Shelby History Tour In Honor of Carroll

The late, great Carroll Shelby would’ve turned 98 this past January 11th, and even though it’s now been almost nine years since his passing, he continues to make headlines. Last weekend, Carroll’s personal 1965 427 Cobra (CSX317 sold for a whopping $5.94 million at auction – proof that the Shelby legacy remains strong in the enthusiast community. Even though Carroll Shelby was born and raised in Texas, and some of his earliest exploits as a racing driver took place in the South and Midwest, the foundations of the Cobra and Shelby Mustangs were largely a Southern California phenomenon. Fortunately, many of the places where that all happened are still standing, and in many cases still recognizable as Shelby properties, or locations significant to his story.

With that in mind, we think now’s a good time to familiarize you with several of these locales, in the event you wish to conduct your own Shelby history road trip. Some places we’ll cover are current Shelby entity properties that you can, and should, visit in more depth; others are no longer standing or otherwise as approachable. But the whole route -- and the high points along it -- are great ways to remember Carroll his own self, and the cars he gave the world. Time to program up that nav system and hit the Shelby history highway:

Moon Equipment (now called Mooneyes), 10820 South Norwalk Blvd., Santa Fe Springs, CA
The late Dean Moon is the very definition of a hot-rodder. He was a racer and hot-rod / racing components manufacturer. Besides his googly eyed “Moon Eyes” logo, Moon Equipment produced aerodynamically efficient spun-aluminum wheel discs, and those iconic beer keg-like fuel, oil, and water tanks – primarily for the top-speed scene at Bonneville, as well as for drag racing. His shops and factory have operated for decades out of a humble collection of garage buildings in Sante Fe Springs, less than an hour away from the West Los Angeles areas where Shelby lived, worked, and cooked up plans to produce his own “sport car.”

Once he had a new Ford small-block V-8 in one hand, and an engineless AC Ace roadster body and chassis in the other, he needed a place to stitch it all together. We once asked Carroll why he chose to build that first Cobra prototype – CSX2000, at Moon’s shops. He replied that “Moon and his guys could fabricate anything, and I knew they’d have the mechanics, tools and capability to get the new powertrain into the car, and get it running and working.”