Carroll Shelby and his cars coming to Toronto auto show

Racing icon's career will be celebrated by exhibit of legendary creations

Feb 05, 2010

Motorsport Writer

You know the clichés – but they're all true: It's always darkest before the dawn. When one door closes, another opens. And so on.

Which brings me to the story of Carroll Shelby, the great American racer and automotive designer, who was born with a heart defect but "grew out of it" as a teenager.

Or so everybody thought – including him.

Shelby is one of the few racing people to ever tell Enzo Ferrari that he wasn't interested in driving for him (it's true; even Ferrari himself couldn't believe it). He was on top of the world in the late 1950s, driving for Aston Martin (he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year) and living the life of a jetsetter, when his world pretty much came to an end, it seemed.

One day in 1960, he woke up and he couldn't breathe. His chest was about to explode because his heart was starved for blood. Believe it or not, he shook off his angina pectoralis and managed to keep racing for a while – he'd pop nitroglycerin pills into his mouth when the pain got to be too great – but finally he had to call it a career at age 37.

So what does an unemployed race-car driver with a heart condition do? It seemed that he'd always had dreams of building his own sports car, so one day – with a little help from some friends who had influence at the Ford Motor Co. – he set about doing just that.

The first Shelby Cobra – a Ford 260-cubic-inch V8 shoehorned into an AC sports car – came out of a hot rod shop in Los Angeles in 1962 and, on the race track shortly thereafter and right out of the box, left the mighty Chevrolet Corvettes it was up against in its dust.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Shelby's – and Ford's – success on the race track all those years ago instantly translated into booming sales for the company. In fact, in the autumn of 1963, the New York Times published a front-page article entitled, "Does winning automobile races sell cars?"

You betcha. And Carroll Shelby and his cars – the Cobra, the GT-40s, the Mustangs – went on to become legends at the race tracks. And notice was taken in the boardrooms of the automakers.

That awareness continues. Witness the industry's involvement in everything from NASCAR to the World Rally Championship.

The news today is that the Canadian International AutoShow, which opens next Friday, will feature an exhibit of more than 40 of the most significant vehicles Shelby either built or influenced during his long career.

Included will be the Allard J2X, a Cadillac-powered British sports car that Shelby raced in 1952 and which gave him the idea for the gorillas that he built later; a 1962 Cobra CSX that was driven by Dan Gurney and Ken Miles and subsequently acquired by Toronto's Comstock Racing team and raced in this country by Eppie Wietzes and Craig Fisher; a 1965 Shelby GT 350 Mustang, a Cobra Daytona Coupe CSX that won the GT class at Le Mans in 1964, and many others.

Shelby, 87, will be in Toronto next Wednesday for a reception that's open to the public (go to www.autoshow.ca/shelby for details). There, he'll be inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame.

Paul Cooke, the president of ASN Canada FIA who ran Comstock for the racing team's owner, Chuck Rathgeb, back in those early days of Canadian racing glory, has fond memories of Shelby.

"Our relationship with him included the Cobra 289 program, the King Cobra rear-engine sports car and the 427 Cobra that we did with (retired driver) George Eaton," said Cooke, who will be clerk of the course again when the Canadian Grand Prix returns to Montreal next June.

"I spent considerable time at the Shelby America shop in Venice, Calif., and when he and his team came to Canada, they always raced out of the Comstock shop, which was on the northeast corner of Kennedy Rd. and the 401.

"Ford Canada got us together with the Shelby organization," Cooke continued. "The core of Comstock was Chuck Rathgeb (the founder), me, Jack Still (marketing manager for Ford of Canada), and the drivers, Eppie Wietzes and Ludwig Heimrath.

"Ford had a slogan, `Race on Sunday, sell on Monday.' We saw it as `Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,' and we did that very well. Ford benefited tremendously in the marketplace because of the partnership they had with Shelby in the U.S. and Comstock in Canada.

"Shelby was a warm and generous person. No one was unimportant to him. He would know what your goal was, he would tell you what the requirement was and then he'd help you to fulfill it.

"Shelby the man was one side, Shelby the organization was the other. In dealing with Comstock, he would release the resources of Shelby America to enable us to do what we wanted to do. The transfer of knowledge was efficient and excellent.

"The fact that we would be winning didn't hurt, By winning, you get more help than losers. We were winning, and that helped."

It will be a bit of old home week at that Wednesday reception. When Shelby is welcomed into the Hall of Fame, two of the people he worked with on the Comstock project – Cooke and Wietzes – will help with the induction.

A portion of the money raised at the gala will go to the Carroll Shelby Foundation, which is dedicated to providing financial support for children to help overcome life-threatening health issues.

Shelby received a new heart in 1990. What comes around, goes around.

GOOD NEWS FOR VIEWERS: TSN has posted its major-league auto racing schedules for 2010 and if you're a race fan you're not going to be disappointed.

The first bit of good news is that all the Formula One races this season will be on the main network. Unfortunately, there will – again – be no pre-race show. TSN will pick up the BBC feed five minutes before the start (as was the case last season) but I refuse to get into a funk over that.

The race is what's important and we will get those from start to finish, as they happen.

You'll need Speed TV to watch Danica's stock car debut later today (the ARCA race will be televised starting at 4:30 p.m.) but all the NASCAR Cup races (including Daytona 500 qualifying today and the Shootout tonight) will be on either TSN or TSN2. Ditto, all the IndyCar races.

Toronto Star