This is an original factory-supercharged 1999 Shelby Series 1. It’s a largely forgotten American sports car, and it was the only car that Carroll Shelby and his team ever made from scratch – from the chassis on up.
In some respects the Shelby Series 1 was developed as Carroll’s last great gift to the automotive world. He had developed the Shelby Cobras, the Shelby Mustangs, the Shelby Daytona Coupe, and countless others. The Series 1 would be his own take on what a modern-day Shelby Cobra would look like, and just 249 of them would be built.
Fast Facts: The Shelby Series 1
- The Shelby Series 1 was Carroll Shelby’s only fully-original production car, designed from a clean sheet rather than modifying an existing road car. Intended as a modern interpretation of his much earlier Cobra concept, it debuted in 1997 and ultimately saw limited production, with just 249 examples completed.
- The car used a 4.0 liter Oldsmobile Aurora DOHC V8 mounted in a front mid-engine layout for balanced weight distribution. Output in production form was about 320 bhp and 290 lb ft of torque. Power was delivered through a 6-speed ZF transaxle driving the rear wheels.
- Engineering was advanced for its time. The chassis used welded 6061 aluminum extrusions with bonded honeycomb panels for rigidity, while the body combined carbon fiber and fiberglass composites. Double wishbone suspension with inboard coil-overs provided race-inspired handling, and the car weighed about 2,650 lbs.
- Development problems affected the project from the start. Production delays, soft-top redesigns, rising costs, and corporate turmoil reduced the planned 500 car run to 249 vehicles. Despite these challenges, the Series 1 remains historically significant as Shelby’s only ground-up sports car design.
History Speedrun: The Shelby Series 1
Carroll Shelby’s name is completely inseparable from the AC Cobra, one of the most iconic sports cars ever built and one of the true automotive icons of the 20th century.
The car you see here is one of the few factory-supercharged Shelby Series 1s that were built, and this one was bought new by Fred Sutherland, a longtime racing friend of Carroll Shelby. As a result, the car was personally delivered to Sutherland by Carroll Shelby.
In the early 1960s, Shelby had taken the lightweight British AC Ace chassis and body, and dropped in a series of increasingly powerful Ford V8s. This created a car that was fast enough to beat Ferrari on the world stage and charismatic enough to become a lasting symbol of what could happen when you crossed lightweight British roadsters with fire-breathing American V8s. A lesson that Carroll had learned first-hand a few years earlier racing Allards.
The Cobras, and later the Shelby Mustangs and GT350s, all helped to carve Shelby’s name in stone as one of the best performance names of the time – but every one of those cars was fundamentally someone else’s design, modified and improved by Shelby and his team. He had never built a car entirely his own.
That changed in the 1990s. Fresh from a heart transplant in 1990 and a kidney transplant from his son in 1996, Shelby set out to cap his career with something unprecedented – a ground-up, clean-sheet sports car that would be as revelatory in its era as the Cobra had been in the 1960s. The result was the Shelby Series 1, unveiled at the 1997 Los Angeles Auto Show to huge interest from the motoring media and the general public.
The Shelby/Oldsmobile Partnership
Shelby needed an OEM partner to supply an engine and help shoulder the enormous costs of federally certifying a new production vehicle. He found one in General Motors’ Oldsmobile division, which had a 4.0 liter DOHC V8 engine originally developed for the Indy Racing League.
The compact, lightweight, aluminum Aurora V8 was ideal for the project as it could be mounted entirely behind the front axle in a front-mid configuration, enabling a near-perfect 50/50 weight distribution.
This Series 1 comes with a spare crate 4.0 Aurora V8 and a NOS Borla exhaust system, as well as extensive documentation including copies of letters from Fred Sutherland and Shelby, copies of invoices, order sheets, photos of Fred with the car during the build process and service records from Shelby American.
That said, the partnership was fraught from the start. Shelby’s key champion at GM, Oldsmobile chief John Rock, was pushed out in 1996, leaving the project exposed to corporate politics. Oldsmobile also refused to share the engine’s computer tuning codes, which meant that instead of the 350 bhp Shelby had originally specified, the production engine delivered only 320 bhp at 6,500 rpm, with 290 lb ft of torque at 5,000 rpm.
Shelby Series 1 Engineering + Specifications
Despite the political headaches, the Series 1’s engineering was genuinely state-of-the-art for a late-1990s American sports car. The chassis was constructed from extruded and formed 6061 aluminum, welded together and then post-heat-treated for maximum rigidity.
Aluminum honeycomb panels were bonded into the floor and rocker panels for added structural stiffness, and the complete chassis weighed a mere 265 lbs all in. The body was made from carbon fiber and fiberglass composite panels, helping bring the curb weight to approximately 2,650 lbs – hundreds of pounds lighter than a contemporary Corvette C5, seen by many as the Shelby’s key performance competitor.
The suspension was all race-inspired, with double wishbones at all four corners with inboard-mounted coil-over dampers actuated by rocker arms, somewhat similar to Formula 1 practice of the time. Power was sent to the rear wheels through a 6-speed ZF transaxle.
In naturally aspirated form, the car reached 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, ran the quarter mile in 12.8 seconds at nearly 110 mph, and topped out around 170 mph. These are solid numbers now, but they were borderline biblical for a sports car in the late 1990s.
Series 1 Variants + Upgrade Packages
Shelby offered two factory upgrade paths – the X50 performance package, priced at $20,150 USD, was intended to add roughly 50 bhp. A more dramatic option was the Vortech supercharger package at $35,100 USD, which raised output to 450 bhp.
In some respects the Shelby Series 1 was developed as Carroll’s last great gift to the automotive world. He had developed the Shelby Cobras, the Shelby Mustangs, the Shelby Daytona Coupe, and countless others. The Series 1 would be his own take on what a modern-day Shelby Cobra would look like, and just 249 of them would be built.
Only 11 cars received both the X50 and supercharger treatments together, pushing power to just over 540 bhp. Early supercharged prototypes reportedly produced as much as 600 bhp and 530 lb ft of torque, putting them well into true supercar territory.
The Infamous Teething Troubles
Almost everything that could go wrong during the development of the Series 1 did. The manufacturing jigs used to weld and heat-treat the chassis weren’t strong enough to prevent warping, requiring costly retooling.
The convertible soft tops didn’t attach properly and had to be redesigned after more than 60 cars had already been built, thirty of which had been delivered to customers without tops, requiring technicians to be sent to buyers’ homes around the country to install them.
The price, originally promised at just under $100,000 USD, ballooned past $135,000 USD and eventually exceeded $180,000 USD before options – the supercharger alone cost an additional $35,100 on top of that remember, putting the car well into Ferrari 360 Modena pricing territory.
When Car and Driver magazine finally tested a supercharged example in 2000, the car destroyed two clutches, threw an engine pulley, and blew a piston during the evaluation. Brock Yates, arguably the magazine’s most famous writer, summed it up somewhat diplomatically as “a work in progress.”
It’s finished in Centennial Silver paint over a Black interior, and the car has Cerullo bucket seats, power windows, power steering and brakes, original aluminum Carroll Shelby 5-spoke wheels, a ZF 6-speed manual transmission, and a clean Carfax.
A planned production run of 500 cars was cut short at just 249, all titled as 1999 models. Shelby American was acquired by Venture Corporation during production, which itself went bankrupt in 2004. Carroll Shelby’s new company purchased the remaining assets, but because federal safety certification had expired, any subsequent cars could only be sold as incomplete “component cars” without engines or transmissions.
Despite its troubled birth, the Series 1 remains the only car Carroll Shelby ever designed entirely from scratch. It was a flawed but fascinating testament to his lifelong refusal to stop dreaming, and the modern day enthusiast community is slowly discovering the car – and prices have been climbing for the past few years as a result.
The Supercharged 1999 Shelby Series 1 Shown Here
The car you see here is one of the few factory-supercharged Shelby Series 1s that were built, and this one was bought new by Fred Sutherland, a longtime racing friend of Carroll Shelby. As a result, the car was personally delivered to Sutherland by Carroll Shelby.
It comes with a spare crate 4.0 Aurora V8 and a NOS Borla exhaust system, as well as extensive documentation including copies of letters from Fred Sutherland and Shelby, copies of invoices, order sheets, photos of Fred with the car during the build process and service records from Shelby American.
This is an original factory-supercharged 1999 Shelby Series 1. It’s a largely forgotten American sports car and it was the only car that Carroll Shelby and his team ever made from scratch – from the chassis on up.
It’s finished in Centennial Silver paint over a Black interior, and the car has Cerullo bucket seats, power windows, power steering and brakes, original aluminum Carroll Shelby 5-spoke wheels, a ZF 6-speed manual transmission, and a clean Carfax.
It’s now due to roll across the auction block with Mecum on the 16th of May and you can visit the listing here if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid.
Images courtesy of Mecum
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
