My name is Shelby, and performance is my business.” That’s what the lanky Texan says into camera on a promotional film, and it’s the line with which Preston Lerner wraps up this very comprehensive tale of Shelby American’s great years.
How many Cobra, GT40 or Shelby books have there been? Too many, I’d say. Here, though, Lerner presents the whole history in one 325-page hardback. A respected author and Motor Sport contributor, he interviewed dozens of people, and it feels like the inside story, packed with quotations from everyone from the man himself, team linchpins like legendary fabricator Phil Remington to team truck drivers, written in his entertaining prose: “Miles swept past as placid as a soccer mom driving a minivan” and “Ford waltzed into the new season fat, dumb…