by Wallace Wyss
It
was a long time coming; a near complete authorized biography of a giant in American sports
car circles, Carroll Hall Shelby. The
author is a surprising choice, British author Rinsey Mills, surprising only because in a couple of his
earlier books on Shelby he seemed of the opinion that the British side of the
AC Cobra story wasn’t being given due credit, a common failing among British
automotive historians who sometimes say A.C. did most of it until that cowpoke
came along. In this book he gives Shelby
full credit for the idea of the Cobra. This
book is a step-by-step walk through Shelby’s life starting out as a farm boy in
a small town near Dallas. Mills had full access to not only Shelby, but Shelby’s
lifelong friends, former employees, race drivers, business partners and even
ex-wives.
He
is brutally frank in some areas, such as during the Series 1 Olds debacle,
trying to fathom why Shelby persisted in making the car even though he was
physically not up to it at the time and there were early signs that GM support
could evaporate at any moment. The book
is best in the Le Mans racing segments, where he tells the simultaneous story
of the Cobras and the GT40s racing. This reviewer has wrestled with the same
thing–basically covering two very different kinds of cars–and concluded it’s
easier to understand if you have separate chapters on the Cobras and GT40s. Mills took the more common approach, since they were both
in the same races at the same time. He
doesn’t tell much about the personalities of the competition, for example the
enigmatic Jim Hall, the young man that Shelby taught to race, and how Hall
came back to haunt the Ford GT40 effort with his technically more advanced
Chaparrals but he does paint a good portrait of Enzo
Ferrari as a worthy adversary.
The
length of the book shows that Mills was trying to show that he could research more in
depth on his subject than any author has done heretofore and that makes for
fascinating reading at times but only occasionally drags, for example in
over-coverage on Africa. He does establish Shelby had a game ranch there but
goes on for several pages of mini-histories of various African countries and
their rulers and that gets pretty far afield from Shelby, Cobras, and Mustangs
and fans of those cars are the primary customers for doing a Shelby book.
Surprising
to this author was his close-up view of Shelby’s wooing of a TV actress while
he was still married, surprising because this is “authorized” by Carroll
Shelby. Hard to take because his wife Jeanne emerges as a noble woman who was
forced to confront that situation (they got divorced, he married the TV star
and shortly after divorced her). I am glad it’s in there because it presents a
more complete picture of a man who, by most accounts, has lived the lives of
six men, not just one.
The
role of various people in Shelby’s life becomes more in focus with Mills’ book, such as the role of Jacque Passino, a Ford
racing czar. I had thought Passino came in only later in the GT40 period but Mills says Passino was one of those paving the way for Ford
to fund the Cobra. Phil Remington is described numerous times as a key
character. Remington was the mechanic who many times came up with last minute
fixes on the Cobras and GT40s. The
threat that Holman Moody would take away a bit of Shelby’s empire in the racing
days is well presented here though Mills never describes the people behind the name, Holman
Moody. Mills does a good job describing Shelby’s engaging
personality, how a rural farm boy from Texas could go to Italy and learn
Italian and drive race cars in several countries because he could get people to
believe in him, to support his dream.
The
book weighs two pounds and is a whopping 552 pages. And yet has only about 32
pages of pictures, not even 10% of the total number of pages. Now the pictures
are interesting, some not seen before from his youth, but I wonder if they will
meet the expectations of Cobra fans who want to see every model: the wide hip,
the narrow hip, the USRRC, the FIA and on and on. It won’t; and I expect you
will have to buy another book to satisfy those needs. And though as an artist,
I like Bill Neale’s paintings of Cobras, I wonder why he included several Neale
paintings when pictures of the same cars are still available. True, the Neale
paintings strike a mood, but many buyers of car books like pictures that help
them make their model cars or replica cars more realistic and a painting can’t
give you much guidance there.
Tony Parravano's Scaglietti-bodied Ferrari 121LM with Hans Tanner
at the Modena autodrome in Italy.
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I thought, since the book is being published in
2012, that it would carry right through to the latest Shelby models, but it
becomes vague soon after it discusses Shelby coming back to work with Ford, as
if the author didn’t want to get buried in the multiplicity of models that has
come out of the Shelby works and Ford since 2007. That’s okay when you remember
that this book is a titled as a biography, so don’t expect a list of models
with a discussion of the features and options. Maybe in the long view of
history they are almost too new to be considered part of history.
In
sum, Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography by Rinsey
Mills has set a tough standard for any future books on
Shelby the man because he covers so many areas so thoroughly there’s almost
nothing else anyone could add, no new area to shine light on. As far as
technical areas, there will be minor quibbles, easily straightened out if he
submits the work to various experts in each marquee. For instance, at one point
he says Shelby was the one who got the flaws in the Pantera corrected, while it
was actually Bill Stroppe in the West and Holman Moody in the East. A larger
question is (and the sales figures will show what direction any future books
should go) do Shelby fans want weighty tomes that are almost all words like
this book, or do they prefer glossy picture books like Colin
Comer’s Shelby and Cobra tomes?
I
think they want both. I think Mills will sell as many of these as Comer does his books.
You need both kinds of books for your Shelby library if you want your library
to be more complete. In racing scholarship, it doesn’t go near as far as The
Cobra-Ferrari Wars by Mike Shoen but then Shoen doesn’t discuss Shelby’s
life prior to the Cobra or go that much into after the Cobra. We’re glad to see
that Mills’ biography got published while Shelby was still there
to add to it and to steer the author to sources who could come up with a lot of
information that’s new. The best part is the price. With a suggested retail
price of $35.00 (and lower online), the price represents a real bargain for a
book that will take you a whole weekend to read.
–
Author: Rinsey Mills
Publisher: Motorbooks; First edition (April 2012)
Format: Hardcover, 9.5″ x 6.375″, 552 pages
Photos: 25 color and 40 b/w
ISBN-10: 0760340560 ; ISBN-13: 978-0760340561
Price: starting at $22
Publisher: Motorbooks; First edition (April 2012)
Format: Hardcover, 9.5″ x 6.375″, 552 pages
Photos: 25 color and 40 b/w
ISBN-10: 0760340560 ; ISBN-13: 978-0760340561
Price: starting at $22
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