Why the Shelby Series 1 Is a Future Classic
Even people with just a casual interest in cars and the surrounding culture are familiar with Carroll Shelby. The name is synonymous with performance and collectibility, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an American who couldn’t pick a Shelby Cobra out of a lineup. Almost everything Shelby has touched has a level of exclusiveness sufficient to catch the attention of automobile enthusiasts around the world. But not all are actually collectible.
Shelby still offers a lineup of vehicles, mostly based on current Ford models like the Mustang and F-Series trucks, and only time will tell if those will turn into collectors’ items. Shelby’s ’80s exploits with Dodge are interesting, but they won’t be setting any records at auction. Then there’s the Shelby Series 1, a vehicle rife with historical significance, world-class engineering, beautiful styling, and the performance to back up its aggressive looks. Somehow, though, the Series 1 has yet to catch on as a collectible to stash away in climate-controlled facilities outside the public eye.
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Still, the mere fact that it’s a Shelby is enough to put it on the list of vehicles with the potential to become future classics. So there’s one solid reason to take a closer look at Carroll’s 1990s moonshot. There’s plenty more where that came from. Here are four more reasons why the Shelby Series 1 is destined to be collectible.
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It’s the only vehicle Shelby American truly designed from the ground up
The Cobra – clearly the most famous machine to wear Shelby’s coiled-snake badge – was derived from the chassis and bodywork of the six-cylinder AC Ace. When Carroll Shelby came along with a pair of Ford V8 engines, the Texan and his American engines were exactly what the British AC needed. The AC Cobra was born and the rest is history.
The Shelby Mustang was similarly a marriage between Ford and Carroll’s California-based Skunkworks. Throughout the 1980s, Caroll was partnering up with Chrysler to build Shelby-badged performance cars. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Caroll and his crew decided to produce a true Shelby product from the ground up. The result of their efforts finally hit the road in 1999 as the Shelby Series 1.
It’s a proper sports car with an American V8 engine
Carroll Shelby’s history of partnerships with American automakers for engines continued with the Series 1. It was a ground-up design unique to Shelby, but the beating heart came from a seemingly unlikely source: Oldsmobile. While some people may remember Olds as a maker of lumbering land barges for older clientele, history is littered with high-performance cars from the ex-automaker.
The powerplant for the Series 1 traced its roots to the Aurora, a car that Oldsmobile cooked up in an attempt to remake its faltering image in the mid-1990s. It was an attractive car that did punch up the company’s reputation a smidge, and its 250-horsepower, overhead-cam V8 engine was fully modern. And, crucially, available to Shelby through his connection to John Rock, who at the time served as the General Manager for GM’s Oldsmobile division.
In Shelby tune, the 4.0-liter V8 spun 320 horsepower and 290 pound-feet of torque through a six-speed manual gearbox to the rear wheels. An optional supercharger package pushed power to as many as 600 horses. The 0-60 time of the standard model was recorded at 4.4 seconds and the top speed was an impressive 170 miles per hour.
Its chassis is the star of the show
The Shelby Series 1 was very well engineered. Its chassis was made from aluminum that was heat-treated after welding to maintain stiffness, with honeycomb panels in key areas to beef up the structure. The use of high-tech inboard springs and shocks kept unsprung weight as low as possible. All in, the entire chassis weighed in at just 265 pounds. With a near perfect 49/51 front-to-rear weight bias, the Series 1 was able to record an impressive 1G of cornering force.
Atop the aluminum chassis sat shapely bodywork fashioned from fiberglass and carbon fiber. The interior wasn’t the car’s best attribute, with key parts like the gauge cluster and HVAC controls lifted straight from the Pontiac and Chevrolet parts catalog. But overall, the Series 1 was an impressive machine.
Experts believe its value may be on the rise
More than a dozen individual Series 1 cars have shown up on auction site Bring a Trailer since 2019, and the most expensive of them showed just 441 miles on the odometer and sold for $180,000.
According to Hagerty, however, the Series 1’s fortunes may be looking up. Younger buyers are showing much more interest in Shelby’s bespoke sports car. Put simply, now may be the perfect time to park a Shelby Series 1 in your garage as its collectibility is on the rise.
