In the late fifties, Carroll Shelby race many different race cars. After a heart aliment, he stopped racing in 1958. In 1963 he approached Lee Iacocca with Ford Motor Company and asked for $25k dollars. Lee said give him the 25k before he bites somebody.
Carroll put the new 289 ford engine in a British made car that started winning races and beating the new Chevrolet Corvettes.
When Henry Ford wanted to buy the Ferrari team, and was turned down, Mr. Ford asked Carroll to build him a wining car. Carroll built a car with the new 427FE engine and won the Le Mans race 3 years in a row.
Also, at that time Carroll was asked to take the new Mustang that sold over 100,000 cars in the first year, and take it racing. It won the SCCA several years in a row. He called it the Shelby mustang. He also built one car called the Super Snake with the 427 engine.
Fast forward… In 1973 Carl Heliki made a movie called “Gone in 60 seconds” about a car thief who had to steal 50 cars in one night. His nemesis was one car called “Eleanor”. It was never a block buster.
In 2001 the movie was remade with Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie. It turned out that the car “Eleanor” was the star of the movie. It was a 1967 Mustang in the fashion of a Shelby Mustang.
After many years of wanting to build a car, I decided on this Mustang. Not just a Shelby but an Eleanor.
No comments:
Post a Comment