Car fans around the world raised a glass last week to mark what would have been Carroll Shelby’s 100th birthday.
Carroll passed away in 2012 after 89 eventful years in which he competed in Formula 1, won the Le Mans 24 Hour race both as a driver and team boss, and developed a slew of iconic road cars including the Viper and original Cobra.
It’s the Cobra for which Shelby will always be best known, though it wasn’t a clean-sheet design, just an engine-swapped AC Ace. But almost 40 years after first coming up with the Cobra idea Shelby created a little-known successor that really was his own work.
No doubt inspired by the success of the Viper he’d driven for pace car duties at the 1991 Indy 500, Shelby spent much of that decade perfecting a similar car that would carry his own name. The Shelby Series 1 roadster finally hit the market in 1999, but only 249 were ever built, and the last of those is about to be auctioned by Mecum.
Related: Shelby Series 2 Unveiled As A High-Performance Roadster Based On The Original Series 1
The Series 1 looks every inch a Cobra for the 1990s. It’s got the macho curves, modern color-coded bumpers and then-fashionable three-piece wheels, but there’s just enough of a retro feel about the styling, particularly at the front and rear to evoke memories of the 1960s without it looking like a Cobra pastiche. The Series 1 was no throwback under the skin, either. It featured trick in-board dampers, an aluminum chassis and a rear-mounted transmission connected to the engine via a torque tube.
Perhaps surprisingly, the engine didn’t come from either Ford or Chrysler, with whom Shelby had worked so closely in the past. Instead, the engine bay housed a 4.0-liter DOHC V8 Oldsmobile V8 related to Cadillac’s 4.6-liter Northstar V8. Shelby’s version made 320 hp (324 PS) and 290 lb-ft (393 Nm) and was apparently lusty enough for zero to 60 mph (96 kmh) in 4.4 seconds and a top sped of 170 mph (274 kmh), though a handful of cars allegedly got 450 hp (456 PS) supercharged V8s.
Mecum’s lot details don’t tell us much about this specific car other than it’s the last of the original run, has covered just 4,645 miles (7,475 km) and comes complete with Carroll’s signature on the carbon fiber engine cover. But if that’s piqued your interest and you fancy a bit of Shelby history that isn’t a Cobra, check out Mecum’s Glendale sale at the end of March.
