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Carroll Shelby’s legacy extends far beyond Hollywood.
Many rediscovered his name while watching Le Mans ’66, and some may have eaten his chili, but the company he founded continues to quietly build some of the loudest Mustangs ever to leave tire marks on a drag strip. It also branched out into the pickup segment to fill a niche abandoned by Ford.
Join Autocar for a virtual tour of Shelby’s global headquarters in Nevada, where Ford’s Mustang and F-Series trucks go to reach performance nirvana.
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Vegas-brewed
Located in Las Vegas, closer to the airport than to the infamous Strip, Shelby’s headquarters is where every Super Snake built for the American market (about 300 units) and around 300 of its hot-rodded pickups come to life. Associates around the globe help the firm build the rest. Tuscany in Indiana notably makes trucks while Austria-based Magna Steyr builds them for the European market. Shops in Australia and South Africa are also licensed to turn a Ford into a Shelby.
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Sibling rivalry
Don’t expect to spot a GT350 or a GT500 in our photos. Both models are built under license by Ford in the same Flat Rock, Michigan, facility that manufactures the regular Mustang. Shelby remains relatively small and it wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand if it added two models to its production roster.
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Deep-rooted collaboration
The transformation process begins well before Ford introduces a car to the general public. As one of the carmaker’s most trusted partners, Shelby receives confidential technical information (like CAD files) about new models ahead of their unveiling and heads straight to the drawing board. And yet, making a Ford worthy of wearing the hallowed Shelby badge is more difficult in 2020 than it’s been in the past.
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From good to great
"Ford gives us a world-class platform to start with. The stock Mustang is simply amazing, and it’s really hard to improve that car," company spokesperson Jonathan Marsh told Autocar. The ever-increasing amount of technology Ford packs into its cars is another challenge Shelby faces. "Everything is electronic and so connected; every part talks to another," he pointed out.
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Releasing the horses
With CAD files in hand, Shelby engineers extract every available ounce of performance from the vehicle they’re working on. This generally requires replacing or upgrading every performance-related part. The Mustang gets a beefy supercharger to generate 814BHP, an improved cooling system and bigger brakes provided by Brembo, among other modifications. The only part that stays relatively untouched is the transmission, which is reliable enough to handle monstrous power levels Shelby dials in.
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Balance of power
Like all manufacturers, Shelby needs to test the parts it designs before releasing them to the public. It puts components through their paces on a race track and on the street to evaluate how they improve the car and whether they’re worth the extra cost. "When developing new parts, the team asks a series of questions. Does it improve the car on the street every day, or just on the track? Do we want to pass that cost to every owner, or is it better to make a part available as an upgrade? We make a lot of these decisions on a case-by-case basis," Marsh explained.
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The mightiest Mustang
Shelby tests and tunes its cars on its in-house dyno when needed. The Mustang tied down in our photo is a Shelby 1000 powered by a supercharged, 5.2-litre V8 that makes 1100BHP thanks in part to a 4.0-litre supercharger. It’s one of the rarest modern-day cars Shelby makes. "We're building very few 1000s because it’s such a comprehensive project. We do it more as a favour for a handful of customers who want the ultimate performance car."
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Tech is here, too
Shelby is proud of its illustrious heritage but you’re on the wrong track if you’re picturing bucolic mechanics in overalls spending an afternoon beating a body panel into shape by hand. The firm takes full advantage of recent technological breakthroughs, like 3D printing, to streamline its development work. Many of the bucks used to make composite parts are notably 3D-printed.
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Hand-made
Alchemising a Mustang into a Super Snake takes roughly two weeks. About 100 people work in the facility, though not all of them in the production department, and cars are largely built by hand. There’s no assembly line; many cars are custom-ordered with specific parts and other unique requests so this approach makes more sense.
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The final coat
"We don’t just bolt on parts," Marsh told us as we walked into the company’s paint shop, where a Super Snake that had received wider wheel arches was waiting for a coat of paint. Like Alpina in Germany, Shelby devotes a considerable amount of energy to integrating the parts it develops in a way that they look and feel like they're original. "That’s why there’s a one-year waiting list. It must be perfect."
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Shelby’s ID card
Shelby fits new wheels at the end of the production process. Before leaving, each car also gets a CSM (Carroll Shelby Manufacturing) serial number in the engine bay, a matching plate on the dashboard and its VIN added to the company’s registry. These instantly help collectors tell the real thing apart from even the best replica. If in doubt, they can reach out to the company to confirm a car came out of its shop.
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Retrofitting
Building new cars is only a chunk of Shelby’s business. Asked about a first-generation F-150 Raptor on the shop floor, Marsh told us the firm works on a lot of late-model cars. “If the customer wants to send us a first-generation Raptor, we’ll still fit those performance packages. The same thing for the Mustang.”
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Steering clear of the mainstream
Shelby caps production of each older package at about 500 units annually to maintain a high level of exclusivity. And, while the company will happily tune a 2011 F-150 Raptor, it won’t turn a 1965 Mustang into a GT350. Licensees around America handle restoration work and assign each car they build a CSX (Carroll Shelby Experimental) serial number to identify them as an authentic continuation car.
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Carroll Shelby’s baby
Shelby also performs maintenance work on cars it has built. Most of the vehicles that come through its shop are Mustangs and pickup trucks but it sees Series 1s a couple of times a year. Released in 1998 with a 4.0-litre, 316BHP V8 engine borrowed from Oldsmobile, the Series 1 (pictured) stands out as the only car designed from the ground up by Carroll Shelby. 249 units of this modern-day Cobra were built.
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The Dodge days
We were immediately drawn to this 1989 CSX-VNT lurking in a far corner of Shelby’s headquarters. One of 500 examples built, it looks like it’s in immaculate condition under the layer of dust and it belongs to a Shelby executive who plans to put it back on the road. This 173BHP pocket-sized rocket is one of the most obscure cars ever to wear the Shelby name. Posters aside, it’s also the only vestige from Shelby’s Dodge-building days we spotted at its headquarters. The two companies haven’t worked together for decades, the CSX-VNT was their last joint project, and they’re not planning a reunion anytime soon which is too bad. We'd love to see Shelby's take on a Challenger Hellcat.
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The next truck
The Ford F-150-based Super Snake Sport unveiled at the 2019 SEMA show is currently a one-off model. It’s scheduled to enter limited production in the first half of 2020 and it will pick up where the F-150 Lightning left off with up to 760BHP from a supercharged V8 engine. Shelby will make 250 units.
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Loud in more ways than one
Shelby has already started building the Super Snake Bold Edition announced in late 2019. It’s a limited-edition appearance package that adds eye-catching, heritage-laced colour combinations like orange with black stripes. 30 examples will be made for the American market during the 2020 model year.
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Shelby’s original EV
While Marsh couldn’t comment on rumoured plans to spice up the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Shelby has already dabbled in electric cars at least once. Well, sort of. This Mustang-esque golf cart is a one-off an executive had built many years ago. We don’t think it’s on the Shelby registry.
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Shelby’s heritage
Shelby placed its official museum right next to the factory. There’s no entry fee so anyone in the vicinity of Las Vegas can stop to worship the temple of horsepower. About a dozen cars are displayed at any given time including GT40s, Cobras and Mustangs.
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On the big screen
Most of the vehicles in the museum are continuation cars because Carroll Shelby didn’t like hanging on to old race cars. Marsh noted most of the cars that starred in Le Mans ’66 came from a California-based Shelby licensee named Superformance; the few real ones left are too valuable to spend hours getting beat up on a track for a movie.
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