The long-awaited authorized biography of Carroll Shelby, written with his full collaboration, is a remarkable account of an action-packed life. Though Shelby gained worldwide fame in the 1960s with Cobras and Ford GT40s, he has achieved much more in a long and varied career, both around cars and in other spheres. It is all recorded here in superb detail, from childhood to life today as a busy 86-year-old who still sets himself a punishing schedule of business and actively seeks further goals. Packed with insight and fresh information gleaned from dozens of interviews, this outstanding biography will be essential reading for all car enthusiasts.

• Early years: delivery boy, World War II airman, truck driver, oilfield roughneck, chicken farmer…
• His emergence as one of America’s best-known racing drivers, the many successes including victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1959.
• After having to retire from driving with a heart ailment, he became a car manufacturer who took his own team to a World Championship – these were the Cobra years.
• The man who turned Ford’s GT40 into a winner, thereby realizing Henry Ford’s ambitions to beat Ferrari.
• Seeking other goals, he walked away from cars before he was 50 – ending up in Africa hunting big game.
• Shelby was seduced back to the performance car business ten years later and has barely stopped since.
• Though one of the world’s oldest recipients of a double transplant (a heart in his 60s, a kidney in his 70s), he remains active today, whether running his own car factory or cattle-breeding programs on his farms.