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. ”

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. ”

Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along. ”

I love horsepower. ”

I don't think I'm a celebrity. I'm just a guy from east Texas who loves cars and airplanes. ”

I didn't have time for my children much. I wasn't a very good parent; I had a pretty unhappy home life. ”

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 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. ”

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.' ”