Shelby American by Preston Lerner

Shelby American by Preston Lerner

Shelby American didn't last long, but it was a flamethat burned incandescently before being extinguished by corporate politics. Inless than a decade, it created a legacy that will be revered as long as carsstill roar around racetracks. Now, on the sixtieth anniversary of the foundingof this iconic company, Shelby American: The Renegades Who Built the Cars,Won the Races, and Lived the Legend relates how the saga unfolded, as toldby the men and women who were there.

Although Carroll Shelby was the focal point of the publicity hiscompany generated, Shelby American was staffed by a who's who of racing royalty, from Phil Remington and Ken Miles to Peter Brock and Carroll Smith.And while the shop is often depicted as a menagerie of Southern California hot-rodders,it also embraced mechanics and fabricators from Canada, England, Switzerland,Australia, and New Zealand. Like the Cobra itself, the company magically cametogether as a whole that was greater than its constituent parts.

By incorporating the recollections of dozens of lesser-known crewmen,Shelby American goes behind the scenes to tell long untold andmisunderstood stories--the cheat embedded in the turbine Indy car, the oilingwoes that sunk the tunnel-port Trans-Am Mustang, even details about the buildof the first Cobra in Dean Moon's cramped garage in Santa Fe Springs. The bookalso delves into the personalities and hijinks that made Shelby American such avibrant place to work, whether team members were transforming humdrum Mustangs intorace-ready GT350s or staging shop battles with cherry bombs and M-80s.

Always standing above it all was a tall Texan. Dynamic,charismatic, mercurial, mercenary, and a little bit dangerous, Shelby had to fightFord bean counters as fiercely as he dueled with Enzo Ferrari. But for a fewmiraculous years, Shelby managed to beat both of them at their own games.

Preston Lerner, a regular contributor to Automobile magazine, has written about motorsports for publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to the New York Times. Lerner has co-authored Motorbooks titles Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman and History's Greatest Automotive Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed with Matt Stone.