In the early 1960s Carroll Shelby, a Texas chicken farmer turned champion race driver, had the audacity to think he could start his own car manufacturing company. To further emphasize the gargantuan proportions of his vision, Shelby decided his company would manufacture nothing but ultra-high-performance sports cars, beginning with the landmark Cobra, introduced in 1962. To the amazement of everyone except Ol’ Shel’ himself, Shelby Automobiles succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, building cars that would provide the benchmarks for performance (benchmarks that stand to this day) and winning world championships in the process. Shelby Cobra Fifty Years is a complete history of Shelby’s Cobra sports cars. Beginning with a prologue about the events that led up to Shelby’s decision to build a high-performance sports car, the main portion of the book tells the history of the production Cobra street cars and race cars, ending with an epilogue about the continuation cars.