In the mid 1990's John Rock, then General Manager of the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors, began working with
Shelby American to build an all new serious sports car. He met with intense internal opposition that resulted
with his departing in 1996.
Shelby American and Carroll Shelby decided to go ahead with the project to build a sports car from a clean slate,
something Carroll Shelby had never done. The Shelby Series 1 is an all out sports car featuring a state of the art, 2650 lbs chassis and the
powerful Oldsmobile 4.0 Liter L47 DOHC V8 Aurora engine. The base engine has 320 bhp and roars with over 600 bhp when supercharged.
Everything was right about the car. Production was set at 250 and many thought it would be an instant classic.
The original price of the base model was announced as $99,975; however, due to unexpected production costs the price escalated to $181,824.
A total of 249 cars were built and all were 1999 models.
Mike is a Shelby collector and has five different Shelby cars in his collection.
He is the second owner of his Series 1 and it now has two thousand miles on it.
In many people’s opinion the Series 1 will always be the most collectable of the Shelby cars.
