Carroll Shelby is known for many legendary cars. Most notably, the first car that comes to mind from Shelby’s innovativeness is the Ford GT40, the race car that soundly trounced the likes of the Ferrari and Porsche in the late 1960s.
Then, of course, there are the Shelby Mustangs and Mustang GTs, as well as the Dodge Omni GLH, the last of which, stood for Goes Like Hell.
Counting on, there was the Shelby Cobra AC, and the very exclusive two-car Shelby CSX, the better-powered prototype of the Cobra. Along with the Ford GT40, there was also the Shelby Daytona Coupe, a classic car that might have proved to be better than the GT40, if better money and time had been put in it.
All in all, Shelby was like a car engine whisperer, a true entrepreneur, and the person to go to if you wanted to make powered and performance cars better suited for the track, with a road-legal certification.
But in 1998, Carroll Shelby and his company, Shelby American, made another car, the Shelby Series 1. Here’s why, today, it’s considered such a classic…
The First Car From Scratch
The Shelby Series 1 is the only car so envisaged and made by Carroll Shelby that was made from the ground up, on a clean sheet. All other Shelby cars were re-engineered models taken from other manufacturers and then modified by Shelby for greater performance and power.
For instance, for the Shelby Cobra AC, Shelby took the body of the Cobra AC car from Britain and made it run on engines from Ford. Of course, it's definitely not as easy as it sounds. The engine bay was too small and had to be modified to fit in the Ford V8. And tuning was another big aspect.
The Shelby Series 1 came powered by Oldsmobile’s 4.0-liter Aurora V8 engine that jetted 320 horses and 290 ft-lb of torque. It was powerful enough in the Oldsmobile Aurora, a good car that was killed off too early because the Oldsmobile marque was terminal by then. It made the Shelby Series 1 classic go 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds, making it faster than the Shelby Cobra AC, and also did a quarter-mile in 12.8 seconds, at 112 mph. The top speed was 170 mph, and the car weighed just 2,650 pounds.
The above specs are for the naturally aspirated engine, if you took the supercharged mill, 0-60 mph times dropped to an astoundingly fast 3.2 seconds. If that isn’t supercar territory, we don’t know what is.
Then again, although it was initially supposed to cost only $99,000; delays and price-rise of parts, plus the time taken to retune and iron out the teething troubles made the naturally-aspirated version's price go up to $180,000. The supercharged version was now priced at $200,000.
The Near Wipe-Out & Rescue
Initially, the car was in trouble. There were production glitches galore, and Shelby’s apoplectic temper was at the brink of a volcanic eruption. The Oldsmobile engine was supposed to make 370 horses but made only 320. Meanwhile, Oldsmobile’s head, Jon Rock, Shelby’s ally, left in 1998.
50 Shelby Series 1 were built in 1998 as the 1999 model, although there were underpowered and way-too-heavy than the projected 2,650-lbs weight. Customers, who had booked these at a down-payment of $25,000 for a total cost of $99,000 were furious at the loss of power and the steep rise in price, now up to $135,000. There were suits and counter-suits, and Shelby was having way too many health problems as well.
According to CarandDriver, Larry Winget, the owner of Venture Holdings Company stepped in with a 10 million dollar infusion, buying Shelby American. The Series 1 got back on track and a total of 259 cars were built, although it was supposed to be a 500-car production run.
With the new money, carbon fiber components became better and many of the earlier-old cars were retro-fitted with the new stuff. The Shelby's name was not besmirched and the Series 1 began to delight drivers with a car that was graceful, bigger than it looked, and pretty awesome to drive.
The End Of The Series 1
In 2004, Venture Corporation went bankrupt and Shelby saw another chance for a revival. During the initial sales, the rights to produce the Continuation Series of the Shelby Cobra had not been sold. The newly formed Shelby Automobiles Inc. made its bread by making and selling these cars. In 2004, they bought back the Series 1 assets, at a much cheaper rate than it was sold. Now, there was enough parts leftover to make several more Series 1.
But the 1999 Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards certification had expired. Getting the car recertified was crazy expensive. Not to be discouraged, Shelby announced the sale of many of these Series 1 as component or kit cars, minus an engine and transmission, and called them the Series 2. Nothing came to fruition, till another announcement in 2018, where they announced the Series 2, and the engines it could be compatible with.
either way, the Shelby Series 1 is the last of Carroll Shelby’s greatness and one of the coolest cars from Shelby American, period. Today, it can be bought for prices upwards of $100,000, at more or less the same price it was sold was in its halcyon days as a new model. Some may call it a classic, but it remains an undervalued one.
Sources: MuseumOfAmericanSpeed, CarandDriver