Showing a knack for salesmanship, Shelby had the same car painted different colors so that he could get cover feature stories in different automotive magazines at the same time. He liked to tell the story that when he was down to his last $20, he used it to take an auto writer to lunch to talk him into a story about his Cobras.

Road & Track magazine called the hot-rod "nothing more than a weapon designed specifically for proceeding from one point to another in a minimum amount of time."

The Cobras won Sports Car Club of America manufacturing championships from 1963 through 1965 and in 1965 beat out Ferrari, the first and only time an American-conceived car won the world championship. A year later, European rule makers banned the 7-liter engine used by Shelby.

"We were a bunch of hot-rodders from Venice, California, and to beat Ferrari the way we did, well, I'm still proud of it," Shelby said in 2006.