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. – 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.’ – Carroll Shelby
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
I’ve always been asked, ‘What is my favorite car?’ and I’ve always said ‘The next one.’ – Carroll Shelby
I’ve had a good run. I’ve built a lot of things that work and a lot of things that didn’t work. – Carroll Shelby
My proudest moments are beating Ferrari for the World Championship in 1965, and working with Ford to win Le Mans in 1966 and 1967. – Carroll Shelby
I didn’t have time for my children much. I wasn’t a very good parent; I had a pretty unhappy home life. – Carroll Shelby
I don’t think I’m a celebrity. I’m just a guy from east Texas who loves cars and airplanes. – Carroll Shelby
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. – Carroll Shelby
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. – Carroll Shelby
Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along. – Carroll Shelby
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. – Carroll Shelby
Racing has reached the point where it is pricing the young driver, no matter his talent, out of the game. – Carroll Shelby
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. – Carroll Shelby
