DALLAS (AP)

Carroll Shelby, the legendary auto racer and car designer who built the fabled Shelby Cobra sports car and injected testosterone into Ford's Mustang and Chrysler's Viper, has died. He was 89.
Shelby's company, Carroll Shelby International, said Friday that Shelby died a day earlier at a Dallas hospital. He had received a heart transplant in 1990 and a kidney transplant in 1996.

He was one of the nation's longest-living heart transplant recipients, having received a heart on June 7, 1990, from a 34-year-old man who died of an aneurism. Shelby also received a kidney transplant in 1996 from his son, Michael.
The 1992 inductee into the Automobile Hall of Fame had homes in Los Angeles and his native east Texas.
The one-time chicken farmer had more than a half-dozen successful careers during his long life. Among them: champion race car driver, racing team owner, automobile manufacturer, automotive consultant, safari tour operator, raconteur, chili entrepreneur and philanthropist.
''He's an icon in the medical world and an icon in the automotive world,'' his longtime friend, Dick Messer, executive director of Los Angeles' Petersen Automotive Museum, once said of Shelby.
''His legacy is the diversity of his life,'' Messer said. ''He's incredibly innovative. His life has always been the reinvention of Carroll Shelby.''
Shelby first made his name behind the wheel of a car, winning France's grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race with teammate Ray Salvadori in 1959. He already was suffering serious heart problems and ran the race ''with nitroglycerin pills under his tongue,'' Messer once noted.

He had turned to the race-car circuit in the 1950s after his chicken ranch failed. He won dozens of races in various classes throughout the 1950s and was twice named Sports Illustrated's Driver of the Year.
Soon after his win at Le Mans, he gave up racing and turned his attention to designing high-powered ''muscle cars'' that eventually became the Shelby Cobra and the Mustang Shelby GT500.
The Cobra, which used Ford engines and a British sport car chassis, was the fastest production model ever made when it was displayed at the New York Auto Show in 1962.
A year later, Cobras were winning races over Corvettes, and in 1964 the Rip Chords had a Top 5 hit on the Billboard pop chart with ''Hey, Little Cobra.'' (''Spring, little Cobra, getting ready to strike, spring, little Cobra, with all of your might. Hey, little Cobra, don't you know you're gonna shut `em down?'')
In 2007, an 800-horsepower model of the Cobra made in 1966, once Shelby's personal car, sold for $5.5 million at auction, a record for an American car.
''It's a special car. It would do just over three seconds to 60 (mph), 40 years ago,'' Shelby told the crowd before the sale, held in Scottsdale, Ariz.
It was Lee Iacocca, then head of Ford Motor Co., who had assigned Shelby the task of designing a fastback model of Ford's Mustang that could compete against the Corvette for young male buyers.
Turning a vehicle he had once dismissed as ''a secretary car'' into a rumbling, high-performance model was ''the hardest thing I've done in my life,'' Shelby recalled in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press.
That car and the Shelby Cobra made his name a household word in the 1960s.
When the energy crisis of the 1970s limited the market for gas-guzzling high-performance cars, Shelby weathered the downturn by heading to Africa, where he operated a safari company for a dozen years.
By the time he had returned to the United States, Iacocca was running Chrysler Motors and he hired him to design the supercharged Viper sports car.
In the meantime, Shelby had also inaugurated the World Chili Cookoff competition and he began marketing Carroll Shelby Original Texas Chili.
In recent years, Shelby worked as a technical adviser on the Ford GT project and designed the Shelby Series 1 two-seat muscle car, a 21st century clone of his 1965 Cobra.
''I just wanted to see if I could do it one more time after a heart transplant and a kidney transplant,'' he once told the AP.
In 1990 he had marketed the Can-Am Spec Racer, an affordable racing car for entry-level drivers.
He created the Carroll Shelby Children's Foundation in 1991 to provide assistance for children and young people needing acute coronary and kidney care. According to its Web site, the foundation has helped numerous children received needed surgery, as well as provided money for research.
Carroll Hall Shelby was born Jan. 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas.
During World War II he was an Army Air Corps flight instructor who corresponded with his fiancee by dropping love letters stuck into his flying boots onto her farm.
After leaving the military in 1945, he started a dump truck business, then decided to raise chickens. The poultry business initially flourished, with Shelby earning a $5,000 profit on the first batch of broilers he delivered. He went broke, however, when his second flock died of disease.
A friend then invited him to become an amateur racer and his success led to his joining the Aston-Martin team and competing in races all over the world.

 

Damn, RIP.

Stewart

 

Yes, sad day indeed. Unbelievable innovator and a true blood racer. The world lost a legend. I love this quote by him about his 427 Cobra, "It's a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car."

 

i think he knew more about cars the Ford did.

 

My favorite Shelby story surrounds my favorite Shelby Mustang. The 1965 GT350, the first of Shelby Mustangs. When they were trying to come up with a name for it apparently they spent the better part of the day arguing with Ford's marketing department. Finally sometime in the afternoon, Carroll turned to one of the marketing guys and asked, "How far do you think it is to that building over there?". The marketing guy replied, "About 350 feet." Carroll then said, "We'll call it the GT350 then." The rest is history.

 

My favorite Shelby picture:



RIP Carroll, you will be missed by many.

 

RIP, lost a legend today. We built a Shelby kit car in college. It was a lot of fun.

 

And then he added, "If the car's good, the name won't matter, and if it's no good, the name won't matter."

 

I sense a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of voices cried out in pain.

RIP to a great man.

 

Yes Mr Shelby. You will be missed. But your name in your cars will live as long as man is alive. You will never be forgot. You where a Master Craftsman.

Now I know this is a truck site. But this is a special thing here and part of automotive history.

If any members have a Cobra GT or Shelby Mustang, Maybe even a Viper could they post pic's and a short story here as a tribute to him? I know we can find lot's of pic's on the net. But FTE'ers with a signed piece of him would be kinda special I think.

 

Damn, one of the greats had gone on.

 

Rest in peace. Motoring has lost a legend.

 

Just a few thoughts on this.

What a sad day that we have lost such a legend.

It's unfortunate we don't have folks like that today that are able to make such an impact in the automotive industry for so long.

And what the he** is wrong with the automobile hall of fame that it took them until 1992 to induct him?

 

Rest in piece, Mr. Shelby. You were among the greats in automotive and racing history. Your knowledge and passion will be missed.

 

That is a great picture of a great man and one of the coolest cars ever built.
May God bless his soul !!