He won the 1960 Sports Car Club of America United States Auto Club Road Racing Sports Car Championship by winning the round-one race at Riverside International Raceway in a Maserati Tipo 61 "Birdcage", and winning round two at Continental Divide Raceways in a Chevrolet Scarab Mark II.

[10] Shelby honed his driving skills with his Willys automobile[11] while attending Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, Texas.

Shelby enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on April 11, 1941, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In January 1952, Shelby raced his friend Ed Wilkin's MG TC[17] at the Grand Prairie Naval Air Station drag meet.

In 1956, he won 30 more races with the Ferrari, started driving for John Edgar, and opened Carroll Shelby Sports Cars in Dallas.

[16]: 60–65, 68, 76  He drove in the Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race in a specially prepared Ferrari 375 GP roadster, to a record run of 10 minutes, 21.8 seconds.

[19][16]: 79 In September 1957, he raced John Edgar's 4.5-liter Maserati at the Riverside International Raceway, where he was involved in a crash that caused injuries requiring 72 stitches and plastic surgery for broken bones in his nose and cheekbones.

[19][16] On 18 May 1958, Shelby joined John Wyer and the Aston Martin team in Europe and drove a DBR3 at the Belgian Sports Car Grand Prix.

The highlight of his racing career came in June 1959 when he co-drove an Aston Martin DBR1 (with Englishman Roy Salvadori) to victory in the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans.

I can think of plenty of other races that carry their quota of thrills for the winner, but when you win this one, it kind of gives you license to go out and tell people you're good, and that often helps get some other deals together.

Shelby's visits to European limited-production car factories led him to believe that “America was missing a big bet, a winning bet": "the design and production of an all-purpose, all-American sports or grand touring car that you could drive to market and also race during the weekend..." Shelby's starting point was putting a 300-brake horsepower V8 on an Austin Healey-type chassis, so that the combination weighed less than 2,600 pounds (1,180 kg).

[16]: 180, 202, 208–210, 213–214, 217, 221 After success with the Daytona Coupe in 1964, Shelby-American became more heavily involved in Ford's GT40 Sports Prototype racing program, which had experienced disappointing results.

Shelby made changes to running gear, particularly transmissions, to improve reliability, and designed their GT40 Mark II variant around Ford's 7.0-litre (427 cu in) engine.

Shelby was brought in to finalize the development of the car after the project experienced setbacks in 1966, which included the death of driver Ken Miles in August.

After parting with Ford, Shelby moved on to help develop performance cars with divisions of the two other Big 3 American companies: Dodge (Chrysler) and Oldsmobile (General Motors).

In the intervening years, Shelby had a series of ventures start and stop relating to the production of "completion" Cobras — cars that were allegedly built using "leftover" parts and frames.

After almost a decade of tuning work, Shelby was brought on board as the "Performance Consultant" on the Dodge Viper Technical Policy Committee made up of Chrysler's executive Bob Lutz, Product Design chief Tom Gale, and Engineering Vice President François Castaing.

The Series 1 used Oldsmobile's 4.0 L L47 Aurora V8, which was chosen because it was the selected engine by Indy for that year but was poorly supported by the ailing GM division.

Before manufacturing the Series 1, substantial expenses were accrued for the purpose of conducting tests and obtaining certification in order to comply with the 1999 Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

Built with a retro body mimicking the 1960s Cobras mixed with modern touches, it was based on the Ford GT chassis (reworked for front engine/rear wheel drive) and powered by a 6.4 L V10 engine that produced 605 hp (451 kW).

[33] It had a Tremec T-6060 6-speed manual transmission, reworked suspension geometry, 18-inch wheels, functional aerodynamic body kit, and a retro solid rear axle.

The cars included a custom Shelby hood and black and gold body styling, incorporating a gold-plated "Hertz" nameplate on both sides.

In 1963 the Rootes Group, manufacturer of Sunbeam automobiles, wanted Shelby to upgrade their Alpine sports car to a more powerful version, using the Ford small-block V-8 engine, as he had done with the AC Cobra.

In his later years, Shelby brought several lawsuits against companies that were making copies of the Cobra body for use on kit cars – ostensibly for copyright, trademark, and patent violations.

[citation needed] In 2002, Unique Performance, a company of Farmers Branch, Texas, purchased a license from Carroll Shelby Enterprises to place his name on a series of continuation vintage vehicles.

[35] In October 2007, Carroll Shelby ended his licensing agreement with Unique Performance after customers complained that vehicles had not been delivered.

Unique Performance was subsequently raided by law enforcement for VIN irregularities and declared bankruptcy, which effectively ended the Shelby continuation "Eleanor" Mustang production.

[38][39][40]Gary Laughlin, a wealthy Texas oilman and amateur racer, and Shelby decided to build a dual-purpose car based on the Chevrolet Corvette chassis and European-style alloy coachwork.

In 1989, after 28 years of being single, Carroll married Cynthia Psaros,[citation needed] a former actress, beauty queen, and daughter of a retired US Marine colonel fighter pilot.

Just four months after Dahl's death, Shelby married his last wife, Cleo (nee Rendell-Roberts), a British former model who drove rally cars.