00:00 Hello folks, welcome to Men and Motors and I'm here today at the Shelby Heritage Centre
00:07 as you can see.
00:08 Now this is a bit of a museum of Shelby, tells you a bit about Carroll Shelby and his life
00:12 and we see some of the important cars that were part of his life.
00:17 But it's also a working workshop for Shelby American and essentially you'll get your new
00:22 model Ford, have it bought here, they spend some time with it and then you drive out in
00:27 your new Shelby version.
00:29 So let's take a look inside, I hope you like this one, give it a thumbs up and let's go.
00:35 So here we've got number one of the Shelby GT350.
00:39 Now the GT350 was actually advertised as the ladies Shelby, as the ladies Mustang in the
00:45 marketing back in the day when it was released.
00:48 And the 350 doesn't actually mean anything.
00:52 You might think that's 350 cubic inch or 350 horsepower but basically they come up with
00:57 this car and Carroll Shelby evidently was quite an impatient man and he said what are
01:03 we going to call it?
01:04 And the designer said I don't know, what should we call it?
01:07 And it was what about this, what about this and Shelby was like no, no, no and he said
01:12 how many steps is it from your office to here where we're standing right now?
01:18 And the guy said I don't know, maybe 350?
01:21 And he said there you go, Shelby GT350 and that's how it got its name.
01:26 So if you thought this was a 350 horsepower car, you were wrong.
01:31 Look at this one folks, prototype model of the GT500 Super Snake.
01:35 I mean what a car this thing is.
01:38 Obviously iconic paint job, the white with the stripes going down the middle and just
01:43 a beautiful car.
01:45 As I'm speaking we'll show you this interior.
01:48 As you can see this has got a fire extinguisher in it, very, very classic design.
01:52 It's absolutely amazing, every inch of this car just says performance and style, I love
01:59 it.
02:00 Of course it all began with Shelby with the Cobra like the one we see here and there's
02:08 quite an interesting story with that.
02:10 When Shelby put together the first Cobra, he took it to car events all around the world
02:15 and had the car photographed for brochures and all the rest of it and every time he turned
02:20 up with a different colour car.
02:23 He didn't quite have the budget to produce all those cars, enough to fill a brochure
02:27 or to debut a different one at various shows.
02:30 So basically he had one car that just constantly got repainted.
02:35 Very very clever, people thought it was a bigger company than it was, people thought
02:38 they had all these cars, all these different colours and actually it was just one with
02:43 different levels of paint.
02:45 They used to have number one in here, last time I visited here they had number one in
02:49 here, the prototype and someone told me that ten years before Carroll died, he got offered
02:54 30 million dollars for it and immediately declined.
02:58 So I can only imagine what that car is worth today.
03:01 In 1963 Shelby began work on what would become the Daytona Coupe with Pete Brock.
03:07 The whole reason for the Daytona Coupe was to produce a car light enough and with good
03:11 enough aerodynamics to be able to compete at Le Mans and in fact to do 200 miles an
03:17 hour down the Mulsanne Strait and that's what they managed to do with this.
03:21 This car won at Bridgehampton with Dan Gurney behind the wheel and it was the first time
03:26 an American driver in an American car had won an FIA race.
03:36 In 1965 Shelby moved over to a facility at Los Angeles International Airport and it started
03:43 work on the GT40 for Ford in their attempt to actually go and win at Le Mans and I think
03:51 the rest as they say is history.
04:00 And if you've seen that movie, this appears in pretty much the first scene of Carroll
04:04 Shelby driving it along.
04:05 It's an Aston Martin but underneath it's not, it's border alert.
04:11 Yeah, that's actually used in the movie and it's in the first scene.
04:17 This is a very special Cobra here, this was Carroll Shelby's last Cobra.
04:21 So it's a car that holds a special place in the hearts of the people that work here.
04:27 He had this at 88 years old, obviously just a few years before he passed away.
04:33 He did 200 miles an hour in this car at that age which is fairly incredible.
04:37 They did have to put an automatic transmission in this one because he was no longer able
04:42 to work a clutch because obviously quite a heavy clutch usually in these kind of vehicles
04:46 but a very special thing and a great thing to see and a great thing for them to have
04:52 here at the Heritage Centre.
04:54 In 2011 Shelby began development of what would become the most powerful Mustang ever.
05:00 This would be the Shelby 1000 with 1100 brake horsepower.
05:04 Carroll himself was closely involved in the R&D of this car and really quite a special
05:10 thing.
05:18 So these are really interesting cars here.
05:20 Instead of a kit car it means you can actually buy a completely functional rolling chassis
05:26 minus the engine and transmission.
05:29 So you can literally put a power plant of your choice into that car and you've got yourself
05:34 a fully fledged running and driving Shelby.
05:37 You can do what you want with the finish.
05:38 They come like this which I think looks amazing as it is.
05:42 See if you wanted to paint the car you could but I mean look at that.
05:48 Here you can see the Cobra example of one of these amazing cars.
05:56 They're called continuation cars.
05:58 As I said, not kit cars, continuation cars.
06:02 I've got some examples of some more thorough bred race vehicles here and just one off special
06:10 editions of them.
06:11 It's called Wings of Pride Super Snake.
06:14 Very very cool.
06:15 We've got plenty of vintage stuff.
06:19 If you're in any way interested in Ford performance cars or in Shelby or the story of Shelby.
06:27 This is a man that went from being a trainee fighter pilot, had heart condition, so went
06:34 to start training fighter pilots to being one of the most successful, one of the most
06:41 influential car designers, producers in the world who designed a car that went and won
06:47 Le Mans against all the odds up against Ferrari.
06:51 This is a place you simply must visit if you come to Las Vegas.
06:54 Of course you've nothing to come in and have a walk around.
06:57 They do great guided tours here as well where they've got lots of information for you on
07:01 the vehicles and the actual gift shop is probably one of the coolest ones I've ever visited
07:09 in my life.
07:11 I'm also going to show you now the workshop.
07:13 Obviously as I said at the start, you can just get your production Ford and have it
07:19 booked in at Shelby.
07:22 They come, the cars come in here for a number of weeks.
07:26 They're booked up several weeks in advance, I think about 12 or 16 weeks in advance.
07:31 Your car comes in here for several weeks into a bay and they will put any option on the
07:36 vehicle that you've chosen.
07:38 They have various packages but anything custom can be done as well.
07:42 They've got highly skilled guys.
07:44 Really interesting thing here is that the workshop actually runs 4am until 2pm Monday
07:52 to Thursday.
07:55 On a Friday the staff can come in and finish up any bits and bobs they want, do a bit of
07:59 overtime but Saturdays and Sundays they're absolutely not allowed in because Carroll
08:04 Shelby said that weekends are for families.
08:08 I think that's a really nice thing in this day and age, particularly in the US where
08:12 people seem to work extremely long hours.
08:17 They've just so many cool classic Mustangs in here and one off very very special cars.
08:28 An amazing place.
08:32 Folks hope you've enjoyed this one and if you're into all things Ford, go and check
08:36 out this video over here where we show you something very special from the LA Auto Show
08:41 2023 that was just a few days ago at the time of recording this.
08:45 And go and check that one out for yet more from Ford at the LA Auto Show.
08:50 Thanks for watching, see you on the next one.
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