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| The Man has a Dream |
| Not being one to give up, he started designing race cars. He had always wanted to build his own “sports car” and after seeing the name “Cobra” in a dream he knew what his next life project would be. For years AC Motorcars was building a two seater coupe, not unlike the first Cobra’s, using a six cylinder engine. When Bristol Engines went out of business and could not supply engines to AC, Carroll contacted AC and started discussions with them about using their chassis and mounting an American V8 into it. With AC interested, Carroll then went to the president of Ford Motors at the time, Lee Iacocca and asked if he could lend him $25000 to make the dream happen. Lee agreed and supplied Carroll with the new 260 CID small block V8. Carroll Shelby contacted AC Cars and arranged with them to send an AC chassis from Britain to his shop in California. In February of 1962, Shelby put together the first Cobra using the 260 CID small block engine and the AC chassis. By March of 1962 the Shelby 260 Cobra was the fastest production vehicle with a 0-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds. Shelby entered the car in races all over North America and was winning lots of them. To promote sales of the Cobra he sent cars to the magazines for them to evaluate. In fact, because of slow manufacturing progress (only 8 complete cars so far) he sent the same Cobra to each magazine but repainted it each time to make it look like there were more in production then actually were. Shelby then continued to race the Cobra’s successfully through ‘62 and ‘63. By 1964, only 170 actual Cobra’s had been manufactured. In March of 1964, Shelby entered a 427 big block Cobra into a race at Sebring. After crashing during the practice runs, the car was repaired and won the race ahead of Ferrari. By October of 1964, the first official 427 big block Cobra prototype is finished. By March of 1967, the last Cobra is built. Again, it was time to start over. Through the late 60's, Shelby worked with Ford to produce Mustang GT 350's and GT500's (Eleanor). After that, he hooked up again with his buddy Lee Iacocca, now at Chrysler, to make Shelby editions of Omni’s, Chargers, and more through the mid 80's. Finally, he capped off his career with Chrysler by consulting on the Viper project. Now, Shelby has resurrected the Cobra and is now building new versions of the classic. His company now manufactures everything from the ground up including the all new 427 side-oiler big block engine. Next year, Ford will introduce a new Cobra, inspired by the original but with definite new-age features. |
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