Carroll Hall Shelby (January 11, 1923 – May 10, 2012) was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur. Shelby is best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang (later known as Shelby Mustangs) for Ford Motor Company, which he modified during the late 1960s and early 2000s. He established Shelby American Inc. in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles, as well as Carroll Shelby Licensing in 1988 which grew into Carroll Shelby International.\n', '

Carroll Shelby was born on January 11, 1923 to Warren Hall Shelby, a rural mail carrier, and his wife, Eloise (Lawrence) Shelby in Leesburg, Texas. Shelby suffered from heart valve leakage problems by age 7 and experienced health complications from this throughout his life. Shelby\'s education as a pilot began in the military at the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, later known as Lackland Air Force Base, in November 1941.\n', '

Shelby was married a total of seven times. Shelby\'s first wife was Jeanne Fields; they married on December 18, 1943. Their daughter Sharon Anne Shelby was born a year later on September 27, 1944. Shelby and Fields had two more children — Michael Hall (born November 2, 1946) and Patrick Bert (born October 23, 1947). They divorced in February 1960, and by his own admission, Shelby was unfaithful. In 1962, Shelby married actress Jan Harrison before the marriage was annulled the same year. His third marriage, which he entered into as part of a deal with a New Zealand woman to get her into the United States, lasted only a few weeks before ending in divorce. His fourth marriage, to a woman presumably named Sandy, lasted less than a year before ending in divorce. His fifth marriage, which lasted more than a year, also ended in divorce. In 1991, Shelby married his sixth wife, Lena Dahl, a Swedish woman whom he met in 1968. She died in a car accident in 1997. It was his only marriage which did not end in divorce, annulment, or separation. Shelby married his final wife, Cleo, a British former model who drove rally cars, in 1997, just four months after the death of his sixth wife. She was 25 years his junior. They were in the process of getting a divorce when he died in 2012.\n', '

Return to Carroll Shelby Autograph Profile