Legendary racer and car designer Carroll Shelby has no interest in retirement. That's for old people.

At 87, his enthusiasm for the next project -- which right now is the 2011 Shelby GT350 Ford Mustang, which paced the field of Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- keeps him moving forward. That, and the heart transplant he had in 1990.

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The automobile industry has been the center of my attention since I was 3 years old and I'm sure it'll never change. I'm 87 now and looking forward to a lot of years, building niche automobiles.

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-- CARROLL SHELBY

"I have a weakness: horsepower," Shelby said. "People ask me, 'What's your favorite car?' And I always say, 'The next one we build.' Forget history. Some of the cars we built many years ago sell for $10, $12 million now. And they say, 'Why didn't you save them?' Because I needed the $4,000 back then.

"I'm always interested in what's happening tomorrow, the technology of tomorrow. We're living in the most interesting of times, even in a recession. I don't get depressed about it. We live in a great country. The automobile industry has been the center of my attention since I was 3 years old and I'm sure it'll never change. I'm 87 now and looking forward to a lot of years, building niche automobiles."

Born in Leesburg, Texas, in 1923, Shelby was a flight instructor and test pilot during World War II. While dabbling in dump trucks and a chicken farm, Shelby was bitten by the car bug in the early '50s, first driving a hot rod, then moving up to sports cars. He was pretty good at it, too, winning the first race he ever entered -- driving an MG-TC against more powerful Jaguars.

By 1957, Sports Illustrated's Driver of the Year had opened his own shop with help from Texas oilman Dick Hall, whose brother Jim would later build the legendary Chapparals of Can-Am and IndyCar fame. But injuries from previous crashes forced Shelby to hang up his helmet three years later and concentrate on designing and building his own cars, starting with the Cobra in 1962.

Then Ford came calling two years later with an intriguing proposition.

"Lee Iacocca came to us [with the Mustang] in 1964 when we were building the Cobras, and he said, 'Shelby, you gotta make a sports car out of this,' " Shelby said. "And I said, 'Lee, I can't do that, because you can't make a mule outrun a racehorse.' It was a secretary's car. It was a six-cylinder, three [gear shifts] on the shaft, and I said, 'No, we can't do that.'

"Anyway he says, 'Shelby, you work for Ford and I'm running this outfit and you're going to do it.' So we took it. I asked for a budget of $15,000 to build a couple of prototypes. He sent me $1,500 and said, 'Get it done.' We built it. It won the national championship against the Corvettes for seven years." (Continued)