90s Nostalgia at its Peak: 1998-2005 Shelby Series 1

Pretty much anyone who knows anything about cars has heard the Shelby name before.  Ever since Carroll Shelby joined up with Ford and AC to make the AC/Shelby Cobra, one of the greatest, maybe the greatest, American car of all time, his name has been treated with immense respect, and for good reason.  From the very start, Carroll was a car expert.  But even after having a hand building so many awesome cars, like the Shelby Cobra, Ford GT40, Shelby GT500, Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, and even more obscure cars, such as the Dodge Omni GLH-S by Shelby, he wanted to do more.  So, in 1998, he surprised the world by unveiling the Shelby Series 1 supercar.
         It was, and still is, the only car Shelby ever designed and built all by itself from the ground up.  It had a really, really strong and light chassis, due to an all-aluminum construction, a strength of 52 hertz in fact, to be exact.  It was equipped with cabin niceties such as an AM/FM/CD player, air conditioning, and power windows.  For all this though, it used a V8 engine from the humble Oldsmobile Aurora.    In the base specification, it was naturally aspirated and produced 320hp and 290 lb-ft of torque, resulting in a 0-60mph time of just 4.4 seconds, and a quarter-mile time of 12.8 seconds @ 112mph.  This was accomplished in part thanks to a low weight of 2,650lbs.  Top speed was capped at a respectable 170mph. The top-of-the-line spec is even more impressive, even by modern supercar standards.  The sprint from 0-60 is accomplished in just 3.2 seconds, due to excessive amounts of power, specifically 600hp and 530 lb-ft of torque.  It had its problems though, just like any car.
        First of all, Shelby promised 500 units to be made, but in the end, just around 250 units were manufactured, from 1998-2005.  This caused many customers and dealerships alike to be rather unhappy, causing Shelby to loose potential customers.  Then there were also a lot of lawsuits and hard feelings against it, at least according to what I can find.  And there was Series II planned, which was going to be an updated and more powerful version of the Series 1, but never made it beyond the prototype stage.  So, yeah, it had its share of troubles, just like all of us.
       But if you stop looking at details, and look at the car as a whole, you see that it was a brilliant supercar, and a future classic, just like everything else Carroll Shelby ever had a hand in.  Yes, even the Dodge Omni.  More on that later.  But yes, the Series 1 was, and still is, a great supercar, no matter what those hate-commenters on the web will tell you.  And so I say: Long live the Shelby Series 1!