Shelby American
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We had been to the Shelby Museum about 10 years ago and at that time they only
had maybe half dozen cars. The museum was pretty new at that time. This time they had a
rather large collection including some of the very first aluminum Shelby
Cobra's. They even had a few of the Chrysler products Carroll Shelby had
modified for Lee Iacocca. They do tours once a day at 10:30 and it includes
the area where they customize the Mustangs. After Carroll retired from driving
for health reasons in 1959 he started the Shelby American company. At first
they taught did high performance driving. |
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He obtained a license to import an aluminum bodied car from AC Motors in
England. He put a Ford V8 engine in this vehicle and the AC Cobra was born.
In the 1960's with Ford they came out with the Mustang Based Shelby 350 and
Shelby GT500. In the 60s some were purchased by Hertz for there rental car
fleet. People were known to rent them, take them to the dragstips and win
races, then take the cars back. There also were cases of people renting
them, removing the high performance engines and putting standard engines
back in before returning the cars to Hertz. |
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Today at Shelby American in Las Vegas they customize Ford Mustangs. They
do not own any cars. They take cars customers bring to them or have shipped
to them. They then do performance and body modifications to the vehicles.
The vehicles in the parking lot are new cars. |
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