John Chun and the Shelby Cobra - Tales of Awesomeness

If you’re a car enthusiast, its sleek style, history, and distinctive logo will quicken your pulse and jump start your interest. It’s the 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 350/500 Cobra. Now, I am not a gearhead nor do I even pretend to know anything about cars beyond how to fill it up with gas and drive it from point A to B. But even I can at least identify the Ford Mustangs from the 1960s, and the most iconic of these to me is the 1967 GT350.

Made in the shops of Carroll Shelby for Ford, the Mustang’s have come to define American muscle cars, freedom, the open road, and all that good stuff. Little did I know that the actual design of the car came from the mind of a Korean immigrant, not unlike myself.

John Chun was born in 1928 in what would become North Korea after the end of WW2. He made to the South during the Korean War and fought for South Korea, and later immigrated to the US as an engineering student arriving in California in 1957. He attended the Art Center College of Design by day, and worked as mechanic at night. Despite his limited English skills and being in his mid-thirties by the time he graduated, he was able to impress Fred Goodell, the chief engineer for Shelby American. And the rest, as they say, is history.