.

Miles per hour.

The epicenter was right
in Southern California.

Lance Reventlo 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.

I got a couple of engines
sent out to Dean Moon's

shop in Los Angeles and
we started working on them.

The AC chassis had also
arrived in Southern California.

The public relations manager for Carol
asked me to come down Dean Moon's in Santa

Fe Springs and take some
pictures of a car being built.

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

Nobody knew if
it was run or not.

The chief engine member for Dean
Moon built the engine, got it running.

We started putting whatever
carburetor manifold on

it and got the engine up
to about 265 horsepower.

Carol took it for a spin.

And said, where's the Corvette?

I like driving the Cobra
Roadster very much.

It sort of flaunted
all the rules.

It was still light.

Good brakes on it.

And the engine had a
broad range of torque.

And they were just
a lot of fun to drive.

Across the county in Venice,
Lance Reventlo and his

Scarab racing team were
moving in the opposite direction.

While the car was competitive, Reventlo had
had his fill of the high cost of racing.

If you look at the core of
the Shelby American team,

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

And Carol took it over
when Reventlo quit racing.

And some of the people
just stayed with the building.

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.

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, a machine, a fabricator,
right then and there.

The guy was just amazing.

He had seven ideas and he only
needed one, but they were all pretty good.

And he taught a lot of people.

He taught 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, Carol wanted to create the

impression that Shelby American
was bigger than it really was.

There's a slight problem.

Shelby only has one Cobra.

Carol 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 and Track.

And so when his car was completed,
he had them all lined up to go test it.

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.

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 he got something special.

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.

It was really a very
interesting time.

We had a lot of spirit
around the place.

You gotta realize
we're a very small group.

We're like about
eight guys total.

We had Frenchmen,
we had a Swiss, we had

Japanese, New Zealand,
and Australian guys there.

And all these guys worked
together amazingly well.

They were all little bit of
road racers, hot rodders.

It was a great shop to work in.

It was like one big
family, abusing each other.

There was a lot of
nicknames down there, yeah.

But we hired a shop
foreman named Carol Smith.

Scattershit was his nickname.

Ken Miles called me.

He called him the hawk.

And some people called
him side-by, you know,

because he talked out
of the side of his mouth.

It was a good day for Ford.

I'm very happy for Ford.

I'm very sorry that
things went down.

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

Gordon Chance was Ricky Nelson
because he looked just like Ricky Nelson.

Ricky Nelson, the teenage tuner.

And isn't this all funny?

Well, Remington, he was twitchy.

His nickname was
SDP, Super Twitch Phil.

That stayed with him that bit.

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 put him in the engine
room and fire him in a pipe there.

The guy's working on the
engines and shit like that.

And it was really
echoing in there.

Ferrari was contentious.

He pitted people
against each other.

It was not a happy
place to work.

At Shelby America, 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 welcome.

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 them.

I wasn't getting 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.

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 10 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.

The Corvette was the car to beat and that
was our primary challenge with the Cobra.

This Corvette was developed by Chevrolet
engineers, headed by Zora Arkas-Dunthoff,

internationally known
designer and racing driver.

It had the first head-to-head
competition at Riverside.

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

Bondurant, Dick Goldstrand,
and Dave McDonald.

And Billy Crouse shows
up in the first Cobra.

Billy Crouse, 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.

The first time we showed up at Riverside
with the Cobra, nobody knew what to think.

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

McDonald 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 going to drive
the heck out of the Corvette.

I didn't have to guess if he was
trying or not, because I knew he was.

Crouse, he went out
and led immediately.

And it showed that the car was way,
way ahead of whatever Corvette was doing.

As soon as it appears at Riverside in
its first race, it dominates the Corvette.

Makes it look second-rate.

Actually, I was surprised how easy it
was to beat the Corvette with the Cobra.

It was at least a
half a lap ahead.

Come out of turn nine, which is a
banked turn, all of a sudden it went boom.

Then the wheel
and tire passed me.

I said, this is not good.

And the Cobra was handily leading
the race and broke a stub axle.

And the Stingray won.

But everyone knows that the
Cobra is going to dominate thereafter.

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 riding 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.

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.

We were 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 a thousand.

Carroll Shelby and his Cobras win
the Manufacturers' Championship.

Cobra creator Carroll Shelby
has risen from the dead.

The alliance is ambitious.

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

and of course the
USRC 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 him and actually

beat him, it was a
huge accomplishment.

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

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.

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.

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, when
on Sunday, sell on Monday.

We didn't have that performance component
of our brand that customers wanted.

Ford had the Galaxy, Ford
had the Thunderbird, but

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

Henry isn't about to race, sees a Ferrari
win, and says, we need those red cars.

The solution to win Le Mans quickly was
to simply purchase Shelby's rival, Ferrari.

Since Shelby's win at 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.

Try to accommodate your
desires as best we can.

My father thought that this
was going to be a done deal.

Ford Motor Company was going to
walk away with an incredible brand.

Ferrari said, no, I
don't want to sell it.

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.

My father was
extremely disappointed.

That's when he decided, all
right, we're going to beat you.

And we're going to beat you at
your own game, in your backyard.

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 going to be a
suitable car for Europe.

Because it simply
didn't have the top speed.

We wanted to go
international racing.

And the old 289 Cobra
was about a year old.

It was as aerodynamic
as a shoebox.

The tracks we ran on in this country didn't
run over 150, 55 miles an hour anyway.

So it didn't run up to 155
miles an hour and just stopped.

It was like pushing a
brick through the air.

Shelby knew that Cobra did
not have the aerodynamics to

blast 200 miles an hour down
the Mulsanne Strait at Le Mans.

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, do you think we could
build a streamlined version of the Cobra?

I said, we can design a completely
new body for the existing Cobra chassis.

And I think that we can
make them go faster.

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

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

Is it going to go fast?

And I said, I believe it will.

The actual idea for this shape
of a body had been a long time.

It was developed in the
late 1930s in Germany

by a guy named Reinhard
Koenigs von Faschenfeld.

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 a car into thinking
that it was going to go that far.

It might look so different that there
would 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 them.

So the idea went away.

World War II comes along.

All of that
information was lost.

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 going to 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 back.

It came from Phil
Remington, who was our

chief engineer, and
the guy who 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
going to 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.

I mean, everyone was abusing him, saying
it wasn't going to work and this and that.

Especially the upper echelon.

When I looked at the Pete
Brock coupe, I thought, you know,

that thing's going to be 200,
maybe 300 pounds heavier.

And it's going to
bog down the engine.

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

But he had Shelby on his
side and that's all it really meant.

So I didn't really know
anything about aerodynamics.

It looked pretty good to me.

Aeroneutronics, the 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 going to work.

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 on to something.

And he convinced Carol 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.

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

Shelby American
wasn't just racing.

It was producing
Cobras for street cars.

It was for street use,
and demand was high.

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

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.

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

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

Once the car started going well,
they all dived in and everybody

contributed something
to make the car right.

Bill Remington and Ken Miles
and John Olson and Don Allen,

they all put together a chassis
and we built the first body.

It looked kind of funny
with that chopped-off tail,

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

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

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.

It was 25 miles an hour
faster down the back

straightaway at Riverside
than a regular Cobra.

Right out of the box,
the car was three and a

half seconds faster than
anything we'd ever run.

Ken was amazed how
fast that car was going.

It ran pretty well.

It would run 170 miles an hour
down the straight on 350 horsepower.

Paints didn't
put a stripe on it.

It was an incredible design
that Pete had come up with it.

Carol said, let's get
this thing back to the

shop and we'll try to
get it ready for Daytona.

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.

We'll make it happen.

When we got down to
Daytona, Carol had assigned

Bob Holbert and Dave
McDonald 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.

Enzo Ferrari and his
team knew very little about

the new American race
car with the strange body.

But they were about to find out.

When the race started, the Daytona Coupe
and the Ferrari were battling for the lead.

Holbert goes out.

He's running
against the Ferraris.

And he comes back
in after a couple laps.

He says, this is too easy.

He says, I can run off
and lead these guys easily.

After 110 laps, the Daytona Coupe had
built a 10-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.

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.

They came in for a pit stop.

Put the fueler in.

It burst out the other side.

It laid out the vent cap and
ran down and caught on fire.

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

One of our boys from New Zealand
was absolutely engulfed in flame.

We're trying to put Olsen out.

Meanwhile, he's screaming,
you know, I dropped my wallet.

So we got his wallet for him.

And Carol was so angry
with the whole situation.

And he said, we're done.

And the mechanics were saying,
Carol, 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.

Shelby puts his foot
down and retires the car.

So the car didn't win it.

But we did set
the lap record on it.

And then we went to Sebring.

Shelby's Cobras led by the
number 10 Daytona Coupe

caused a stir as they
moved through inspection.

The reaction after Daytona was rather
mixed because obviously we'd shown great

speed, but the car had
also proven pretty vulnerable.

It had blown up.

The reigning Ferraris.

They dominate the prototype class
with two 4-liter and two 3-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 race forever.

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.

I never saw anybody
in an equal race car that

I didn't figure that I
could hold my own with.

It'd be great for motor racing if American
cars could beat the Ferrari's once.

They've broken on five earlier than
they've ever jumped the gun before.

Kinski gets away
just in front of Holborn.

The race died.

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.

It didn't take long for
people to understand

that the car was going
to be really, really fast.

It was an absolutely amazing
group of guys from Venice, California,

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

Carroll Shelby with the
Ferrari GTOs, taking the

Manufacturers' Championship
lead at the same time.

Holborn and McDonald
led the GT winners.

By the time that
Holborn and Davy won at

Sebring, I think Ferrari
would have some concern.

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.

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'd been insulted

by Enzo Ferrari at one time, and he wanted
to go back and show what Americans can do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Win Le Mans.

The whole planet knows.

There was a tremendous
amount of publicity for the fact

that Ford Motor Company was
going to enter the Le Mans race.

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.

Millions of dollars had
been devoted to this project.

It was getting
tremendous, tremendous

publicity, you know, with
the Ford PR campaign.

The style of the GT40 was really
representing a big change in motor racing.

My father was
surprised about the car.

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

It was clearly a
very dynamic design.

Although Shelby was using a Ford engine,
that's where the relationship stopped.

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

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 that's a 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.

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 put
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.

The Le Mans
24-hour race at last.

And three gleaming
Ford GTs are present.

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

In the opening laps,
the GT40 is furiously fast.

There's a helicopter
camera car following it.

Its top speed is incredible.

The cars were fast.

Richie Guenther was particularly quick
and was challenging the Ferrari, which was

really his job because
he was the lead car.

Richie Guenther 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.

Do you recognize him?

Have you got anything up your sleeve that
you can sort of pull out a little bit more?

I can pull out 15 seconds,
but I know you wanted it.

We're trying to finish 24 hours.

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

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 race is followed by Dan
Gurney and Bob Bondurant.

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

It seriously hinders their
ability to win the race.

Ford's first casualty is
Richard Atwood from Britain.

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 woof
underneath the bonnet.

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 going to happen now.

We're starting 55 cars.

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

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

Richie Ginther's
GT40 is retired.

13 hours into the
race, Bill Hill goes also.

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.

And when you had long straightaways,
we had just blown Ferrari off the wheels.

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.

Here is 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.

I was thinking, are we
going to win overall?

We were leading there
for a little while overall

and there wasn't
anything that could beat us.

They were competing
against one of the lead Ferraris.

And they run those
guys into the ground.

We got in a rock through
the oil cooler in the front.

And it had a little pit hole and it
was spitting oil out all over everything.

So they had to
drive it really gently.

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

It never missed a lick.

Amazing.

The Oil League prevented the Daytona
Coupe from winning Le Mans outright.

But Shelby and his team still
won the GT class, beating Ferraris.

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

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.

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.

So once again, Ferrari wins Le
Mans in 1964, first, second and third.

Henry Ford, the
second, is not pleased.

He wanted somebody who had
demonstrated that ability to win.

Ford has always known, and
the whole industry has always

known, that Shelby is the
guy who can get it done.

Carroll Shelby had
won Le Mans as a driver.

Had won Le Mans as a
manufacturer with the Daytona Coupe.

And it was after 1964 that he brought in
Carroll Shelby to help develop the cars.

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, was the endurance.

These 12-hour and 24-hour races are,
you know, demanding beyond reason.

Carroll Shelby knew
the task for them.

I can remember when the two
GT40s actually came into our shop.

They still had wire wheels
on them 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, everything was redesigned.

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.

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 house.

It was a housewife's car in 64.

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.

And then, you know,
along comes Carroll Shelby.

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 to get a better shop.

They moved from that small shop at Princess
Street, and they moved to the airport.

I got an explanation And
I'm on my way There's

no hesitation I don't
know how Shelby slept.

He had his tire division going.

He had the race shop going.

He 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.

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

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

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

The oldest guy there was Shelby.

He was 40.

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.

Carroll Shelby was a
promoting, 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 was to be in

the front page of any
paper anywhere he was.

Every little movement Every little thing
you do Is it slight of hand that commands

my heart to love you 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.

It was there to
promote Carroll Shelby.

Few people realized,
back when all this was

happening, Ford had
taken over Shelby American.

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.

It became a division
of Ford Motor Company.

And so the other side of it
was, he was a factory team.

He was their boy.

They owned him.

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.

The whole atmosphere changed.

It went from a cool race shop to
a, you know, to a corporate entity.

It got a little bit more
sterile when we moved to

the airport, because now
there were more rules.

It was just a
different environment.

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.

Shelby American was
experiencing growing pains.

It was no longer a little shop filled
with bad-ass 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.

This GT350 is a racing version
of Ford's Mustang 2 Plus 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.

We put lighter aprons and plexiglass
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 our

models, and they were
strictly for the track.

The 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.

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.

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...

Zebra...

Le Mans...

And at the end of 1964, Carroll
Shelby really wanted just one thing.

He wanted to beat Ferrari.

Ferrari for the World
Manufacturers' Championship.

With one race left at
Monza, the Daytona was

going to 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 going to go to
Monza with four Daytona coupes.

We would have
absolutely crushed Ferrari.

Enzo Ferrari seized
the writing on the wall.

There's no way he's
going to 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.

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.

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.

Ken Miles drove it at first.

He didn't like it at all.

I hopped in it 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 it worked out, it
got better, and better, and better.

We have high hopes for
all 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.

43 cars.

29 from Europe and 14
from America will start

the 2,000-kilometer
Daytona Continental.

So the GT40s show
up at Daytona in 1965.

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

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.

At the beginning of the race, Bob Bondurant
in the GT40 flies by Surtees in a Ferrari.

Bob Bondurant sips into the first
turn, opening up number 72 Ford GT.

By the time we got to turn two,
I was doing 200 miles an hour,

and I pulled Surtees'
18 car lengths.

My car felt great.

I was like, yes!

We fixed it, and it worked.

With all the changes that Remington
made, they got the car moving very quickly.

This race was the first
race that GT40s finished.

The last lap.

The Americans have won.

They've overthrown the Ferraris.

This was a magnificent win for Shelby,
and you could 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.

The next race for the
factory team was at Sebring.

With the GT40 and four
Cobras running strong,

Shelby is delighted with
how the team is performing.

It's

the worst value ever
recorded at Sebring.

You take a tire off and
change it, and if you

didn't grab it, it literally
would float away.

It's the worst value
ever recorded at Sebring.

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

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

He was trying to get out of the
car, and Shelby's going, God damn it,

he's staring and he's
pushing him on the shoulder.

And I'd gotten a wheel
hammer and a giant ice pick, and

I'm smashing holes in the
floor, to drain the water out.

Meanwhile, Phil's screaming, because
he thinks I'm going to hit him in the balls

or something, so I'm with
the hammer, because I'm right

between his legs with the
hammer and the ice pick.

And he's yelling, watch it,
you're going to castrate me.

So he's trying to get out, and Shelby's
pushing him back in, saying, God damn it,

Phil, get back in the car, he's
not going to hit you, or it hurts.

A funny pit stop, that one.

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, I
will be there in June.

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.

This is the year of Ford's
great challenge, an American

invasion on the supremacy
of the Italian giants.

The pre-race drama had centered on the
strongest ever challenge from Americans.

They declared their
intention to beat Ferrari.

In 1965, it was starting
to get really serious.

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 1970.

In 1964, there's
a huge audience.

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

For the first time at Le Mans, an
American car is actually favored to win.

Chris Amon's first away
in the Ford 7-Liter, followed

by Bob Bondurant, Bruce
McLaren, and Surtees.

At the S's, the 7-Liter Ford GTs are
pulling away from the works Ferraris,

and the leading Ford
sets a blistering pace.

Bruce McLaren in one of the
427s and Chris Amon in the second.

By the time they're
at the end of them

straight, the Ferraris
aren't even in sight.

Ford had really built
some good engines.

And somebody at Ford decided to
replace them just before Le Mans.

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.

But now the McLaren Miles
Ford is in gearbox trouble.

Already the Ferrari grip
on the race tightened.

What happened was they got
some new head bolts, and they

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

By midnight, with the
race only one third through,

the Ford Challenge had
been shattered by Ferrari.

All the cars broke.

Ford made the decision to tell Shelby to
take them all out and put in Ford engines.

It didn't work out.

That was a disastrous race.

If I had not have changed
an engine, I would have won.

Again, the Fords broke.

They made simple
engineering mistakes.

And Ferrari didn't.

Only one Ferrari
prototype finished the race.

But that was enough to win it.

And Ferrari also
won the GT class.

And they finished 1-2-3 overall.

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

The press called it
murder, Italian style.

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.

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 that?

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 GT40's
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
Manufacturer's Championship.

If the car can win at
the 12 Hours of Le Mans.

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.

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 engineers.

The steering and Brock's design.

They were my co-driver.

We both wanted to
win that championship.

We were running nice and strong across the
finish line, and we knew we just won the

race and won the World
Manufacturer's Championship.

First time any
American ever won it.

That was the last time
any American ever won it.

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.

That's the one race, that championship
that Carroll Shelby wanted the most.

He was so proud when we won the
World Manufactured Championship.

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 arse.

And he loved it ever afterwards.

When we won it in 1965, it was probably the
greatest day of my life up until that time.

Ferrari personally took it very hard
when Shelby beat him in the Daytona.

And Reims is the
capital of Champagne.

So we celebrated immensely.

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

Henry IV's dissatisfaction at
Le Mans had reverberations

that were shaking the
foundation of Shelby American.

The decree comes
down from Henry.

Put that ship to the side and start getting
these GT40s done and do it right now.

And that crushed Peter, clearly.

The Daytona coupe
was no longer needed.

And neither were its workers.

Definitely they got
rid of a lot of people.

When I came back, a lot
of the crew were missing.

They were gone.

I mean, they just
weren't there anymore.

Anyone who was working 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.

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.

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.

After we won the World
Championship, we didn't even

think they were worth
hauling back from Europe.

We were through.

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.

And Alan Mann couldn't bring himself
to dump them in the English Channel.

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

The cars were loaded up as deck freight,
exposed to the weather and condition,

and shipped back to California.

He didn't like it.

But he was ready to
move on to something else.

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.

I was with Don Fry and
Leo Beebe when he called

us in, and he had the
name tag made in 65.

But 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 events.

Ford decided to
expand its operation.

So instead of just having Shelby American,
they also hired Pullman and Moody,

who was already running their stock
car operation, and Allen Mann Racing,

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

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 this 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.

We knew we had
some brake issues.

A heavier car, you
just have to understand

that, you know, it's not
going to stop as easy.

Especially Le Mans, because of
the Mulsanne Strait, so you got 3.

2 miles and the brakes would go from
1200 degrees to zero, every single lap.

I don't think they had
the material that would

withstand, you know,
that repeated cycle.

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.

Phil Remington figured
out how to make a quick

change brake setup on a
Shelby American, the GT40.

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.

Racing for the flag in the
24-hour Daytona Continental.

Ford had five GT40 Mark IIs in the
running, led by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby,

and Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant.

Miles takes the lead in
pushing the last Ferrari threat.

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

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?

It's neck and neck now.

Mark, Miles, Gurney,
tossing up the cover with

a blanket as they roar
through the webster.

The GT40s and the P-Series
Ferraris battled each other all race.

Now they're giving it an inch.

So with nightfall on,
it's Ford, Ford, Ford.

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

All that's left is Le Mans.

You'll probably see
the surround as a

competitor at Le Mans
for a long time to come.

What I'm talking about is a real threat
where it's taken us about three or four

years to get on to 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.

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
going to be in trouble.

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 beat me.

So I went down, and met him.

And he said, would
you like to run with us?

I said, yeah, I would.

Ferrari had stolen Shelby's world
champion driver right out from under him.

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.

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.

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 a 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 was some possibility that
we might be able to break the Fords.

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.

But he got a terrible start.

And I thought, oh, this
ended right from the beginning.

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

He could go very
quickly if he had to.

Race, race, race.

His deal was competition.

He just loved to compete.

The next 20 laps or
so was just incredible.

Ken was falling ass.

I mean, he was
just going so quick.

He wasn't backing
off or anything.

It was his job to
break the Ferraris.

The Mark II driven by Ken Miles and Dennis
Holm 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.

Dan Gurney's car died
about the eleventh hour.

Ken was still
really hauling ass.

I mean, he was just
doing a great job.

We're still running
away with the race.

Ferraris are dropping out.

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 going to break anyway.

Ken was going to
win the race easy.

Miles is now in first place,
and he's lapping at amazing

speeds, faster than they
told him he should be going.

Miles is one Daytona.

Miles is one Seabrook.

So if Ken Miles wins Le Mans,
it would 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
one, two, three finish.

A lot of it was people
saying that Miles

wins again, and Ford
wanted Ford wins again.

Henry Ford told Carroll, he
said, you've got to slow him down.

He's leaning on the pit, we're
waiting for his stint on the drive.

And that's when he first told
me they want me to back off.

They've 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.

Ford won one, two, three.

And Henry Ford was
so happy he beat Ferrari.

It was a relief for a lot of
people because this was

a Herculean effort to make
this program a success.

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 a Ferrari zone.

That quick-change brake
system was a huge joke.

And that would never
have come out of corporate.

They would have
never allowed it.

It was a shop, of course, but
that's motor racing, you know?

One day, you lose it.

When it came to the finish, it was
actually considered a dead heat.

But when Ken came up the pit lanes ahead
in 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...

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.

There wasn't going to
be a one, two, three finish.

Bruce was going to win.

Come on!

We made a horrible
decision with Ken Miles in

saying the three cars
come over exactly together.

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

Besides that, I work for Ford, and
I'm not going to go against Henry Ford.

Ken ended up getting
cheated out of it.

Yeah, it broke his heart.

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 don't have to live.

When they win the race, Henry Ford
is asked, well, what happens now?

Henry Ford says, well, we're going to
come back next year and do it again.

At the latter part of 66, Carroll Shelby,
Phil Remington, and the Shelby experts

were making a faster,
quicker Mark II B.

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, the J car, was a

prototype that they had used
this kind of honeycomb pattern.

So they sent it out to testing.

The car was being
tested by Ken Miles.

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 then I could see it
was in pretty bad shape.

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

I've never had a loss that hit
me as hard as when we lost Ken.

Not only a friend, but
he was a good engineer.

He was a good tester.

He was a good driver.

As good a race
driver as I ever knew.

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

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.

Jesus Christ, they told you you
weren't going to live five years in 1960,

and every five years is a
new pill or a new operation.

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

At his bedside, there's stacks of medical
journals, and he would read those things

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

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 says, you were
having a heart attack.

Oh, those are probably 40.

40 times.

And I'm going to walk
in a 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.

In 1967, when the season
began at Daytona, Ford

showed up with a full
array of upgraded Mark IIs.

Ferrari wanted revenge after 66.

And he brought like six cars.

But Ferrari came to me and
said, Mario, the P3 has lost.

You can improve the P3.

When you win, many
times, you are led to a wrong

assessment of the factors
that determined the victory.

When you lose, you
always see very clearly.

So, by losing, you
learn to build new cars.

Ferrari shows up with
the P3, a brand new car.

It's called the 330 P4.

It's just beautiful.

It looks stunning.

It's got a new engine that's
derived from their Formula 1 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 going to be a real
showdown and a real race.

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

They started coming in one after
the other with broken transmissions.

Only one out of six GT40s
finished at Daytona in 1967.

Ferrari won the 24 Hours of
Daytona with a one, two, three.

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

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

They had a lot of power.

They had a lot of traction.

Something needed to be done.

And it wasn't clear how to make the Mk2
decidedly faster in a short period of time.

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.

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

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.

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 Mk4.

And they went out and
tested that and it proved to

be faster right out of the
box than the existing Mk2.

It was decided to race the Mk4 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 Mk2B and the brand-new Mk4.

By the S's, the Fords have
gobbled up the quick-starting

outfit and McLaren has assumed
command with point second.

We go out there and we're
running 7 to 10 seconds a lap faster.

By nightfall, the redesigned GT40 Mk4
is a full 12 laps ahead of the Ford Mk2.

We raced to the Sebring
the first time and won.

And Mk4 became the
envy of the competition.

It's race week, and along with
nearly every gendarme in the

south of France comes the
world's finest racing machinery.

It would be the first
time that the Mk4 and

the P4 would face each
other on the racetrack.

Ferrari has three of their factory
P4s in the top 10, 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 10 starting positions.

And as the race progressed,
the Fords took the lead.

The Ferraris were
not too far behind.

They were the fastest
racing cars in the world.

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
10 practice laps under his belt.

A.J.

Foyt, the rookie everyone was worrying
about, has charged into a seven-lap beat.

Fifteen cars have already dropped out,
trying to keep up with the bright red Ford.

Foyt was ecstatic about
the Mark IV's performance,

but they kept a
watchful eye on Shelby.

Mr. Foyt had his sergeants with him,
but they would come through every two or

three hours, and that
happened all night long.

I was in the pit
performing at the pit stop.

I turned around to duck
right on 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, this great big guy down
there, I bashed straight into him.

What's he doing
standing in that pit?

Turns out it was Henry Ford.

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 okay.

I shouldn't have been there.

I shouldn't have been your way.

Roger McCluskey and Joe
Schlesser, both in Mark II's,

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 Joe Schlesser
spin out, trying to avoid Andretti.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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
straightaway a little bit.

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

It was the steamroller again.

Ford won.

There's the checkered flag.

And Gurney climbs atop the Ford.

An

effort from tyres
to drivers to 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, realising that
24 hours is a long time.

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

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

And again in 1969.

Only two mates ever won.

Ford won Le Mans in the 1960s.

Ferrari won the first half.

Ford won the second half.

In 1968 and 1969, the GT40 won Le
Mans without any factory support from Ford.

Or Carroll Shelby.

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

programme and everything
that was related to it.

They shut Shelby
down in August of 1967.

And when the shutdown came,
Ford just shut his operation off.

They just closed it.

So by late 1967, Dad didn't
have any production cars there.

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.

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 factory.

The Toyota GTs.

Shelby got the deal
out from under him.

So Shelby became the
Toyota team with the 2000 GT.

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

because 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 of getting too many points
or winning anything on the West Coast.

He tried to streak off to Stuttgart,
Arkansas or someplace else to pick up some

cherry picking points in a
region that wasn't too strong.

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.

He won pretty much
every race that we ran.

Shelby didn't qualify for the national
championships 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.

After we'd won Le Mans.

After we'd 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.

That little company had
a heart and soul that no

company that I've ever known
or seen around racing had.

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'll never be another
little company like that.

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.

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 abysmal 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.

Harold 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 an
old girl in Nassau.

Every time I mentioned it, he
said, Dave, I never married her.

But I said, Carol, you
want to see the pictures?

I think Carol 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.

He took her to a friend of his,
the Justice of Peace of San Diego.

He wanted a Justice of Peace.

But she still got a divorce.

Nobody knows how many
times she 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 Carol Shelby Chili Company
along with the International Chili Society.

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.

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

And lo and behold, it took off.

And it's gotten so big.

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

He was just able to take an idea
and promote it and make it work.

Shelby had left the
automobile business behind.

But the automobile business had
not forgotten about Carol Shelby.

So in 1982, an old
friend comes calling.

I, Koka, decided he needed
to jazz up Chrysler a little.

In the early 1980s, Chrysler was
desperate for a performance product.

I, Koka, 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.

The innovations that Shelby was
making under our leadership and I, Koka's

leadership at Chrysler were
boosting the company's bottom line.

Shelby and I, Koka 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 him.

His heart was failing,
and this time for good.

When he was with Chrysler, his
health was going down pretty fast.

And his doctor said he needed a new heart
if he was going to continue on much longer.

It finally got so
bad in about 1986.

That I have to sleep sitting up
in bed with my lungs filling up.

And I was told that I'd have to
have a transplant if I was to survive.

With that inappropriate donor, this
was a man who was coming to grips

with the fact that he
was probably about to die.

And here comes a 34-year-old in Vegas
somewhere that falls over with an aneurysm.

He's brain dead.

My coordinator, she
came in and said, Shelby?

I think we might have
found you a heart.

There'll never be words
that are any sweeter than that.

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.

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.

We're coming out with
a very interesting car

called a Viper that I
just drove last week.

I can tell you 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.

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.

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.

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 1 in the early 90s.

We just put down some designs.

He got a deal with Oldsmobile,
so he used their engine.

I went on to build the best sport
car they 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.

It's a good example of Carroll
putting everything he has into a project.

Which he's done, I
think, throughout his life.

In true Shelby fashion, Carroll put
everything he had into the Series 1.

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.

Carroll had survived the pursuit
of a dream that would prove costly.

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.

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.

He hired my dad as like
an intern for the summer,

because I think my
grandfather probably made him.

But my dad loved it,
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've 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 up half a step in his walk.

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.

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.

Millions of car fans were psyched to
see the Shelby logo on Ford cars again.

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 Ford Motor Company.

Always.

I couldn't be happier than
to be with Ford and know

that I'm going to be
there the rest of my life.

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.

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 1,000-acre
property and a 30-acre lake.

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 enjoy it.

I loved Carroll Shelby.

I really did.

He was a magical
person, just magical.

This guy is such an icon,
such a hero to so many people.

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.

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 okay.

The next play's gonna work.

Well, I think when you say Shelby,
I think he'd think of the Cobra.

That car was so dominant.

Mainly because 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.

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.

And 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 before he passed away.

They appreciate the brand
and the man more than that.

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.

But I want to be known
as someone who's a man.

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.