Carroll Shelby passed away last week at the age of 89. To America’s youth, Shelby was that old guy who showed up at Barrett-Jackson auctions and was the namesake for some very new limited edition Mustangs. To the older folks, Shelby was a racecar driver and automotive tinkerer who was always trying to cram more horsepower into a car. To people with heart defects waiting for a transplant, Shelby was a legend in both longevity and generosity.
Born in Texas in 1923, Shelby was a fragile child who spent much of his youth in a bed. He suffered from a heart valve leakage, a condition that almost sounds automotive in nature. He would go on to serve as a test pilot and flight instructor during World War II. After the war, he tried owning a few different businesses, including running dump trucks and raising chickens. They ultimately failed.
It wasn’t until 1952, when Shelby was 28 years old, when he ran his first car race, a quarter-mile drag behind the wheel of a hot rod with a flathead Ford engine. Later that year he tried his first road race and was an instant success, winning on his first try in an MG-TC and then beating much faster Jaguar XK120′s that same day. He would go on to be one of the top drivers during the decade, topping it off with the greatest victory of his career at the 1959 24 Hours of LeMans. The next year he would experience chest pains as his heart condition reemerged and he was diagnosed with angina pectoralis, permanently ending his racing career.
After he stopped racing, Carroll Shelby opened his own driving school. It was while he was running this school that he learned of a manufacturing problem at AC Cars in England. The company, which had been making small roadsters, broke ties with its engine-maker and was left with a beautiful chassis but nothing to power it. Shelby suggested the company continue making the car, and he’d figure out a way to put an American V8 engine under the hood. He finds the new Ford 220 small block to be sufficient, and within months he had one car built successfully and orders from dealers who wanted more of this speedy roadster, now called the Shelby Cobra.
As the Cobra became popular with consumers, Shelby wanted something specifically tailored to the racing set. The Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe was just such a car, and it was designed to compete against other world-class automobiles like the Ferrari GTO. These Shelbys would go on to beat the Ferraris in the GT class at LeMans in 1964.
Shelby’s success at car-building caught the attention of Ford, who wanted someone to build a high-performance version of their recently-introduced (and vastly underpowered) pony car, the Mustang. By September of 1964, Carroll Shelby was making both racing and street versions of the Shelby Mustang GT350. A month later he got started on a 427 Cobra, stuffing a big block Ford engine into the tiny British roadster. Ford was so impressed with his work, they asked him to build their GT-40, which would be a race car built to compete for the overall title in endurance races at Daytona and LeMans.
From here, Shelby’s auto-building career took off. His company signed a contract with Hertz to make a limited number of GT350-H cars for their “rent a racer” program. His cars continued to win races in a multitude of racing series’ for the remainder of the decade, including wins by the GT-40 at LeMans.
By the end of the 1960′s, the changing times and new regulations made the Shelby cars irrelevant in auto racing, and his contract with Ford ended. By 1974, Shelby was more interested in travel, especially to South Africa, and competing in chili cook-offs. He even produced his own “chili kit” of spices, which would eventually be sold to Kraft.
The 1980′s were known as the “Dodge years” for Carroll Shelby. He signed on with Lee Iacocca and began making Dodge Shelby Chargers in 1982. It had been over a decade since an American manufacturer had made any serious effort to pack more power into their cars. An even bigger challenge was met in 1984 with the introduction of a Dodge Omni tweaked by the wizard of horsepower to run like a true sports car. Even today, I consider the Dodge Omni GLH (it stands for Goes Like Hell) to be the greatest sleeper car of all time.
In 1987, Shelby had a vision of a new sports car for Dodge that would be a modern compliment to the Cobra he’d built decades before. This car would eventually be known as the Dodge Viper. His heart problems became so bad that in 1990 he received a transplant. That replacement heart would keep him alive for another 22 years. In his later years he would continue to make new cars, including the completely original Shelby Series 1 in 1997. He was also involved with the development of the modern Ford GT and the Ford Shelby GR-1 concept car. The Shelby name would also be attached to new performance Mustangs.
Standing next to a Series 1
In 2007 at the Barrett-Jackson collectible car auction, Carroll Shelby’s personal CSX3015 Shelby Super Snake with dual turbochargers was auctioned off to benefit the foundation he had started for children suffering from life-threatening heart conditions, and it sold for a record $5 million.
On May 10th, Carroll Shelby passed away in Dallas, Texas. His name will surely adorn performance cars for decades to come.
More than a few independent graphic designers have been inspired by Mad Men. The TV show got their creative juices flowing, and they’ve come up with some really amazing promotional posters. Their names and websites appear at the bottom of this post.
Note that “whisky” is misspelled on the bottle. Canadian whiskys are spelled without the “e”
The classic Don Draper slim lapel charcoal suit with slim tie combo
Minimalist movie poster
The famous Lucky Strike pack design
Can you name the inspiration behind this poster?
This was clearly inspired by the Mad Men season 3 DVD cover design
The Mad Men-inspired motivational poster
The artists behind these posters:
Kristian Hay
Matt Needle
Ben Whitesell
Made By Radio
British Indie
Albert Exergian
Impale Design
Luke Beard
Joey Vestal
I’ll give everyone time to catch up on their recorded TV shows and hopefully the season 5 premiere of Mad Men before I start getting into the nitty-gritty details of the episode, but I would like to share this link to a 1966 New York Times article that relates directly to the opening scene: Poverty Pickets Get Paper-Bag Dousing On Madison Avenue.
I miss the days when the History Channel aired Modern Marvels all afternoon instead of the incredibly stupid fake reality shows about pawn shops, “pickers”, or swamp people. 1960′s office technology is the type of subject matter Modern Marvels featured, and it’s also the subject of this slideshow (you’ve been warned) that might make you feel a bit more informed upon your next viewing of Mad Men.
In honor of the two-hour start to season 5 (which aired last night on AMC), here’s a little tribute to alcohol abuse, courtesy of Mad Men:
The two-hour season five premiere of Mad Men is this Sunday at 8:00 EST on AMC, so of course we’re counting down the hours. It’s been 17 months since our favorite show was last on the air, and the end of season four left us with more questions than answers. Was Don really going to marry his new secretary? Will Bert Cooper cool down and return to the agency? Change was in the air, and then they just left us hanging.
My episode-by-episode recap of the entire series so far is still in the works (I’m averaging about 5,000 words per episode guide, so it’s going to be very thorough), but in the meantime I thought I’d celebrate the return of Mad Men by re-posting various MM art, videos, and other related material from around the web.
Newsweek dedicated this week’s issue to Mad Men. They even did all their ads in a 1960′s style. I suspect this will be the first time many people have opened the pages of Newsweek in decades.
AMC has tried to go viral with “Draping“, which they compare to the Tebowing meme from a few months ago but I think is actually more like the planking fad from last year. Basically, it involves taking a picture of yourself from behind while sitting with your arm extended outward, just as Don Draper’s silhouette is depicted as he sits on a couch. The weirder the location, the better.
Speaking of Draping, here’s that famous pose in some fan art I came across:
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Comedy Central UK and the creators of South Park have joined in on the fun by making promos that mimic the Mad Men intro except with Kenny and Cartman replacing Don (note that both are wearing a suit and tie)
Kenny version:
Cartman version:
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I’ll probably have more to comment on this later, but a user on a popular Mad Men forum recently posted this picture of an actual 1960′s Manhattan ad agency: 
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That’s all for now, but expect a lot more as we get closer to Sunday night.
The 1970′s brought us many things we’d like to forget: gas rationing, disco, the leisure suit (to name a few). It wasn’t all bad, as the Polaroid SX-70 instant developing camera also made its debut in that decade. The quality of the photos might not have been nearly as good as even the cheapest 35mm, but it was an interesting novelty that would revolutionize how the average consumer feels about photography.
In many ways, the Polaroid camera was the precursor to the digital camera. Even as the use of Polaroids began to wane in the 1990′s, there was clearly a market demand for cameras that didn’t require the handling of film. Instant cameras were popular for a few years, and then digital cameras took over the market as the cost of processing each new photo was reduced to $0.
The following short documentary was made by the Charles and Ray Eames, the famed brothers who revolutionized American design in the mid-20th century:
I’d rather not make this little blog one of those places where each day we note the famous people who have died on this date, but this particular anniversary is one that’s important to me. Hunter S. Thompson ended his own life in his kitchen on this date in 2005, and with each passing year I’m amazed that it wasn’t just a week or so ago.
Long past his prime, Hunter was still churning out articles with a rhythm no other writer could match. He wrote a column for ESPN.com’s Page Two titled “Hey Rube”, which was supposed to be about sports but in trademark Hunter S. Thompson style would often turn into rants about law enforcement and crazy living. In his final column he gave no hints of his upcoming demise, and he actually seemed upbeat as he recalled a early-morning phone call to Bill Murray and their plans to invent a new sport that combined driving golf balls with skeet shooting.
Hunter’s death was followed many months later by a funeral/memorial send-off funded by Johnny Depp. Just as Hunter had asked, his ashes were mixed with fireworks and launched from a giant peyote-clutching Gonzo fist erected in his Woody Creek, Colorado backyard. The long-planned cinematic adaptation of The Rum Diary was complete several years later and finally released in theaters in 2011 to mixed reviews.
Many biographies and collections of stories about Hunter Thompson were released by various friends and scholars after his death. The third and final version of Hunter’s collected letters, titled The Mutineer, will finally be released in a few weeks. If you haven’t had a chance to read the first two books, titled Fear and Loathing in America and The Proud Highway, I highly recommend them. They give tremendous insight into a man who is too often dismissed by literary circles who can’t look past the notorious drug abuse.
I’ll end this post with one of my favorite photos of Hunter S. Thompson, taken when he was just a young man struggling to find his way as a writer:
I received an email promotion from Brooks Brothers on this Presidents’ Day in which they noted they have dressed 39 of the 44 presidents. Looking down the list, it appears they missed out on the first three (which makes sense, since the company didn’t exist yet), and for some reason Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan decided to go with someone else. I can understand Jimmy Carter avoiding Brooks Brothers because they probably didn’t have a line of leisure suits, but what about Reagan? Was his preferred boxy cut too conservative even for Brooks Brothers?
You’ll note that Barack Obama makes this list even though many of his suits come from Hart Schaffner Marx.
I’m a little worried about the upcoming season of Mad Men if this is what passes for a promo at AMC these days:
You might have noticed that not a single second of new footage is shown in this trailer, which they went so far as to put a title on: “Don Is Back”. Any fan could have made this on their laptop using video ripping software and the season 4 DVD. I realize they are trying to build suspense by not giving away what’s going to happen in season 5, but releasing a trailer like this makes it look like they are just hiding because they don’t have anything of substance. It’s not like season 4 left us with a huge cliffhanger at the end. Don’s marrying his secretary, so what? Betty’s new husband is realizing how immature she is. Is this news to anyone?
Stay tuned for my promised complete synopsis and footnotes of Mad Men seasons 1 through 4. I’ll be posting them one episode at a time, so you can follow along by watching one or two episodes per day or you can just skip the repeat viewings (assuming you’ve already watched the series at least once) and read my entire write-up at the office or while ignoring that boring professor trying to influence your young mind.
- May 2012 (1)
- March 2012 (5)
- February 2012 (7)
- January 2012 (4)
- December 2011 (5)
- November 2011 (4)
- October 2011 (3)
- September 2011 (4)
- August 2011 (7)
- July 2011 (27)
- June 2011 (14)
- May 2011 (10)
- April 2011 (18)
- March 2011 (10)
- February 2011 (24)
- January 2011 (29)
- December 2010 (5)
- November 2010 (11)
- October 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (5)
