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rection. Demands from buyers became
exhausting and clearly something had
to be done. So, a “delivery program”
was begun. Buyers were invited to Las
Vegas to tour the factory and went
through an “indoctrination program”
where they learned about the Series 1
and received a driving lesson in a fac-
tory demonstrator from race driver
Davey Hamilton at Las Vegas Motor
Speedway. Hamilton drove for A.J.
Foyt in the CART and IRL and lived
in Las Vegas. Buyers also received a
custom made Series 1 leather jacket,
numbered to match the car and signed
by Carroll Shelby. It was touted as a
$1,500 item (although Shelby got
them for considerably less). The deliv-
ery program went a long way towards
calming down buyers who were having
doubts about ever seeing a car.
In May of 1999 two Series 1s were
delivered to a government-approved
facility near Riverside, California, for
crash testing. One car would be
crashed front and rear and the second
one would undergo a side impact test.
Crash tests were not mandatory for
small manufacturers, provided that
they could show enough supporting
data simulating what would happen if
a crash took place. However, if some-
thing were to happen in an actual
crash that was not indicated by the en-
gineering data, there could be major li-
ability for the manufacturer. With a
high performance car, crashes were
virtually inevitable; so the decision to
crash the same cars which would be
sold to the public was an easy one.
Both cars passed, which seemed to
surprise everyone.
Production began at Shelby’s Gar-
dena facility and it was painfully slow.
In May, Shelby received a bill from
GM for 530 Aurora engines at $4,000
per engine. This $2,120,000 bill came
as something of a surprise, because it
was not the “grandfather” deal John
Rock had outlined. The invoice caused
an immediate panic because there was
obviously no money to pay for the en-
gines, and they would not be delivered
until they were paid for. In addition to
the cost, the engines still had to be
modified to Shelby specifications.
After a number of hastily called con-
ference calls, Oldsmobile relented and
sent the engines with no up-front pay-
ment required.
Also in May, Venture decided to
close the deal. They would purchase
75% of Shelby American, with Carroll
Shelby retaining 25%. Rumors imme-
diately abounded about how much
Shelby received, but if anybody knew,
they weren’t telling. Venture began
funneling money into Shelby Ameri-
can. Well, sort of. The initial agree-
ment was that they would pay all of
the suppliers, all outstanding bills,
and the payroll. But Venture decided
what bills would get paid, and when.
As Venture’s presence expanded, so
did its influence. Chassis construction
was pulled from the company that had
been subcontracted to build them and
moved to one of Venture’s facilities in
Detroit – even though they had no ex-
perience in the production of welded
aluminum chassis.
By March of 2000, 235 chassis had
been completed. This was beyond the
Department of Transportation’s dead-
line of December 31, 1999, but nothing
was made of it. It meant that all Series
1s would be 1999 models, no matter
how long it took to complete the build.
In order to market them as 2000 mod-
els another round of testing and certi-
fication would have been required and
this would have been prohibitively ex-
pensive. Dealers were faced with try-
ing to sell a brand new car which was
ostensibly a year old, but compared to
past problems this amounted to noth-
ing more than a small speed bump.
John Rock left Oldsmobile and the
Series 1 program suddenly became a
hot potato that no one wanted to
touch. Venture was considering a law-
suit against GM/Oldsmobile for breach
of contract because there was a ques-
tion of Oldsmobile not living up to
their end of the contract. This was
mostly dust thrown into the air by
Rager in order to conceal Shelby’s
shortcomings. A continual revolving
door of Oldsmobile personnel moving
in and out made it almost impossible
for decisions to be made and Shelby’s
people had a difficult time dealing
with Venture’s people.
While all this was swirling
around, Larry Winget was convinced
that the cars were underpriced, and
that dealers were taking advantage of
him. He was intending to retroactively
raise the price, initially to $165,000
but eventually to $174,975. His under-
lings had convinced him that because
the car had Carroll Shelby’s name on
it, they could get away with just about
anything. However, when this was pre-
sented at a meeting with dealers, they
became outraged. Accusations flew
and a dealer from North Carolina who
had sold the most cars was threaten-
ing to go to the state attorney general.
As all this was taking place, only a
handful of cars had been delivered.
The rest were held up by a myriad of
problems. Between Shelby’s sales per-
sonnel; Venture’s people, dealers (sev-
eral had dropped out and now there
were 17) and everyone’s lawyers it was
bedlam.
Initially all cars were produced in
Oldsmobile Centennial Silver and
there were never any plans for varia-
tions. However, customers began re-
questing special colors as part of the
sale. Not wanting to lose the sale, deal-
ers contacted the factory and re-
quested special colors. At first the
factory balked, and then put the price
of a repaint at $7,500. Venture in-
creased that to $30,000 in an attempt
to dissuade customers. One threat-
ened to sue and Venture eventually
backed down, but it was clear they did
not want to go through the trouble of
having cars repainted.
Stripes were another bone of con-
tention. The cars were intended to be
delivered without stripes, but when
they sent a car to the Detroit show
with blue stripes and one to Los Ange-
les with orange stripes, and when a
car on magazine cover was shown with
maroon stripes, suddenly stripes be-
came a popular way to personalize the
cars. Shelby American put a price of
$1,200 on stripes but when the de-
mand became greater than they antic-
ipated, and they realized how
labor-intensive it was, they raised the
price to $2,500 – even for the cars they
had quoted at $1,200.
Oldsmobile announced on Decem-
ber 12, 2000 that they would be ceas-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 43