Pete Brock - Back To Racing, California and Shelby American

Back To Racing, California and Shelby American

Knowing that the opportunity to create a car such as the Corvette Stingray at a large corporation was rare, and having turned 21 so that he could get his SCCA race license, Brock left GM in 1959 to return to his native California. In a chicken coop in Detroit he'd been working on a mid-'50s Cooper that had run at Le Mans. Returning to CA with the Cooper in tow, he started working for Max Balchowski at Max's Hollywood Motors shop during the day and worked on his race car at night. A frequent visitor to Max's shop was Carroll Shelby. One day in 1961 Shelby and Paul O'Shea met at Riverside Raceway to discuss opening a driver's school. Brock was there. When Shelby and O'Shea got into a disagreement about who would work for who, O'Shea left in disgust. Shelby turned to Brock and asked if he wanted to run the school. Brock said yes and became Shelby's first paid employee, running the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving. Brock would work at Shelby American thru the end of the 1965 season. During his tenure he created the Shelby American brand via creating the logos, merchandise, ads, car liveries, etc. He designed the Shelby components of the Shelby Mustang GT350s and designed race cars for Shelby such as the Lang Cooper, Nethercutt Mirage, De Tomaso P70 and most famously the iconic Shelby Daytona Cobra coupes that won the FIA World GT Championship in 1965.