The Dallas Morning News

ANNONA, Texas – Sometimes late at night, 81-year-old Carroll Shelby lies awake, thinking about all the cars he still wants to build.

“I’ve got 10 different cars in my head,” said Shelby, the lanky, legendary Texan who created the fierce Shelby Cobras and Mustangs of the 1960s and was a renowned racer in the 1950s.

At a time when most men his age are settling in for the final chapter of their lives, Shelby is on the move again.

Earlier this year, he and wife Cleo bought a 4,600-acre ranch outside tiny Annona in East Texas. After years of living mostly in Los Angeles, he said that he expects the new ranch to become his primary home – a symbolic return of sorts to East Texas, where he was born.

More important, perhaps, Shelby is already building some of the cars in his head.

He and Unique Performance of Farmers Branch, Texas, announced in October that they plan to produce a high-performance 1967-68 Mustang inspired by Shelby’s fleet GT 500 Mustang.

In November, he unveiled a hot rod Ford Expedition sport-utility vehicle at the influential Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. Although the Expedition is a concept vehicle, it was assembled as part of Shelby’s two-year partnership with Ford Motor Co. – a relationship that he expects to soon produce other vehicles.

“I want to beat the Porsche Cayenne’s ass,” he said. “Besides, I also believe there is a niche for high-performance SUVs – to tow race cars, boats and go to Highland Park to pick up your 3-year-old.”

Shelby also continues to build new models of his seminal Cobra.

That’s in addition to raising African Tulli cattle in East Texas, developing a small “revolutionary” engine that will consume less fuel and raising funds for his Shelby Children’s Foundation.

All that drive comes from a man who is one of the longest-surviving double-organ transplant recipients, with a heart in 1991 and kidney in 1996.

Some who know Shelby speculate that this high-profile flurry of activity is meant to firm up an already substantial legacy – an observation that Shelby largely dismisses.

“I think what he’s focused on today are projects that will carry his name, carry his legacy,” said Doug Hasty, president of Unique Performance. “He wants to get back to Texas, he wants to get involved in these projects.”

Others say Shelby is simply increasing his involvement in a segment that he helped create 40 years ago: muscle sports cars.

“The peak for the cars he developed was in “67,” said Bill Neale of Dallas, a car enthusiast and respected automotive artist who has known Shelby for 50 years. “I kind of see what he’s doing now as completing what he started then.”

Whatever his reasons, Shelby said he intends in the short term to build “several more cars.”

“When I got my heart 14 years ago (from a Las Vegas gambler who dropped dead at a craps table), I had two weeks to live,” he said. “Eight years ago, I got a kidney from my son. I live it a day at a time. But I still have the desire, the ideas.”

That was clear to Ford two years ago, when it hired Shelby – then nearly 80 years old – as a consultant, said spokeswoman Jennifer Flake.

“No matter what year you were born, speed and power and performance still resonate,” she said.

California car designer Chip Foose, star of TLC’s reality series “Overhaulin,”‘ is considering working with Shelby on another Unique Performance project – “34 Ford hot rods with Foose styling and Shelby power.

Even in this era of oversized wheels, electric tangerine paint and 1,000-watt car stereos, Shelby has relevance, said Foose.

Sleep, what’s that?

“He’s very sharp and very passionate about his cars,” said Foose, who is half Shelby’s age.

At Unique Performance, Shelby provides decades of automotive experience as well as a push for heavy testing of new products, Hasty said. The company already builds two other highly modified models of specialty “60s Mustangs, and the new one with Shelby will likely be the last of its “continuation” pony cars, he said.

“He’s a man who never sleeps,” Hasty said of Shelby. “He’s always thinking. He’s not just sitting back and lending his name to something.”

Despite his health problems, Shelby doesn’t seem much interested in sitting, period.

On a recent blustery day, he strolled through the mostly empty ranch house, noting that he and Cleo are still moving furnishings and equipment to the ranch – including some items from smaller ranches in Pittsburg, Texas, that he has owned for years.

Later, behind the wheel of a white Jeep Grand Cherokee, he ticked off the list of repairs and improvements needed for the property and a striking 50-year-old ranch house designed by Dallas architect Charles Dilbeck.

“It’s a beautiful place,” said Shelby, who drove with nitroglycerin tablets under his tongue for a time before his failing heart forced him to stop racing in the “50s.

“I’ve kind of fallen in love with it. I’ve got to refence it, I’ve got to put 12,000 tons of chicken manure on it, and the house needs rewiring. It’s a 10-year deal, and I won’t be around in 10 years. But we’re getting started.”

Shelby said he bought the ranch mainly “for the dirt.” It will give him more space for his 350 head of Tulli cattle, which he says are easier to maintain and can tolerate heat better than other breeds.

His primary source of revenue will likely continue to be a Goodyear tire distributorship that serves 15 Western states, he said.

Though he and his wife may still spend summers in California, he said he expects to be in Texas far more than in the past.

“Texas was a hobby for me for a while,” Shelby said. “But Texas is my residence now. My business is automobiles, really. What I love are (classic) airplanes, steam locomotives and dirt. I want to have all of them.”

Neale, the Dallas artist, doubts that Shelby even views this as his last hurrah.

“He still approaches an opportunity to do something with a car like he did when he was 30, and still has got good ideas to this day,” Neale said. “Legacy? He doesn’t give a rip about what people think. If something interests him, he just does it.”

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(c) 2004, The Dallas Morning News.

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PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): AUTO-MUSCLEMAN

AP-NY-11-05-04 0617EST