The Cobra is my personal favorite car. The original 289 Cobra is the car I respect the most. I like to drive the 289 better than the 427.

I'm not going to take this defeatist attitude and listen to all this crap any more from all these people who have nothing except doomsday to predict.

In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'

I didn't have time for my children much. I wasn't a very good parent; I had a pretty unhappy home life.

I don't design cars. I'm not a designer. I know what I desire to be built, I know what the end result is, the horsepower, the competition we'll be working against - but I leave it to the people who work with me to put it all together. I don't do anything.