Carroll Shelby quotes

Carroll Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur, renowned for his high-performance cars. His innovations, including the legendary Shelby Cobra and contributions to the Ford Mustang, left a lasting mark on the world of motorsport and car design. He became an icon in both racing and automobile engineering. Here are 14 of his quotes:

Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races.

Carroll Shelby

I'm not going to take this defeatist attitude and listen to all this crap any more from all these people who have nothing except doomsday to predict.

Carroll Shelby

I don't think I'm a celebrity. I'm just a guy from east Texas who loves cars and airplanes.

Carroll Shelby

I never made a damn dime until I started doing what I wanted.

Carroll Shelby

My proudest moments are beating Ferrari for the World Championship in 1965, and working with Ford to win Le Mans in 1966 and 1967.

Carroll Shelby

In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'

Carroll Shelby

Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along.

Carroll Shelby

I don't design cars. I'm not a designer. I know what I desire to be built, I know what the end result is, the horsepower, the competition we'll be working against - but I leave it to the people who work with me to put it all together. I don't do anything.

Carroll Shelby

The reason I moved to California the first time was to build the Cobra. I thought it was stupid to have a 1918 taxicab engine in what Europeans like to call a performance car when a little American V-8 could do the job better.

Carroll Shelby

Racing has reached the point where it is pricing the young driver, no matter his talent, out of the game.

Carroll Shelby

I've always been asked, 'What is my favorite car?' and I've always said 'The next one.'

Carroll Shelby

It's a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car.

Carroll Shelby