Snake Bit: Carroll Shelby's Controversial Series 1 Sports Car (Motorbooks Workshop)

By Eric Davison

The story of the Shelby Series 1 is a drama about everything that could possibly go wrong and then did. It's a drama of gigantic and and aspiring egos, petty prerogatives, awsome talents, bureacratic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076031781X
• ISBN13: 9780760317815
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Motorbooks Intl
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A fascinating story about Carroll Shelby's few failling ventures.

Eric Davison did a wonderful job while working for Shelby American. If anyone could tell the story, he is the one! Enjoy meeting the cast who participated in building the "Shelby Series 1".

A must-have book for all motorheads, dreamers and auto DIY fans

I've been interested in cars for as long as I can remember. Building your own car is a dream come true for many motorheads. Carroll Shelby, will always be famous for his involvment in the Cobra, the Shelby Mustangs and the GT40, and Shelby Chryslers but the Shelby Series 1, as far as I know was the first car bearing his name to be built from the ground up. It COULD have been his greatest work. However ... so many things happened that shouldn't have happened. I finished this book cover to cover almost non-stop. Being employed in the car industry, everything in it really hit me. A fantastic bunch of vendors like Multimatic, Oldsmobile, ZF and others were involved in the construction of this fantastic car. This is a tragic story, but a must-have book for every car fan out there.

Ever dreamed of starting a car company?

Every decade or so, some big dreamer/schemer attempts to start a car company and then it implodes after a few short years. Names like Tucker, Kaiser, and DeLorean come to mind. In the free-wheeling 1990s, Carroll Shelby gave it his shot and met an all to familiar fate. Sure Carroll had some luck (with the help of Ford and brilliant designer Pete Brock) in the 1960s stuffing V-8s into a certain English sports car and renaming them Cobras, and also putting tuner tweaks to some Hi-Po Mustangs--but actually building a new car and company from the ground up (even with GM's involvement) has shown to be nigh impossible. Only an insider and consummate car guy like Davison could author such a treatise, logging the pitfalls and tribulations of Shelby's folly and GM's counter-productive meddling. It's a wild story, and he tells it well. If you're like most car enthusiasts, you have at one time or another dreamed of starting your own car company, and therefore owe it to yourself to read this book from cover to cover to see how such a dream became a nightmare.

For anyone who loves cars and how they are made

Anybody who loves cars, is interested in how they are engineered and built, or how they are marketed and sold will be captivated by this amazing book. It's a great tale and an extremely entertaining read. It's also a wonderful read for for anyone who thinks *their* workplace is dysfunctional--the crew who created the Series 1 faced some scenarios that will astound you.

A must for the enthusiast. It is as it was.

Eric as true to his nature, reveals in absolute honesty the details about the program, people, and the everyday drama. If this had been a filmed documentary/docu-drama, it would have made today's scourge of reality shows seem tame by comparison.Only intending to start the foreword late last night, I was riveted until reaching the back cover. A must for the enthusiast or anyone with the dream of attempting the impossible.