Shelby Mustang: Racer for the Street

by Randy Leffingwell

When Ford wanted to add some spice to its new Mustang pony car in the mid-1960s, it turned to talented, colorful, and opinionated Texan Carroll Shelby, who was then building high-performance racing sports cars (Cobras) using a British body and a Ford engine. The resulting Shelby Mustangs proved to be the definitive performance Mustangs of the muscle car era. Ford has recently released a new Mustang, the first truly all-new Mustang since 1979, returning the model to the spotlight. The most-talked-about and anticipated version of the new Mustang is the Shelby Cobra GT500, which Ford will bring to market in 2006. Shelby himself was involved in the development of what will be the most powerful factory-produced Mustang ever. This rich new history from award-winning authors Randy Leffingwell and David Newhardt traces the Shelby Mustang story from the early Shelby America cars built in a converted airplane hangar in Southern California to the 2006 version of the new Mustang.

186 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2005

About the author

Photographer and writer, Randy Leffingwell, has more than 35 books in print, primarily on Americana subjects. These cover interests and areas as diverse as the American barn and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, California’s wine country and John Deere farm tractors. His awareness of and attraction to moving things goes back as far as he can remember, to the first Dinky Toys and Match Box cars his father and mother gave him. His practical introduction to real sports cars came several years later when his uncle took him to watch a weekend of racing events at Meadowdale International Raceway in suburban Chicago.

Throughout all this time, however, he imagined himself becoming an architect and his life-long admiration of buildings and design began with frequent trips to downtown Chicago. While in undergraduate studies at Kansas University in the architectural engineering sequence, he discovered photography, journalism, and reawakened an earlier passion for writing. He scarcely looked back as he shifted his major studies from architecture, through English, Art History, psychology, and finally to the William Allen White school of Journalism for a BS in photojournalism.

Following graduation from KU, Randy began a successful career as a photojournalist first at the Kansas City TIMES, then joining the staff of the Chicago SUN-TIMES where he remained for nine years. He then worked as associate editor at AutoWeek magazine in Detroit, before being hired by the Los Angeles TIMES as a writer/photographer. He worked for the TIMES for 11 years, covering everything from news stories to personality profiles to food features throughout Italy, film festivals in France and Utah, and live theater in London. It was, he says, a great job and a great place to work.

His latest project is a large history of Harley-Davidson for them. During this project, he photographed 193 motorcycles from the Harley-Davidson Archives Collection and he completed the corresponding text for the book in early April 2007. Release of this 432 page book tentatively is scheduled for early 2008.

Reviews

[Braden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. There are not any main characters, But two people where very important in the making of the mustang and the Shelby cobra. They are Henry Ford 2 and Carroll Shelby. The book takes place in the 1960s and the start of the 70s. Ford was struggling to make a sports car so they turned to a Texan named Carroll Shelby. Ford gave him the engines to make a more powerful car. With the help of Shelby, Ford made the Cobra Gt500 and the gt350 which are cars still made today. I picked this book to read because i love older muscle cars and the history behind them. This book reminds me of life because i love to work on cars see how they work. This book makes me remember the time my grandpa bought a old mustang and i got to help him work on it. To bad he sold it 2 years later. The book did live up to its promise. I found all the things i wanted to know about the mustang cobra.

[JoEL cOnSuEgRa...:::...]

its about mustang car