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Shelby Cobra turns 50
Fifty years have passed since the first Shelby AC Cobra, CSX2000, landed, heralding the emergence of an automotive sex symbol and a racetrack legend from a modest display stand at the New York motor show.
Cannily resprayed pearlescent yellow, from its original blue, to give journalists the impression that full-scale production had begun, it was well-received, although hardly the only attraction of that 1962 show.
Competition came in many shapely forms, including the Studebaker Avanti and from a design study done for the Chevrolet Corvette, the XP-755.
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Few could have imagined that the upstart Cobra, the unlikely offspring of Englands venerable but tiny AC Cars (making cars since at least 1904) and a relentlessly ambitious Texan, Carroll Shelby - a World War II pilot turned chicken farmer turned racing car driver turned chronically undercapitalised sports car constructor - would continue stirring enthusiasts souls well into the next century.
Desperately expensive now, Shelby Cobras didnt set sales records when new; only 998 were built in 1962-67, in two basic versions.
Starting at about $6000 and reaching $8000 in some versions, they were beyond the reach of most enthusiasts, although they could be ordered at selected Ford dealerships.
Cobras were anachronisms even when new, with clumsy side curtains in place of roll-up windows, a challenging erect-it-yourself convertible top and the bare minimum of ventilation or safety equipment.
By almost any logical measure, Corvettes and Jaguar E-Types were infinitely more practical high-speed grand touring cars.
Yet with voluptuous lines that continue to transcend time, blistering performance and immediate success on the racetrack, the Cobra readily achieved canonisation in the car-collecting church.
For decades, original Shelbys have been among the bluest of blue-chip classics, with fine examples selling today for $US600,000 ($580,000).
Owners of cars with exceptional provenance or noteworthy racing histories might comfortably ask twice that much.
The Cobras desirability has also given rise to an entire industry of knockoffs. Very likely, no single model of car has ever been so widely copied, with Cobra clones, replicas and kits of varying degrees of authenticity and quality peddled through the decades.
Even Shelby- now 89 years old and the recipient of successful heart and kidney transplants - has long dabbled in the action, selling official re-creations of the Cobra, authorising some made by third parties while damning others and hauling those who he feels are infringing on the design into court.
And he remains involved in the business of modifying Ford Mustangs, an effort begun in 1965 with the Shelby GT 350.
This week at the New York motor show, his company will introduce the Shelby 1000, a 950-horsepower, $150,000 package of enhancements for the 2012 Mustang GT500.
The Cobra production car and all the fame it brought may owe as much to a medical condition as to Shelbys lust for speed. The smooth-talking racers career was ascendant, capped by an outright win at Le Mans in 1959 driving an Aston Martin, when cut short by a congenital heart ailment that had plagued him intermittently since childhood.
Shelby hung up his helmet, choosing to pursue the recurring but seemingly impossible American dream of successfully marketing a car with his own name on it.
Influenced by the Allard racecars of the early 1950s, which established the competitive possibility of big US engines in lightweight English bodies, Shelby confidently approached General Motors for supplies of its new small-block V-8 and Donald Healey for the Austin-Healey rolling chassis.
He was, in both instances, rebuffed.
But timing is everything. Shelby learned that Bristol, a British carmaker, had ended production of the 6-cylinder engine used in ACs aging sports car, the Ace.
Shelby was quickly in front of AC directors with a proposal.
The Cobra, whose name Shelby has said came to him years earlier in a dream, was on its way.
In February 1962 an unpainted Ace, its chassis modified to withstand a doubling of its horsepower but sans engine, arrived at the Santa Fe Springs, California, shop of Dean Moon, a maker of performance equipment.
Within hours, a new Ford V8 had been installed, and soon the glittering predictions of the performance potential of this Anglo-American mongrel were borne out on local streets.
Ford agreed to sell V8s to Shelby, and with its engine supply assured, the newly formed Shelby American company moved to take over the Los Angeles shop of Lance Reventlow, a racer who was heir to the Revlon fortune and the maker of Scarab racing cars.
Reventlows gifted fabricating engineer, Phil Remington, came into the fold. Ken Miles, a British-born racer living in Southern California, was on board soon after, as a Shelby American test driver and development engineer.
Confident that winning on the racetrack would establish the Cobras credentials and spur demand, Shelby arranged for the second car off the production line to go racing. After some initial teething troubles, success followed with a stellar roster of early 60s greats, including Dan Gurney, Phil Hill and Bob Bondurant, behind the Cobras large wood-rim steering wheels.
For a memorable moment in American sports car racing history, the Cobra was king, its fame nourished by Shelbys shrewd marketing hand.
Cobras were featured prominently in Elvis Presleys Viva Las Vegas and Spinout films, and provided the theme (and cover image) of the Rip Chords 1964 hit single, Hey Little Cobra.
Not for nothing was Shelby building cars in Americas new entertainment capital.
Like many racers of his day, Shelby set his sights on beating the cars of Enzo Ferrari.
He assigned Peter Brock, a former General Motors designer who had been running a Shelby performance driving school, to design an aerodynamic fastback coupe capable of winning on European tracks.
Only six examples of Brocks Daytona Coupe were originally built, but they cemented the Cobras majesty, winning the FIA World Manufacturers GT Championship in 1965, making Shelbys the only US car to collect the honour.
Collector-car price guides value the Daytona Coupe at about $US10 million today.
Rarity, sex appeal, competition success - and epic branding conjured by a charismatic Texan who can be equal parts snake charmer and snake oil salesman - the Cobra has it all.
But the legend would not be complete without a reference to its persistent, history-making oversupplies of horsepower.
As the veteran car tester Tom McCahill pithily wrote of the new machine in Mechanix Illustrated in August 1963, here was a potential Le Mans winner you could buy at the neighbourhood Ford dealer that will snap Gramps head right off his shoulders if you hit the go pedal when he isnt ready.
Squarely in the middle of Detroits horsepower wars, Shelby and his team knew that no matter how fast their car was, its performance advantage wouldnt last as competitors upped the ante.
After 655 original-formula Cobras had been assembled, a new model arrived for 1965. Deploying Fords 427-cubic-inch V8, the Cobra anticipated the challenge of big-block Corvettes, coupling a more extreme overdose of power to wider tires and the almost cartoonishly bulging bodywork needed to cover them.
Gone were the original cars reedy ladder frame and transverse leaf-spring suspension. In their place was a stout tubular chassis, with a modern coil-spring independent suspension, fat Goodyear tires and improved braking.
The engineering work, done with the help of Ford supercomputers, was intended to rein in the veritable Saturn moon rocket residing under the 427s hood.
This new Cobra, Car and Driver reported with equal measures of approval and amazement in November 1965, remained a crude appliance. But it was fast without precedent, travelling from zero to 100 mph (160km/h) and back to zero again in less than 14 seconds. This at a moment in history when it took many new cars 14 seconds or more to wheeze their way up to 60.
The revamped Cobras may have handled better than their predecessors, but were even trickier to drive.
A mere 343 of the 427 Cobras, including two twin-supercharged models with automatic transmissions, were built before production ceased.
By 1967, Shelbys competition focus had moved on to the mid-engine GT40, he was busy building Shelby Mustangs with Ford, and emissions controls and safety regulations loomed.
The Cobra, still very much a product of the 1950s, was never going to make it into the 70s.
Then somehow, not unlike its creator, it managed to live forever.
New York Times
I'd even take one of these replica's 👍
Happy birthday to one of the most brutal cars ever built!!! 
