RIP CARROLL SHELBY Carroll Hall Shelby, the Texan who created the famous Shelby Cobra and uncounted other high-performance machines that turned the auto world on its ear, and made it a whole lot more fun for 50 years, died in Dallas Thursday night at age 89. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia. While perhaps best known now for his Shelby Cobras and Shelby Mustangs, the racer and car builder's signature accomplishment was the 1-2-3 finish in 1966 in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, ending Ferrari's then-domination of the event. Charged by Ford with making its GT40 racer competitive, he stuffed it with a 427 cu. in. V-8 and ran the table. But he'd first taken on the Ferraris and Porsches of the world on their own European sports car racing turf early in the 1960s with his original and now-legendary Cobras, mating a Ford V-8 with a light British AC roadster. Shelby, who affected the aw-shucks demeanor of the chicken farmer he once was, said, "I never made a damn dime until I started doing what I wanted." What he wanted was, if you will, power for the people, automotively speaking. "I love horsepower," he said more than once. Beyond just his efforts in the small world of hot-rodding, Shelby influenced how Detroit automakers thought about high-performance, and he proved that hard work and bit of guile can make a hero. But to achieve that, he had to jump from chicken-raising — his fowl all died of a disease one year — and into full-time auto racing, which he'd been doing on the side, in the 1950s. He was a success — at first continuing to wear the work overalls that he did as a farmer — and parlayed that reputation into a foothold as a car builder. The litany of significant cars he created is long, running from the original 1962 AC Cobra — small British sports car with a big (for the times) Ford engine — through a sojourn at Chrysler and a stint with GM via a failed Oldsmobile-powered car, back to Ford. He was involved with development of Ford's GT 500 Mustang, the 2013 version of which is certified as the most-powerful regular-production car in the world. His love affair put him into the orbit of industry giants of the time, as he more and more successfully showed car companies that powerful engines in lightweight cars was a viable and roadworthy combination on which he and they could make a lot of money. He became good friends with Lee Iacocca who was president at Ford Motor when Shelby began as a car builder. The relationship continue when Iacocca moved to Chrysler. Iacocca serendipitously happened upon on a small dinner in a Los Angeles restaurant some years back, intended as an intimate schmooze between Shelby and a journalist. Iacocca plopped down at the table and he and Shelby started telling stories. Among them, how the two began their relationship. Iacocca said Shelby was pestering him for money to build the original Cobra, and was so persistent that "I finally gave him the money to get him out of my office." Much later, in 2010, Shelby was facing two challenging phenomena: Mortality, and the changing nature of the go-fast auto business. At the time, he was taking 25 pills a day, tooling around in a motorized wheelchair and talking about passing the torch at Shelby American, the company he set up to build small numbers of exciting cars, as well as parts. Carroll Shelby at Ford's Dearborn Development Center in Michigan during development work on the Shelby GT500KR in September, 2007.CAPTIONBy Ford, WieckHe noted that extracting the most performance from an engine had become an exercise in computer programming, not tinkering. "I don't have the power to fight all the problems that I used to anymore," he said at the time. "I've had a good run. I've built a lot of things that work and a lot of things that didn't work." He estimates that of the 165 car projects he tried over his lifetime, seven or eight turned a profit. Big enough, it seems, to keep the enterprise rolling. His was a bold approach to car crafting that was too in-your-face for mainline car companies to conjure in-house. They let him come up with wild machines under their sponsorship, then refined them into cars the automakers could sell as high-performance halos. Along the way he came up with a recipe for a mean bowl of chili, sufficiently infamous to spark an annual beat-this chili cookoff in Texas, and later even ventured into fashion timepieces. He began his car building with subterfuge. Hoping to give the impression he was producing a lot of the original 1962 Cobras, he kept repainting the two he had built so car magazines would show them in a variety of colors. And he had to fend off another giant, his eventual friend Robert E. Petersen, founder of Motor Trend and Hot Rod magazines, for the affections of a woman. Petersen saw himself as merely taking advantage of an opportunity. Shelby recalled it as a work of infamy: "He'd tell her, 'You don't want to go around with a chicken farmer. And he'll lose (races), anyway'." Rumors began circulating about a health problem when the affable auto man failed to appear as scheduled at the New York auto show in early April to promote his latest creations, the 950-horsepower Shelby 1000 and the 1,100-hp Shelby 1000 S/C. Shelby published an update on his Facebook page in late April to say, in the vein of Mark Twain's "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," that he had been hospitalized for pneumonia, but was "resting comfortably with family and working on getting better."

Long before Jay Leno became an international celebrity, he was spinning wrenches at a local car dealership. While there, he crossed paths with Paul Annunziata, a brilliant mechanic with a penchant for Mopar muscle. While Leno was busy doing stand-up comedy and working his way toward network television, Annunziata was doing something really interesting: building a street-legal pro-stock drag car out of a 1975 Duster. After winning $10,000 in the lottery, he started with a body-in-white chassis before snapping up a 426 Hemi V8 from a Super Bee. Not satisfied with wedging an impossibly huge engine into the confines of the Duster's engine bay, Annunziata bolted on a massive Roots blower. The rear of the body had to be tubbed to keep the tires under the factory sheetmetal, and the Duster also underwent extensive engine bay modification to house its new powerplant. Even so, everything on the machine is fully functional as it would have been from the factory. Unfortunately, Annunziata was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Rather than sell his pride and joy, he offered it to Leno for free under the stipulation that he never sell the machine. Leno agreed, but only if he could actually pay Annunziata for his creation. The two compromised by setting up a scholarship for those who are interested in pursuing a four-year degree in auto mechanics or restoration. We call that a win on every front.

http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/registration/downloads/bulletin_1_v10_24_02_2012.pdf

The muscle car era in the United States occurred roughly from 1964 to 1972. No one person is responsible for developing factory production cars powered by massive performance V-8 engines that led to the creation of the muscle car, but Pontiac chief engineer John DeLorean was an early pioneer. DeLorean and his team produced the high-powered 1964 Pontiac GTO that defined the future of the muscle car. Muscle Car Defined A muscle car is a midsize coupe or hardtop equipped with a large block V-8 engine. It's often confused with a pony car. According to musclecarclub.com, a stock Ford Mustang, for example, is identified as a pony car. But the Mustang Mach 1, GT and Boss models equipped with performance engines are considered muscle cars. The Beginning In a bit of irony that can only be dreamed up in a Dilbert comic, General Motors management indirectly created the muscle car by banning GM cars from National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing competition in 1963. GM also banned factory-installed engine sizes above 330 cubic inches, according to Hemmings Muscle Machines. GM engineers conspired to circumvent the ban. Enter John DeLorean The car that started it all: The 1964 Pontiac GTO. In 1963, Pontiac's DeLorean, Russ Gee and Bill Collin decided to take the Pontiac Tempest family car and fit it with a 389-cubic-inch V-8. It was equipped with a four-barrel carburetor and generated 325 horsepower. DeLorean skirted the GM ban by offering the 389-cubic-inch "Super Tempest," later to be called the GTO, as an option only and with an initial production of only 5,000 units, according to Hemmings and web-cars.com. Super Sport The 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Super Sport convertible. By the time the GTO hit the market, Chevrolet was already producing its performance Super Sport models with the compact Nova. The Super Sport was introduced in 1961 primarily as an appearance package, according to musclecarclub.com. Although all Super Sports today are considered muscle cars, the 1963 Nova SS was only powered by a small-block 283-cubic-inch V-8. The exception was the 1961 Impala SS powered by a 348-cubic-inch V-8. However, the Impala SS predated GM's ban on big V-8s and was a full-size car. Mustang Versus Camaro The 1967 Shelby Mustang GT350. Pony cars are essentially midsize stock production coupes with modestly powered engines. The standard Mustang and Camaro fit into this category, according to musclecarclub.com and web-cars.com. Yet these two cars are perhaps most responsible for igniting the Ford/Chevrolet muscle car wars. Retired race driver Carroll Shelby developed the performance Shelby Mustang GT350 and GT500s, while Chevrolet produced its Camaro SS and Z28 performance packages. Dodge Dodge, a division of Chrysler, perhaps best embraced the muscle car concept in the late 1960s with several models. It developed a performance package, the R/T, for the Challenger, Charger, the compact Dart and full-size Coronet with 383 or 440-cubic-inch V-8s, according to musclecarclub.com. Demise The oil embargo of 1973 stopped the muscle car era dead in its tracks. Gas prices skyrocketed. The U.S. government implemented a series of strict safety and emissions regulations that doomed the big-block V-8. Americans turned to fuel-efficient Japanese imports, prompting Detroit automakers to downsize their cars and engine horsepower, according to Fortune magazine.