A little known fact (well I didn't know until recently) is that across the road from Town Square shopping centre in Las Vegas, is Shelby American.
I found it using a combination of the local bus route, google maps and a lift from a random Brazilian couple!
As well as an extensive workshop, seriously it's massive, the rather nondescript building houses their Heritage Collection, along with some cars that are for sale.
One stand out car for me is the Shelby Series One, a rare beast with less than 250 cars being made in the original run, although there are some later "continuation" cars. If you think that doesnt't sound rare, consider the fact that Ferrari produced over 1,000 F40s. This was supposed to be the Cobra for the 90s and in many ways it was, it had a 4ltr V8 from Oldsmobile pushing out 320bhp, it was capable of 170mph and 0-60 times of around 4.4 seconds. There was also a supercharged version which almost doubled the power to around 600bhp and brought the 0-60 time down to a little over 3 seconds. Today if you want a Series One, should you find one for sale, expect to pay somewhere North of $100,000.
As you would expect, there are quite a few Cobras, including the legendary Daytona variant and the infamous 7ltr or if you're American, 427ci, Super Snake Cobra. Although nowadays the bulk of their business involves the Ford Mustang.
Before we talk about the Cobras, lets talk about the Mustang, along with the Corvette this is an American icon of motoring. The car has gone through many iterations but Shelby were there at the beginning with the GT350 and GT500. For a while Ford used the Shelby name under licence but in reality the cars were built by their Special Vehicles division, thankfully nowadays a Shelby is, once again, built by Shelby. If you are insane enough and have the cash, they will build you a Shelby 1000 and so far they have built 35. As you might imagine the 1000 refers to the horsepower, or should that be pony power? I was told that this was put on a dyno and came out at 1060whp, which makes even a Hellcat look under powered!
The GT350 and GT500 names are still in use and they also had a wide body concept on display.
Should you so desire, Shelby have also worked their magic in the Ford Raptor pick up and given the number of pick ups sold in the US this would seem a smart move.
Ok, lets discuss the elephant or snake in the room the Cobra, the car that started it all, a nimble little British sports car given a massive does of steroids and sent out to race against the Italian legends of Ferrari and Maserati. Whilst it had great success on the shorter tracks it had one major flaw, it had the aerodynamic qualities of a brick. The Cobra-Ferrari war has been well documented in print and on film and after Enzo got the final race of the season cancelled to prevent the Cobras winning, Carrol Shelby allegedly said "Ferrari's ass is mine".
The Cobra's aero problems were solved when Peter Brock came up with the design for the "Daytona" as it became known, a car designed to compete with the Ferrari 250 GTO, which was much faster than the standard Cobra, especially on the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans. Just six of these cars were built and whilst Ford backed, they were raced mostly by the British Alan Mann Racing team. The car raced in period in '64 and '65 but Ford and Shelby moved on to the also legendary Ford GT40, again the base for this car was a British car, the Lola Mk6.
The Ford GT, as it was originally designated became known as the GT40, based on the fact that it was 40 inches in height. This is the car that broke Ferrari's hold on the Le Mans 24 hour race, taking the honours from '66 to '69.
People unfamiliar with the full Shelby story may be surprised to find Chrysler cars in the collection but he did work with Dodge on quite a few cars from 1983-1993 and then later in the early part of the 2000s, including being involved with the Viper, which is in many ways is a modern day Cobra. The collection includes a Shelby GLH - which stands for "Goes Like Hell" and there was also a GLH-S, "Goes Like Hell S'more". A hot hatch derived from the Dodge Omni.
For those wanting to visit the museum, entrance is free and there is also a free guided tour or you can choose a self guided audio tour. The tour includes the workshop area and in fact you can only gain access to this if you are on the guided tour, which runs twice a day but check availability direct with Shelby as it doesn't run the tours every day.
There is also a well stocked gift shop full of all the Shelby merchandise you could ever want.
Series One
Selby 1000 engine bay
Cobras
Daytona
Ford GT40
Raptor
Wide body Concept
Workshop