The Cobra is my personal favorite car. The original 289 Cobra is the car I respect the most. I like to drive the 289 better than the 427.
— Carroll Shelby
In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'
Racing has reached the point where it is pricing the young driver, no matter his talent, out of the game.
I love horsepower.
What I wanted to do was build an automobile.
I never had ambitions to see how rich I could get. I got a lot of contemporaries that that's their ambition, and I don't know very many of them that are happy.
I don't think I'm a celebrity. I'm just a guy from east Texas who loves cars and airplanes.
I'm not going to take this defeatist attitude and listen to all this crap any more from all these people who have nothing except doomsday to predict.
My proudest moments are beating Ferrari for the World Championship in 1965, and working with Ford to win Le Mans in 1966 and 1967.
I've got cattle on 4,000 acres about 100 miles east of Dallas, but I've also got another 65-acre ranch where I raise American miniature horses.
I'm a terrible husband.
Porsche and BMW drivers are arrogant.
I've always been asked, 'What is my favorite car?' and I've always said 'The next one.'
Every morning I wake up with new ideas.
Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along.
It's a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car.
The reason I moved to California the first time was to build the Cobra. I thought it was stupid to have a 1918 taxicab engine in what Europeans like to call a performance car when a little American V-8 could do the job better.
The first time I walked by a crap table, I felt kind of funny.
I've had a good run. I've built a lot of things that work and a lot of things that didn't work.
I didn't have time for my children much. I wasn't a very good parent; I had a pretty unhappy home life.
I never made a damn dime until I started doing what I wanted.
I don't design cars. I'm not a designer. I know what I desire to be built, I know what the end result is, the horsepower, the competition we'll be working against - but I leave it to the people who work with me to put it all together. I don't do anything.
I had a lot of fun driving race cars, but it wasn't my No. 1 priority.
