RIP Carroll Shelby

Looking back is not something Shelby likes to do. He prefers to fix his gaze forward, focusing on his next project rather than dwelling on the past. But as he’s just about to celebrate his half-centenary of producing lethally amusing cars by unveiling his latest explosive creation at the 2012 New York Auto Show, 50 years to the day after the first Cobra broke cover on the Ford stand at the same event, we’re sure he won’t mind this recap.

Before he started building cars in 1962, Shelby spent the Fifties earning his racing spurs on the race circuits of the world. Among his many achievements, he won the Le Mans 24 Hours in an Aston Martin in 1959, set 16 American and international speed records in a specially smoothed and supercharged Austin Healey 100S and competed in the 1958 and 1959 seasons of Formula One, behind the wheel of a Maserati 250F and then an Aston Martin DBR4-250.