Cobra factoids - Shelby, pre-Cobra
Carroll Shelby was internationally known as a premier competition race-driver before he ever began building automobiles. He was twice named race-car driver of the year by Sports Illustrated magazine. During his years as a racer, he drove Allards, Jaguars, Austin-Healys and Ferraris in the U.S, Europe and South America. The height of his racing career was his win, with co-driver Roy Salvadori, at 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959, driving an Aston Martin. After he retired from racing because of a heart condition, Shelby operated a high-performance driving school at Riverside Raceway, was the western distributor for Goodyear tires and was a consulting editor for Sports Car Graphic magazine.
- Just a Chicken Farmer from Texas
Before he became successful in his racing career, Shelby's earlier pursuits included chicken farming. In one of his first races, he was in such a rush to get to the track that he didn't have time to change clothes. Instead of a racing suit, he showed up wearing the bib overalls he'd been wearing to tend his chickens. He drove the race wearing the unorthodox garb. When he won the race and appeared in the winner's circle wearing denim overalls, the photographers had a field day. The overalls became Shelby's trademark, which he later embellished by adding his signature black cowboy hat. Shelby wore the familiar striped overalls when he raced Formula-One Maseratis in Italy in 1958.
- Light as a Feather
The bodies used in the original Cobras, supplied by the British automaker AC, were aluminum. Although Shelby's first preference would have been fiberglass, he settled on the aluminum because the bodies were readily available. When lifted off the chassis, the body itself weighed only about 50 pounds.
- Not Exactly Detroit
At the AC Cars Ltd. plant in England, where Cobra bodies were built during the 1960s, hand-crafting was still preferred and automated assembly was still in the future. The "assembly line" for Cobra chassis consisted of hand-pulled dollies that were rolled along floor tracks.
- A Car of Many Colors
When the first Cobra had arrived and been assembled in California, Sports Car Graphic magazine was set up with an appointment to test-drive and photograph the newly christened car. The aluminum body arrived unpainted, and there was not time to have it properly finished before the photo shoot. Shelby's crew used several boxes of Brillo pads to scrub the unpainted aluminum until it gleamed. An artist hurriedly painted a Shelby logo on the hood and trunk lid, and the world's first Cobra was born. The journalists were suitably impressed (and didn't seem to mind the absent body paint) writing that "[the Cobra] is one of the most impressive production sports cars we've driven." Later the car was painted red, then blue, then yellow as it was reviewed by subsequent magazines -- to make each reviewer think he was testing a brand-new car, and to give the impression that multiple Cobras were rolling off Shelby's production line.
- Nomenclature
The first production 427 Cobra rolled out of Shelby-American's California plant in the winter of 1965. It bore the identification number CSX3001. "CSX" stands for "Carroll Shelby Experimental." The last car in the series, CSX3358, was manufactured in February 1966. According to the Shelby-American Automobile Club, there were 356 production 427s built. (The discrepancy between 356 and 358 indicated by the numbers was due to one car's being built by combining parts of two others.) The auto club does not recognize as official any of the cars built after February 1966 from leftover parts, or any of the 289 Cobras retrofitted with 427 engines.
- Genealogy of the 427 Engine
The 427 engine used in the latter-day Cobras was originally used in the Galaxie 500 fastback models that Ford entered in NASCAR. It was about 200 pounds heavier than the 289 and was the most recent in a line of big-block engines built by Ford. That line had included the 332-cubic-inch V8 (first built in 1958) and later versions upsized to 390 and 406 cubic inches. The 427 was considered a high point in Ford engine development. It was a solid, sturdily constructed block and employed a number of performance features including solid lifters, aluminum-alloy intake manifold, cross-bolted main bearing caps and forged-steel connecting rods. It took advantage of these features, as well as the generous oil-flow of the "side-oiling" design, to facilitate running at higher rpm for long periods of time.
- A Race Car, By Any Other Name
In 1966, when Shelby realized that he had built more competition-versions of the 427 than he had racing customers, he devised the "S/C" designation for making the racing Cobra (with nominal modifications) available to the public. Once his racing orders had been filled, he outfitted the remainder of his initial run of competition 427s with softer bushings, a windshield and a muffler (which actually muffled very little). The S/C stood for "semi-competition" or "street competition," depending on the source consulted. Whatever the derivation of the name, the S/C version could be easily converted back to a racing version simply by removing the windshield, swapping out the bushings, switching to open headers and installing a roll bar. In all, there were actually four varieties of 427 Cobra produced: the street version, the racing version, the S/C (which hybridized the former two), and the lesser-known 428 (the street-version 427 sports car with a racing 428 engine substituted).
- Nobody Ever Said It Was Practical
The S/C version had no gas gauge, but it did have two gas tanks: a main tank and a reserve that came into play when the main tank ran dry. The 42-gallon tank, housed in the trunk, took up nearly all of the trunk room. The tires were so wide that parallel-parking the vehicle was nearly impossible.
- Hot Foot
Engine-heat radiating through the floor of the cockpit was a problem in the design of some of the first 427 Cobras. One race-driver reported that his right shoe melted during a race and bonded itself to the accelerator pedal. Most owners of the street version installed aluminum and asbestos plates both inside and outside the foot box, and vents for fresh air to circulate. (Most modern replicas, like the one shown in our demonstration, incorporate a heat-shield.)
- Used Cobra for Sale; Automatic; Driven Only Once
Approximately 25 289 Cobras with automatic transmission were built and sold. When the 427 was created, Carroll Shelby authorized the fitting of a prototype 427 with an automatic, but that version never reached the market. According to Al Dowd, a Shelby-American staffer: "I was road-testing the 427 with the automatic on the San Diego Freeway when it suddenly shifted by itself from high gear to low gear at about 80 mph, and I started doing loop-the-loops right down the middle of the freeway. I didn't hit anything, but when it finally stopped, I called the factory and told them to come on out and tow it in because I wasn't driving it another foot." Ford did custom-install automatic transmissions in a handful of 427s at customer request.
- And How Much Was that New Viper, Again?
According to a release dated January 1966, the retail price for a competition 427 Cobra at that time was $9,750. The street version cost considerably less. Unlike contemporary American automakers, Shelby-American was able to hold the retail price of the street version to the same figure for two years in a row: $7,495. Dealer cost was reported to be about $6,145, and Shelby-American's cost to produce a single unit was estimated at $5,700. With profit margins like those, it's fairly clear that Shelby was not planning to become rich by building Cobras.
RESOURCES :
The Cobra Story: A Man, His Dream and His Automobile
Author: Carroll Shelby and John Bentley
1965, Trident Press
Carroll Shelby website
The Carroll Shelby Web Site
The official web site of the man who created the legend.
Includes biographical information, a historical timeline, information about new Shelby cars and products, news, links and more.
Web site: www.carrollshelby.com
Shelby Cobra: The Shelby American Original Color Archives 1962-1965
Model: 0879387572
Author: Dave Friedman
(1994)
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing)
Essential AC Cobra : The Cars and Their Story 1962-67
Model: 1870979850
Author: Rinsley Mills
(1997)
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing)
Shelby Cobra Gold Portfolio, 1962-69
Model: 1855200236
Author: R.M. Clarke
(1990)
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing)
Carroll Shelby's Racing Cobra
Model: 0850454573
Author: Dave Friedman and John Christy
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing)
Shelby American Inc.
Carroll Shelby's company specializing in manufacture of a new series of authentic Cobras.
6755 Speedway Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89115
702-643-3000
Web site: www.shelbyamerican.com
or
"http://www.shelbyamerican.com/cobra/">www.shelbyamerican.com/cobra
Shelby's Wildlife: The Cobras and Mustangs
Model: 0879380454
Author: Wallace A. Wyss
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing)
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