So what did it take to get Carroll Shelby to lend his name and expertise to the Shelby GT500 Mustang that goes on sale this summer with a 500-horsepower supercharged V-8?
Lots of money?
A couple copies for his own garage?
Naw, says Hau Thai-Tang, director of advance product creation for Ford Motor Co. and head of its SVT performance group.
A legend for his racing skills as well as his creation of world-class performance machines, it’s well known that the 83-year-old Shelby has received two organ transplants: A kidney and then a heart.
“Before we met with Carroll, we found that one member of our SVT team had gone in for an MRI and found he had three kidneys,” said Thai-Tang, who also was chief engineer on the latest Mustang, the one that got the Shelby treatment.
“So when we sat down with Carroll I said, ‘Sign up and you have dibs on two of those kidneys.’
“He grabbed the pen.”
