Six Degrees of Automotive Personalities Separation – Dick Teague and Carroll Shelby

Let’s try something different this week. Throughout the Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenge, we’ve always focused on how the cars and the companies that built them can be connected. But we’ve yet to examine how the people who worked for those companies can be connected. Focusing on the people would actually hew closer to the spirit of the Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon college pasttime, so let’s give it a try.

You all should be pretty familiar with both of the men we’ve chosen for this week’s challenge. Carroll Shelby, famed racer and originator of the Shelby Cobra, and Dick Teague, longtime AMC vice-president of design. To the best of my knowledge, they never directly crossed paths, but indirectly they can be linked.

Now, to link the two, you have to find people they directly worked with at various automotive companies. It’s not enough just to say that Guy X worked at Company Y, which Guy Z worked for 20 years later. You should need no more than six degrees of separation between the two, and the path that I found involves just five degrees.