BOOK REVIEWS FOR PORSCHEPHILES

BY BRUCE HERRINGTON, ORANGE COAST REGION

Shelby American 60 Years Of High Performance

SHELBY AMERICAN 60 YEARS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE, by Colin Comer with Rick Kopec, published January 3, 2023 by Motorbooks, Beverly MA.

TheForeword of this book indicates that a young James D. Farley Jr., once used ‘pull’ to land a job as a janitor at Phil Hill’s restoration shop. Now he is CEO of Ford Motor Company. Interesting !

There are eight chapters covering the Shelby’s evolution from an experimental hot rod race car to an automotive empire. Chapter one summarizes the history, mostly focusing on the early years and how Shelby exploded from a single prototype/ demonstrator to a manufacturer of thousands of vehicles in a multitude of models, and almost incidentally also a race team capable of a onetwo-three at Le Mans. This book provides a very comprehensive treatment of all manner of ‘Shelbys’, past, present, and possibly future.

Chapter four may be the meat of the book for many readers It gives brief biographies with pictures of the many assorted drivers and mechanics, well known and unknown, and the cars that contributed to the Shelby legend. It puts faces and stories to many names that were continually poping up in the motoring press during the ‘s60s through ‘80s, The many references to Shelby Cobras, Shelby Mustangs, etc. are based on the corporate name, not personal involvement by Carrol Shelby himself. This chapter highlights what is implicit in other chapters – a great number of different people played key roles in the success of the Shelby vehicles.

SHELBY AMERICAN is very well illustrated with comprehensive captions for each picture. Indeed, there may be more words in picture captions than in all the text blocks. The casual observer who picks this up off a coffee table must be excused if they consider it a picture book, not a book telling a story. The snap-shot nature of these pictures collected from multiple sources, can give the viewer a palpable, you-are-there, in the scene of the action, feeling. The cover of the book proper, not the stylistic dust jacket, gives one the feeling they can almost reach out and touch Shelby, Bob Holbert and Ken Miles, arguably the hottest sports-car racers in the ‘60s. The back cover photo puts you in the action for an Elkart Lake pitstop. There is no Porsche content, but the index does list six entries for Bob Holbert and one for Roger Penske, the premier Porsche racers of the ‘60s and ‘70s..

Hardcover, with 224 9-1/2 x 12 inch pages, with 250 color photos and innumerable B&Ws from the early years. There is a four page index mostly of people’s names and Shelby model numbers. This reviewer’s per-production copy has some unfortunate publishing lapses of the wrong selection in spellcheck variety, and misplaced caption blocks. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time you buy a copy. With or without these glitches, any enthusiast of old time, ‘grass roots’ sportscar racing will love this book, even if they don’t have there own memories of that era. SHELBY AMERICAN is a fascinating story well told in a fast paced narrative appropriate to the frenetic nature of Shelby operations over the years. By the time you read this it should be available for $60.00 from your favorite bookseller (ask for it), or from Quartoknows.com