season due to his persistent angina caused by a congenital heart defect. In 1961 Shelby founded the Shelby School of High Performance Driving at Riverside International Raceway near Los Angeles, hiring Pete Brock as a teacher, and obtained a distributorship for Goodyear tires and Champion spark plugs. He rented space for these other businesses from Dean Moon, at his shop Santa Fe Springs, California. Shelby contacted several European automakers with the purpose of striking a deal to import their chassis and install an American V8, but he was rebuffed until September 1961, when AC Cars of Britain replied in the affirmative. After the Bristol Aeroplane Company merged with English Electric and Vickers to form the British Aircraft Corporation, the newly spun-off Bristol Cars ceased production of their six-cylinder engine, which AC had been using in their Ace sports car. In need of a new supply of engines they struck a deal with Shelby: they would ship bodies from their shop in Thames Ditton, Surrey to Shelby in California for installation of an American V8 engine, if a suitable one could be found. Shelby returned to GM, asking for a supply of Chevrolet V8s, but was refused again for fear a Chevrolet-powered European sports car would compete with the Corvette. Instead he sought an agreement with Ford, who were releasing a new "small-block" V8 engine of their own at the end of the year. In November 1961 Ford delivered a pair of "Windsor" V8 engines to Moon's shop, and AC's first body arrived in February 1962. Shelby and Moon installed the V8 engine and a Borg-Warner T-10 transmission into the AC body, creating the first of the cars Shelby named "Cobra". In order to expand production Shelby needed a facility of his own. Coincidentally Lance Reventlow's lease at his shop in Venice, Los Angeles, where his company built Scarab racing cars, was expiring. Shelby leased the building at 1042 Princeton Drive in April and founded his new company: Shelby American, Inc. Phil Remington, Scarab's chief engineer, was hired immediately by Shelby to continue working on the Cobra. Motorsports — Cobra, Daytona and Ford GT40 Shelby American began racing the Cobra in the fall of 1962 with driver Bill Krause entered into the three-hour endurance race at the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix on October 13. Krause ultimately did not finish, having broken an axle shaft, but the car was very competitive