1966 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra

In the late ’60s there just wasn’t anything badder than a 427 Cobra, and the fact that they were rumored to kill an abnormally high percentage of people who dared to drive them only increased the reputation.

by Thor Thorson

 

Although the 289 Cobra was well proven in competition by the mid-1960s, it was becoming clear that something more was needed to stay competitive. Ford’s 289-ci V8 reached its reliability threshold at about 380 or 390 hp, which wasn’t going to be enough power for long. Although Shelby had been promised a new aluminum-block version of Ford’s 390-ci V8, internal resistance from the NASCAR faction inside Ford forced Shelby to make do with the cast iron 427. Although reliable at 500 hp, the engine was so much heavier that a complete redesign of the Cobra chassis was required to ensure proper handling. Engineered with Ford’s help, the new chassis was five inches wider, with coil springs all around. One of the most memorable stories about the 427 Cobra surrounds a test that was arranged by Ken Miles for Sports Car Graphic magazine. A few years earlier, Aston Martin had bragged that its racing cars were capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 mph and back to 0 in less than 30 seconds. Miles had the idea to re-stage the test using the new 427 Cobra. The result, according to SCG editor Jerry Titus, was an astounding 13.2 seconds. As with all his cars, Carroll Shelby intended to see that the 427 Cobra was a winner on the track, so a competition-spec version was developed. Features included a wider body to accommodate wider wheels and tires, an oil cooler, side exhaust, external fuel filler, front jacking points, roll bar, and a special 42-gallon fuel tank. The car on offer here was restored for street use in the late 1980s. The vendor has since conducted a thorough mechanical restoration in order to prepare the car for track use. Work included a rebuilt suspension, engine and drivetrain, braking system, exhaust, and safety equipment. Since completion, the car has been driven at the 2003 Monterey Historics and the 2003 Coronado Festival of Speed. These cars are brutally fast, and driving one is an exhilarating experience. Very few cars like this remain today, and the best ones—like CSX3014—seldom change hands.

This car sold for $627,000 at the RM Monterey sale held Aug. 13-14, 2004. Flashback to my senior year at college: A friend had gone home to St. Louis for spring break, and when he returned, he told us that someone he knew had just bought a 427 Cobra. “You know how they advertise that it will go from zero to a hundred to zero in just over 13 seconds?” the friend asked. “Yeah,” I replied. “Well,” he said, “it will.” In the late ’60s there just wasn’t anything badder than a 427 Cobra, and the fact that they were rumored to kill an abnormally high percentage of people who dared to drive them only increased the reputation. Big-block Cobras came in three versions: One for the street, a full competition car, and the S/C (a model created after Shelby American couldn’t sell the competition cars, and converted them back into streetable vehicles). I’m told there were 21 full competition cars actually sold. The 427 Competition Cobras pretty much dominated any race they entered. The minimal weight, huge horsepower, and room for equally huge tires made them the right weapon for the battle. With a short wheelbase for the width of the car and all that power to play with, they were twitchy at the limit, but good drivers loved them. Aerodynamics were not their strong suit, but one advantage of the Cobra’s shape was that it kept the car from having high speed lift problems, something the slipperier Corvettes of the era had to fight. Dick Smith was clocked at 198 mph in a Cobra at Daytona in 1967, which was flat hauling in those days. In vintage racing today, Cobras are the 800-pound gorilla. That said, a fully fettled 427 Corvette with a good driver behind the wheel will give them a serious run for the money. Cobras accelerate better out of the corners but the Corvette can get it back at mid-range and faster speeds, when its smoother shape comes into play. The Cobra has a slight advantage on brakes, while absolute cornering is about the same. The match-up has made for some glorious vintage battles over the years. I’ve mentioned before that the expensive part of vintage racing is operating and maintenance costs, as most reasonably purchased race cars will, at a minimum, hold their value. The Cobra scores big points here, as its Ford V8 engine and drivetrain are easy and comparatively cheap to run. That there is an entire industry devoted to creating Cobra replicas is less of a good thing. On one hand, it perpetuates the icon, the thing that all those kit car guys with junkyard Mustang motors wish they could have. On the other hand, you’ll spend your life explaining to people that you actually have an original, which is even more annoying than having to tell people that your Cobra actually came from Poland. This is less of a problem for the pure competition cars, like the one pictured here, as most vintage racing organizations are careful to only allow correct and original cars to participate. If you see one on the track in a sanctioned event, you can usually rest assured it’s legit. Racing cars are notorious for being used and abused and then discarded, before some collector comes along a decade or two later and resurrects them into the fabulous pieces we all lust after and pay big money for today. Cobras, however, have largely avoided that fate. They’ve always been desirable and have held their value since new. At about $8,800 for a full competition car when new, 427 Cobras dipped into the $5,000 range in the late ’60s before starting their long, slow climb through the years. By the early 1980s, they were comfortably into six figures and the collecting boom late in the decade got them close to seven. Several owners at the time decided to advertise their cars at a million and had to back down when serious offers came in. The high point came when one of them turned down $1.5 million. Along with everything else, prices dropped off in the early ’90s crash, but have since come back. Today Cobras are hot, and are now valued at about half of their historical high. I’d say that even at today’s market-correct price of $627k, this one was well bought. (Historical and descriptive information courtesy of the auction company.)                                                                                                                                                    

A 1963 original, the 289 Cobra A 427 Cobra replica The AC logo. Auto Carriers, manufacturers of British roadsters, supplied the aluminum bodies used in Carroll Shelby's original Cobras. During his racing career, Carroll Shelby was twice named racecar driver of the year by Sports Illustrated The distinctive Cobra logo -- the hood ornament on an original 1963 Cobra. The original 289 Cobra engine. A 427 engine installed in a new Cobra replica.

Legacy In the Rear-View Mirror:

A Short History of Carroll Shelby's Cobra®

Whether or not you're familiar with 1960s-era auto racing, if you're a fan of American sports cars, you've heard the name. The Cobra® is truly one automobile that stands out from all others. Conceived and built by legendary automotive engineer Carroll Shelby, when the Cobra made its debut in the early '60s, it was quickly apparent that there had simply never been a car like this one. On roads and racecourses, the Cobra would change everything -- leaving European race competitors like Ferrari stunned as a bunch of ragtag Americans robbed them of their hold on the checkered flag. At the same time, the Cobra captivated the imaginations of driving enthusiasts all over the world. The original Cobra made its debut in 1962, and by 1968 it was all over. But not really. Because of the unique brand of performance embodied by this benchmark racing and performance car, a whole industry has been built up that's devoted exclusively to building carbon-copy replicas. It's estimated that there are more than 40,000 replicas on the road today. In fact, in recent years Carroll Shelby himself has reappeared and has begun a project of building and releasing several variations of his own ultra-authentic re-creations of the original.

The Cobra is a car whose reputation has not only endured but also flourished and intensified over time. After all, the last original Cobra rolled out of assembly in 1968, right in the middle of the muscle-car era. Floyd Garrett -- the owner of the Muscle Car Museum in Tennessee and someone who knows a few things about fast cars -- reviews the history of the Shelby Cobra to give some clues about why this rare vehicle has retained so much mystique for nearly four decades.

Cobras were built in Great Britain -- only about 1,000 of them in all -- between the years 1962 and 1968. In fact, the original Cobras were themselves a component car, in a sense. The aluminum bodies, chassis and undercarriage components were manufactured in Britain by a company known as AC (an abbreviation for Auto Carriers), then shipped to Carroll Shelby's facility in California, where the engines and transmissions were installed and final assembly was completed.

Carroll Shelby was a chicken farmer from Leesburg, Texas, who became interested in hotrods and drag racing and eventually went on to become a world-class race driver. During the 1950s, he was twice selected by Sports Illustrated as driver of the year. Following a heart attack, Shelby retired from racing in 1961. He remained interested in racing, however, and when he opened the Shelby School of High Performance Driving and took out a small ad in Sports Car Graphic magazine, he was overwhelmed by responses.

In September 1961 AC Cars of Ditton, England, lost its source for the six-cylinder engines that it had been using in its two-seat roadsters. Shelby airmailed a letter to the company proposing that they keep building their chassis for a limited-run sports car to be powered by an American V8 engine. The owner of AC agreed, provided that a suitable engine would be available in the United States. Later that year, Shelby found out about a lightweight, thin-walled cast compact V8 being designed by Ford. Shelby formed an alliance with Ford to provide power-plants for his new project, and the AC CobraB. , "powered by Ford," was born. As it happened, the timing was just right because Ford was eager to increase its profile in the development of high-performance products. The major automaker wanted the prestige that went along with adding a performance sports-car to its fleet. This was the dawn of the muscle car -- those powerful automobiles with striking good looks and charisma like Chevrolet's Corvette and later the Ford Mustang. The Cobra was, without a doubt, the right machine at the right time.

Shelby claims that he came up with the name for his creation in a dream. In the middle of the night he awoke and, on a notepad that he kept on his bedside table, jotted down a single word that had appeared to him while he slept. He then went back to sleep. The next morning he woke up and saw the word cobra hand-written on the slip of paper. That omen was good enough for Shelby. In short order, a 260-cubic-inch engine and four-speed transmission was installed in one of the roadster bodies. Shelby and a friend immediately took the newly christened Cobra out to road-test it -- and to look for Corvettes to bait. None was found.

The Cobra name was soon to find wide recognition. Production startup was slow since fitting the Ford engine into the AC chassis required some reengineering, but in mid-1962 a prototype was offered to automotive journalists for test-drives. Sports Car Graphic magazine described the car's acceleration as "explosive." Soon the British/American hybrid, this aluminum-bodied roadster with the muscular American V8 shoehorned into the engine compartment, would begin making racing history. In 1964 the Cobra team would win in its division at Europe's biggest auto race, the 24-hour Le Mans. In 1965 the streamlined Daytona Coupe version, sculpted by American automotive designer Peter Brock, took the prestigious World Manufacturer's Championship. In its heyday the Cobra had no equal on the track. In turn, it dominated such world-class competitors as Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar and Corvette.

Shelby outfitted the early Cobras, those built in 1962 and early '63, with Ford's 260-cubic-inch small-block V8. At the time the engine was widely available as it was popular in Ford's Falcon and Fairlane passenger cars. Shelby later substituted the 260 with a 289 engine of the same block, and the car was labeled the 289 Cobra. Its thin-walled high nickel-content made for a lightweight but reliable performance engine. It was those 289 engines, in the early "slabside" Cobras (so-nicknamed because of the absence of the fender-flares that would become familiar later) that established the Cobra's racing reputation. But for long straightaways like those on European racing tracks, more thrust was needed.

During 1963 and '64, while Brock was designing the aerodynamic fastback-styled Daytona Coupe, work was begun on the engineering of a new generation of Cobra roadster -- the one that would solidify the legend. In November 1964 the prototype was tested in England. The following January the newly named 427 Cobra -- featuring a tube frame, aluminum body, coil-spring chassis and, most notably, a big-block racing engine -- was unveiled at a press conference at Riverside International Raceway. The new version would be offered in three variants:

 

• The 427 Competition Cobra, outfitted for racing and equipped with a driver-side windscreen.

   

• The 427S/C Cobra. The "S/C" stands either for "Street/Competition" or "Semi-Competition" -- depending on whom you ask. This stunning version sported gleaming side-pipes, hood scoop, a three-point rollbar, and other racing accoutrements. It did have a full windshield and was otherwise rendered slightly more "civilized" for the street. This version is by far the most popular variation among today's replica-makers.

   

• The 427 Cobra, or "street version," came without a rollbar, hood scoop or oil cooler (although these were available as options). The exhaust system was under-car (rather than with side-pipes), and it featured chrome "bumperettes."

In all configurations the 427 Cobra's frame was beefed up from that of the 289 predecessor. Coil springs replaced the outmoded transverse-leaf setups used on the 260s and 289s. The final topless variant of the breed, the flare-fendered big-block 427 roadster, is still today regarded as the quintessence of brute automotive power.

Carroll Shelby built the last of the original 427 roadsters in 1968. The sun had set on the electrifying duels at Laguna Seca, Riverside, Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans -- where bare-fisted American muscle had thrashed the Italian stallions and all other also-rans. But the legend, and its physical presence on the road, continues to grow in the form of faithful replicas built and driven by dedicated and romantic enthusiasts. The Cobra persona has proved to be timeless.

• 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.