Several years ago when I was researching pickup trucks to decide which one to purchase as my daily driver, I saw that the Ford F-150 Raptor had a special high-performance version modified by Shelby American. Although it was tempting, I decided to make a much more reasonable selection of pickup truck and purchased a GMC Canyon instead.
Funny enough, when I moved into a luxury high-rise condominium on the Las Vegas Strip in 2019, one of my neighbors owned a Shelby Raptor, so I got to look at it every day in the parking garage whenever I drove in and out.
Since moving out of that tower, I hadn’t seen too many Shelby Raptors on the road. After I found out that Shelby American had their headquarters in Las Vegas, I decided to make a quick visit during my midday break today in hopes of seeing the newest model of Shelby Raptor.
Their facility also housed their modification shop. A paid guided tour for US$59.00 included a tour of the shop, but I opted to go for the free self-guided tour instead. Fortunately, there were windows looking into the bays, so I was still able to take a look at some of the vehicles they were working on.
The rest of the museum had a variety of different Shelby vehicles on display with a wide range of different models and model years.
Notably missing from all the displays… was any pickup trucks. At all.
I looped back around just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, nosily peeked in through some dark hallways in case there was anything hidden, then checked the modification bays to see if there were any trucks being worked on. Shelby has an F-150, F-150 Super Snake, F-150 Super Snake Sport, F-150 Raptor, F-250 Super Baja, and F-150 Centennial Edition, so I feel like it was reasonable to expect to see at least one single truck … but there were none.
There was, however, a huge merchandise section.
I paid nothing for my visit, so I guess I can’t be too disappointed (though, if I did choose to purchase the $59 guided tour, I imagine I still wouldn’t have seen any of their wide selection of pickup trucks, and would have still left somewhat disappointed).
I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that all the pickup trucks are just so insanely popular that they all sell at a huge mark-up immediately upon production, so they don’t have an opportunity to leave any on display due to the queue of enthusiasts eagerly waiting for the day they can accept delivery of their new Shelby truck.
As consolation, I decided to just take a picture of my own pickup truck in the parking lot instead. And yes, that is indeed a humongous model of a bottle of Corona Extra beer in the background. Very Las Vegas. 🤷
The warehouse is about a mile south of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign on the Las Vegas Strip, so if you’re already in the area and are a car enthusiast, it’s a neat place to check out. However, if you don’t care much about classic and sports cars, you’ll probably feel like you’re just walking through a car dealership, with the museum area being the showroom and the modification bays being the service center, so it might not be too special for you.