AARON SHELBY

What was it like to grow up with Carroll Shelby as a grandfather? Was it all tough love or was he just a big softy? Aaron Shelby remembers it all

- David Lillywhite

'I'm Aaron Shelby, one of Carroll Shelby's grandkids. We've known each other for a while, and he's just saying it for the recording. But there's something special about hearing that sentence - I mean, imagine having Carroll Shelby as your grandad! And Aaron is heavily involved with Shelby American; when we meet, he's helping to promote 60 years of the Shelby Mustang GT350.

'Carroll has six grandchildren,' continues Aaron. 'My father is Patrick, who was the youngest of his three kids. We were a small family, growing up really closely together, and we spent a lot of time with Carroll.

'I always liked cars but I got into racing and cars more because my father started racing in Formula Ford when I was eight years old, and then moved on to Formula Atlantic. We lived in Southern California, so we had Willow Springs and Riverside Raceway and all those great tracks that we would go to.

But what about Carroll? I want to know when Aaron realised who he was. 'We just knew him as grandpa. As a family member, you had to really pry the information out of him. He would talk about his last trip, he would talk about the cows he was raising in East Texas... anything but cars, unless you pushed him.'

What, the great showman Carroll Shelby never talked about his achievements? By the time Aaron was born in the early '70s, Shelby had won Le Mans with Aston Martin in 1959, formed Shelby American in 1962, developed the AC Ace into the all-conquering Cobra in the same year, further developed it into the 427 and launched the Daytona Coupe in 1964, collaborated with Ford to create the Shelby Mustang GT350 in 1965, taken over the Ford GT programme famously resulting in the Ford 1-2-3 at the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours and developed the Mustang GT500 for 1967. Heck, by 1967 he'd even launched his autobiography,