Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 914 | Page 11

Doing Business with Attitude Makes Carroll Shelby a Legendary Boss

C

arroll Shelby finished second in the first sports car race
I ever saw. Phil Hill finished first. The race was the Road
America 500 in 1957.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I’d experience
at Elkhart Lake that day. The sounds were from a different
planet. And the smell; how could cars smell that good? It was,
in NASCAR vernacular, truly awesome. And it was the day I decided, at 15, that I, too, would be a race car driver.
So in 1962, when a car magazine ran a story on Carroll
Shelby’s School of High Performance Driving at Riverside
Raceway in California, I disappointed my parents by dropping
out of college and heading west. Incidentally, nearly 50 years
later, Carroll told me the reason he finished second that day
was that Hill had a 3.8 liter Ferrari while he had only a 3.0 liter
Maserati.
Upon arriving at the Riverside track, a man rode up on a
Honda 50 motorcycle, introduced himself as Pete Brock and
said he was to be my instructor. My heart sank! Where was my
hero, Carroll Shelby? The magazine had said that he would be
the instructor. Pete explained that Mr. Shelby was so busy with
the development of his new Cobra sports car that he didn’t
have time to teach. The first Cobra – the prototype - was relegated to the school and would be my mount for the five-day
course.
Now remember, this was 45 years ago. Unlike the schools of
today like Bondurant and Skip Barber, with 20 or 30 Jeff Gordon
and Michael Schumacher wannabes, it was just me in the reject
Cobra and some guy in his own Corvette.
On our third day, Pete suspended school for a while so
Lance Reventlow could test his Scarab. It was the last Scarab,

the rear-engine sports car. The Shelby operation had taken
over the Reventlow building in Venice, California, and absorbed several of Reventlow’s employees. Lance kept a
small room and two people to work on the Scarab.
After the Scarab was unloaded, Lance climbed in, started the engine, and for some reason, spun some NASCARstyle donuts before blasting onto the track. Shortly he reappeared from the wrong direction and said the engine
had a miss. The crew lifted the rear bodywork, discovering
a connecting rod protruding from the block. Lance hadn’t
displayed much mechanical sensitivity. I believe that was
the end of his driving career.
The following day, the school was again halted. This time
it was for a test of the first Cobra being developed for racing.
It was the second Cobra prepared by Shelby American, the
first being the school car I had been driving for three days.
The new Cobra arrived and the engine man, Bill Likes, announced Billy Sol was on his way to watch the test. Billy Sol?
Billy Sol Estes was a crooked Texan known for his alligator
shoes. When he explained he was referring to Carroll Shelby,
I didn’t get the connection.
Mr. Shelby was taller than I had imagined him to be and
his now-legendary cowboy accent and brusqueness was
intimidating, to say the least. Billy Krause, who looked like a
miniature prize fighter, was the Cobra driver. Though it had a
slight cooling problem, the car impressed everyone and they
appeared satisfied with its first test. I took that opportunity to
ask Mr. Shelby if he might find a place in his company for me.
He said, “Come see me next Monday.”

CarGuyMagazine.com

9