SoCal Shelby Invasion: Celebrating Carroll Shelby at the Petersen Auto Museum
In addition to amazing cars, Carroll Shelby’s family & friends shared Shelby stories and highlighted a few Ford v Ferrari mistakes.
The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles holds a themed cruise-in the last Sunday of every month. Last month, the Peterson hosted Bruce Meyer’s All-American Cruise-In to celebrate the life of Carroll Shelby and honor the recent blockbuster film, Ford v Ferrari. While the parking garage overflowed with classic and modern hot rods of all makes, Shelby Mustangs, Cobras, and Ford GTs took center stage. There was everything from Concours-quality rotisserie restorations to survivor quality racecars proudly showing off their patina and imperfections.
It was a Shelby fan’s dream car show.
Shelby Friends & Family
As the show was winding down, Petersen Founding Chairman Bruce Meyer hosted a two-hour Q&A panel with Shelby’s friends, family, and colleagues. Panelists included Pete Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Coupe & C2 Corvette Stingray; Peter Miles, son of racing driver Ken Miles; Charlie Agapiou, who was Ken Miles’ crew chief in 1966; Allen Grant, who drove for Shelby in the 1965 Le Mans; Aaron Shelby, Shelby’s grandson; A.J. Baime, who wrote the book Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans; and Lenny Shabes, a producer who was personal friends with Shelby during the last two decades of his life.
Pete Brock spoke about becoming Shelby American employee number one, joining Shelby to open a racing school. During the panel, Brock reminisced about meeting Shelby and having to sideline the Shelby Daytona Coupe in favor of the Ford-sponsored GT40 program. In fact, Brock said the Daytona was faster than the GT40 (Mark I) when equipped with the same brakes. Brock also mentioned that Ford v. Ferrari didn’t do a good job at depicting Shelby’s Chief Engineer, Phil Remington. He was much more important than the movie portrays.
Peter Miles echoed Brock’s statements, speaking about how much he wanted the world to know that it wasn’t only his father and Shelby who made the 1966 Le Mans victory possible. The entire Shelby team was incredible and played vital roles in the historic win.
Allen Grant talked about how hard it was when the GT40s all broke during the 1965 Le Mans. He also told stories about how every driver on Shelby’s teams first had to cut his teeth in a different department. Everyone wanted to drive, but Shelby attracted all of the top talent, which made competition for seat-time fierce. As such, Shelby drivers also become welders and fabricators, etc.
Aaron Shelby had a different take on Shelby’s life. When Aaron was young, Carroll was just a grandfather to him, naturally. The younger Shelby admitted that his grandfather wasn’t the most attentive father — he was off racing all the time and then building cars — but he was a terrific grandfather.
Lenny Shabes told a few funny stories about becoming Shelby’s drinking buddy. Shelby liked rum and loved telling stories to Shabes while making grilled cheese and tomato soup lunches. Shabes recalled that Shelby couldn’t remember how many times he was married (it was a bit of a running joke). And, later in life, Shelby’s eyesight deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t see well enough to recognize Shabes standing eight feet away from him, but that didn’t stop Shelby from calling Shabes on the cell phone while driving to work through the west side of Los Angeles.
Go Like Hell author A.J. Baime had a similar story. Baime spent a lot of time with Shelby at Shelby’s Gardena, CA offices, conducting interviews for the book. One time, when Baime was set to fly back to New York, Shelby offered to drive Baime to the airport. As Baime accepted the offer, Shelby’s assistant appeared in the background, silently waiving her arms in protest and mouthing the words, “He. Can’t. See!” But it was too late. Shelby raced Baime to the airport, weaving in and out of traffic and honking at anyone who got in his way. Baime said he got really drunk after that ride. It seems nothing slowed Shelby down, even when his health was failing.
Was Leo Beebe Really a Villain?
During the audience Q&A portion of the panel, a man stood up to ask if Ford Executive Leo Beebe, played by Josh Lucas in Ford v Ferrari, was actually a cartoon villain who despised Ken Miles. For context, Beebe is often credited with the decision to have all three Ford GT40 Mark II race cars finish the 1966 Le Mans in a “dead heat” so Ford’s marketing department could highlight the win with a photograph. This choice, along with the way the French judges selected the winner, robbed Ken Miles of his victory. In the movie, Beebe is also depicted arguing with Miles and trying to get Miles fired.
Pete Brock spoke up first, defending Beebe. “Leo Beebe was not a bad guy at all. He was the guy who got blamed for taking the victory away from Ken Miles at Le Mans, but I don’t think that’s really the way it happened.”
However, Miles’ Le Mans crew chief, Charlie Agapiou, and Lenny Shabes, disagreed with Brock. Shabes spoke of Shelby “never forgiving Beebe” for the photo-finish idea. And Agapiou said, “Leo Beebe was always getting in the middle of things when I don’t think he should have been. [Beebe] didn’t really like [Miles] that much because [Miles] was getting too much publicity and Ford wasn’t getting enough publicity.” Regarding the decision to end the race with a dead heat, Agapiou said, “I really believed it was [Beebe ] in the middle of all that.” Also, both “Ford and the French people knew there was no possible way there could be a dead-heat. So they kind of conned Ken.”
Even worse, Agapiou ran into an unnamed Ford executive in the early 1970s who told Agapiou that, despite the dead-head photo finish, Ford’s calculations actually placed Ken Miles a full lap ahead of the other Ford drivers. What a shame.
To learn more about the Petersen Automotive Museum and its exhibits, please visit www.Petersen.org.
Photos by Michael S. Palmer for Mustang Forums
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