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est from Rock, so they decided to help
move the project along on their own,
aided by the automotive press which
was always attentive to any Carroll
Shelby project. And for good reason:
for forty years, whatever Shelby did
was news. Shelby and Landy were
soon trumpeting that Shelby’s latest
project was “a Cobra for the 1990s”
and passing out photos of a large scale
model which Landy had ordered a
model maker to create. It looked like a
roadster version of the original Cobra
Daytona Coupe. Shelby provided his
usual flamboyant sound bites: “
It’s
going to be an ass-kicker—not a little
tin can.
” The proposed price tag was
put at $75,000 because, “
if I can’t sell
it for $75,000, I won’t build it.
” How
many? “
I’m only going to build 500 of
them
.” And he chose an Oldsmobile en-
gine because, “
it’s the only engine out
there that’s worth a shit
.” Shelby was
a bubbling fountain of colorful quotes.
Oldsmobile had not yet signed
onto the project but Landy was beat-
ing the drums as if it was already a
done deal. As push came to shove,
Shelby began to have second thoughts
about getting back into the car busi-
ness. It was an entirely different world
from the one he had waded into in the
1960s. He was older now (and suppos-
edly wiser), and he was not in perfect
health. Landy continued pushing,
however, probably feeling that once
momentum was lost it would become
impossible to regain. Shelby began to
wonder, did he really need this? Landy
convinced him that he did.
John Rock had yet to make a deci-
sion about Oldsmobile’s involvement
in a sports car project. Shelby had,
over the years, developed a gigantic
network of people in the automotive
industry and one was a friend named
Vic Olesen, a semi-retired marketing
executive who also happened to be, as
it turned out, a good friend of John
Rock. Shelby asked Olesen to act as a
go-between and see if he could accu-
rately gauge Rock’s level of interest.
Olesen discovered there was some, but
Landy was quickly draining it away.
After learning that Oldsmobile had
plans for a wide-ranging motorsports
program (World Sports Car, IMSA,
and even a new IRL series) Landy had
cobbled together a proposal for not
only an Olds powered Shelby sports
car but a program for Shelby Ameri-
can to handle all aspects of Oldsmobile
racing. Rock saw the camel’s nose get-
ting under his tent. The more Landy
talked, the more Rock disliked him. It
became clear to Shelby that it was up
to him to do something to hold things
together.
In the previous year, 1994, Shelby
met Don Rager through an organ
transplant organization. Rager was a
Las Vegas businessman with a back-
ground in accounting. He was also a
car enthusiast who was drawn to
Shelby and they hit it off. Rager had
undergone a recent liver transplant
and Shelby was on his way to getting
a new kidney. Shelby found himself
agreeing less and less with Landy but
was reluctant to let him go until he
had a suitable replacement. He found
exactly that in Don Rager.
With Landy out of the picture and
Rager in it, Shelby’s Olds-powered
sports car project began to pick up
speed. Vic Olesen and Eric Davison
[
whose detailed book
, “Snake Bit—
Carroll Shelby’s Controversial Series
1 Sports Car”
was heavily relied on in
researching this article
] came on board
the sports car project, getting orders
and guidance from Shelby but filtered
through Rager – who made Landy
look good.
Don Rager seemed to be at the
center of a perpetual maelstrom which
was mostly his own creation. He
jumped from crisis to crisis. He rarely
returned phone calls or responded to
memos or faxes, and he seemed to con-
stantly be running behind schedules
that he, himself, had created. He tried
to micro-manage everything and
meetings with him were full of loud
talk, big promises and lots of arm wav-
ing. But when the smoke and haze
cleared, little had been accomplished.
Rager also set himself up as the only
one who could talk with Shelby. Any-
one who wanted to say anything to
Shelby had to go through him. As
Shelby’s kidney situation grew worse
he relied more and more on Rager. Be-
fore long Rager had installed himself
as the head of the Shelby sports car
project and everything was routed
through him.
In November of 1995, at the an-
nual SEMA Show in Las Vegas, it all
came together. Oldsmobile agreed to
provide Shelby engines and technical
support. They would also make avail-
able whatever GM parts were re-
quired at a fair price and would pump
some money into the project. A month
later, at a follow-up meeting with John
Rock at Olds’ headquarters in Lans-
ing, Michigan, Rock finally gave his of-
ficial approval. With everyone at
Oldsmobile worrying about a divi-
sion’s survival, many enthusiastically
saw a parallel between what the Viper
had done for Dodge’s image with
Shelby’s help and what Shelby had
done for Ford’s image with the Cobra.
Now it was time for the Texan to work
some of his magic for Oldsmobile.
Shelby hired several competent
people to take care of the engineering
and production details. Oldsmobile di-
rected a few high level people of their
own to help cut through the corporate
red tape. The schedule called for two
The SHELBY AMERICAN
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