Intended to be a modern Cobra, its troubled development hurt its potential. Does it deserve a second look?

The Shelby name is tightly associated with Ford nowadays, but there was a very short time when it was trying to be its own manufacturer.

Rather than using pre-produced cars and stuffing high-powered engines in them, Shelby wanted to build a sports car in-house, inspired by the basic idea of the original Cobra.

The result was a short-wheelbase, open-top coupe with a powerful V-8 under its hood. In 1997, it showed off a concept sample that would go on to become the Shelby Series 1.

It looked to be a brilliant modern-day Cobra successor on paper, but the reality would prove to be a bit different.

Thanks to this Series 1 going up for auction at Mecum Kissimmee, we have an opportunity to look back on the development of this car, of which only 294 of the proposed 500 were built.

The Lead Up To The Series 1

Imagine sitting at the Los Angeles Auto Show in 1997 after hearing rumors that a brand-new Cobra was in the works, and you were greeted by the prototype of the Series 1. It looked exciting sitting still, with a clean new design, short wheelbase, open top, fender haunches, and of course a V-8 under its hood. How could it go wrong?

But things started to take a turn even before the first prototype was built. Despite much of the claim that Carroll Shelby had designed and built the Series 1, the reality was his health was deteriorating thanks to late complications with his kidney from an earlier heart transplant in 1990.

He was directly involved in its initial design, but the process of the prototype’s manufacturing was done while Shelby was in the hospital. This left the building of the Series 1 to Shelby American with major backing and influence by General Motors, specifically its Oldsmobile division.

1999 Shelby American Series One 1 Coupe Mecum Auction Kissimmee 2023 4

It was that Oldsmobile influence that steered the Series 1 toward using a brand-new V-8 engine from General Motors, the L47 Aurora. It was a 4.0-liter engine with a double overhead cam (DOHC) valvetrain layout and could produce up to 250 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque in street guise when it was used in the rather tame-looking namesake sedan, the Oldsmobile Aurora.

The idea behind this push, as viewed by Oldsmobile, was to create a car equal to the Corvette using their new V-8 but without the Olds badge, so as to not look like they were competing directly with the General’s sports car—especially because a modified version of the engine was already in use in sports car and open-wheel racing by the time the two Shelby Series 1 prototypes were built.

Also, having a Shelby with an Oldsmobile V-8 under the hood as a pace car and leading the field of Indy Racing League cars with those racing-spec L47s during the Indy 500 was just icing on the marketing cake.

However, the weak 250-hp output wasn’t enough for Shelby American and their modern-day Cobra. It was going to be bumped to 350 hp and 290 lb-ft of torque and feed that power through a torque tube leading to the ZF six-speed transaxle while the engine itself was mounted directly behind the front axle for a modern front-mid-engine placement.

Shelby would also plan to add on a supercharger to push it beyond 450 hp as an installed option, but that would cost more than $35,000 on a car that would go on to cost more than $100,000 in 1997 money—nearly $186,000 in today’s dollars. Which also means the equivalent price of that supercharger upgrade would be nearly $65,000.