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Vintage Video: Carroll Shelby And Friends Go Racing With Ford

In the 1960s, retired racing driver Carroll Shelby decided that resting on his laurels was not for him, and went about launching his legendary, eponymous sportscar firm: Shelby American. The rest is history – glossy, illustrious, well-documented history.

The video above was recorded in the mid-1960s, during a critical moment in Shelby American’s history. The company had only been producing the Shelby/AC Cobra for a couple of years by that point, and had just launched the Shelby GT350 Mustang, shortly after inheriting the Ford GT40 racing program from Ford. Carroll Shelby and his gang found themselves responsible not only for trying to achieve Ford’s aspirations of beating Ferrari in endurance racing, but also for developing and running their own Shelby Cobra and Shelby GT350 to victory, as well.

Despite all this, Carroll Shelby – alongside a cast including racing great Dan Gurney and noted automotive designer/writer/photojournalist Pete Brock – managed to make time to put together this video, showing some of the exciting things happening at Shelby American at the time. This includes appearances from each of the three sportscars mentioned above, a light demonstration of finding the proper racing line, and a rundown of the firm’s racing successes so far.

We highly recommend giving this video 16 minutes of your undivided attention, if for nothing else then at least to witness the on-camera awkwardness of a young Carroll Shelby, and an even younger Pete Brock and Dan Gurney.

Aaron Brzozowski is a writer and motoring enthusiast from Detroit with an affinity for '80s German steel. He is not active on the Twitter these days, but you may send him a courier pigeon.

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