>From cheysco!gallium.chey.com!kendall@uu.psi.com Sun Jun 14 05:58 PDT 1992
>From: kendall@gallium.chey.com (none)
>To: british-cars@hoosier.cs.utah.edu
>Subject: Cobra Ramblings
>Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 10:54:24 EDT
>There's a new upscale [British] magazine out called Car Classics.
>The second issue had a revue of a 289 MK II cobra (6?),
>a brief history of competition Cobras, and a one page story
High Performance 289cid Ford V8. Comp version ~385HP
>on Shelby. Very interesting reading. I recommend it. Shelby says
>his favorite all time car (in this article anyway) is the 289
>Cobra (MK?, sorry).
Mk I: 260cid V8; Mk II: 289cid V8, Mk III: 427cid V8.
>On another Cobra note, the April 1992 Classic And Sportscar
>picked the AC Cobra 427 as one of its top ten worst cars.
>"Ugly, pumped-up looks, ridiculous performance, clumsy gearchange and
>brutal road manners. Totally needless compared with the desirable 289".
Well, I both agree and disagree with this. The car is certainly uglier
than the Mk I and Mk II Cobras. In fact, it's just plain ugly. One of
the ten worst cars and ridiculous performance? By what standards?
Shelby's intent was to build a small number of very high performance
cars that could successfully compete with Ferrari for the 1965 FIA World
Manufacturing Championship. Only a hundred cars were required or
intended. Ferrari was doing exactly the same thing on his end.
Basically what happened was that this plan fell through for both
builders. Shelby was stuck with 30+ cars that year with no more buyers
and a large outlay in development costs. He did what he could to cut
his losses. He certainly was aware that the car had a very limited
potential market and made the best of it. I don't know of any Cobra
owners (Mk I, II or III) who weren't aware of the limited creature
comforts and performance characteristics of these cars before they
bought them. In fact, that's mainly WHY they bought them. In short,
the competition 427 Cobra fulfilled it's intended designed purpose as
far as performance was concerned. It just turned out that this purpose
saw very limited use. The 427 SC Cobras were left over competition cars
slightly tone downed to appeal to buyers outside of the well healed
racing crowd. The later street Cobras were even more toned down, some
even being powered by the cheaper and more civilized 428cid engine.
>Kendall
As longs as I'm on the subject of Cobras I thought I'd pass along some
gossip I heard at the Shelby Club meeting the other night. The rumor I
heard was that those 25 427 chassis stacked up in Shelby's warehouse
don't look anywhere near old enough and some parts on them appears to be
MIG welded, a technology not available in 1965.
Two other things about these chassis have been bothering me every since
I first heard about them. First, it's always been my understanding that
AC delivered "rolling" chassis to Shelby needing only engines and
transmissions to be complete. I've even seen a photograph taken in
front of the AC factory at Thames Ditton of Cobras being loaded on to
trucks for transport to the docks and shipment on to the US. These cars
appeared to be complete from the outside, including paint. The other
thing I've wondered about is something I saw during a visit to Shelby's
plant at LA International Airport in 1965. There were about 20 bare
metal Cobras lined up along the runway. At the time, I thought they
were new 289s under construction or something. Later I learned that
these cars were comp 427s waiting to be sold. The purchasers, who were
racers for the most part, specified the finish.
And a comment from one replica owner at the meeting: why would anyone
pay $500,000 dollars for one of Shelby's new 427s when they could buy a
"real" one for the same price or less?
It's my understanding that in order to license these cars as '65s,
Shelby's will have to prove that 50% or more of the pieces in them are
that old. Assuming the chassis are indeed 100% vintage 1965, I think he
going have a lot of problems with the rest.
Roland
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