Shelby has an agreement with Ford. I've been through their facilities in Vegas. Pretty cool if you get a chance to tour it.
Yep! The Shelby and Ford relationship started at Shleby's racing school where he wanted to take an Aston Martin frame and put a V8 engine in it and make a V8 that weighed less than 2600 lbs. Ford and Aston Martin agreed to give him a frame and motor on credit and he created the Shelby Cobra.
Shelby contacted Charles Hurlock of AC, who agreed to provide the chassis on credit. Dave Evans of
Ford Motor Company, agreed to provide on credit, the 221-cubic-inch and 260-cubic-inch V8 engines with transmissions. The new car, called the Carroll Shelby Experimental or CSX0001, would be marketed as the Shelby AC Cobra, then
AC Cobra, and eventually, the Ford Cobra.
Shelby's early racing successes led to a joint effort of Ford and Shelby-American to produce the Mustang-based
Shelby GT350, starting in 1965, then the
Shelby GT500, starting in 1967. Shelby produced those cars through 1968, then subsequent cars with the Shelby GT brand were produced in-house by Ford.
After parting with Ford, Shelby moved on to help develop performance cars with divisions of the two other
Big 3 American companies:
Dodge, and
Oldsmobile.
