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by Wallace Wyss –
Normally, plans for a TV show are hush-hush until a deal is signed. There’s always a rival that could jump in front of you with a better deal. Plus I am genuinely interested in if the movie Ford v Ferrari took all the market in this subject and most fans feel nothing more can be said on the life and times of the auto world’s greatest pitchman, Carroll Hall Shelby, whose resume includes such diverse titles as failed chicken farmer and Le Mans winner.
The reason I think his life is still fodder for a series is that, as good as Ford v Ferrari was, it skipped some of the great stories.
Like the time he flipped a Maserati during practice at Riverside, lost his nose in the process and when his girlfriend came to see him at the hospital and saw the nose on the table she fainted dead away.
Or the time he was a flight instructor during WWII and would divert his flight path to fly over his home to drop a note from the plane. Or the time Al Dowd told me they sold a few rubes 427 Cobras with 428’s “if they were too dumb to know the difference” and profitted another $200.
I think there should be a series. I sold three books on Shelby but I think optioning two of them would provide enough material for 13 episodes. Like Ford v Ferrari, I’d cut it off after Le Mans ’67 or maybe go all the way to ’70 to include the original Shelby Mustangs.
To me the story gets lost in the Dodge Shelbys, the Shelby Olds deal, yadda-yadda so why not concentrate on the story ending in the ’60s? When Hollywood does a movie on Wyatt Earp, they don’t show him in the 1900s–they show him in the Olde West.
Shelby and Ford became at odds, sure he did a lot after leaving Ford, but that is a different story.
When I did my first book on him–the one where he wrote the forward, there were still lots of his former drivers and mechanics around. But now it’s 60 years later, so not so much, but I’m going to make a poster announcing book rights availability. Hey, Netflix…
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
THE AUTHOR Wallace Wyss is a fine artist, accepting commissions for oil portraits of exotic cars. He can be reached at malibucaart@gmail.com
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