car classification question

[dusty]

This one is for all the guys that were around in 64 or 65. When the cobras hit the streets, they were racing with the crowd but how did the crowd classify them? Hot rod? muscle car? sports car? Please, dont start a war here on classes we had enough of that already!

[hatch]

Only saw one...brand new in the ford dealer showroom...we just called em Cobras.

[DrJ]

They were a hybrid low production British sprts car.
AC built them pretty much to order with the buyer's choice of engines.
So Shelby ordered a bunch with Fords in them.
They were so rare I think most people only saw the one "Honey West" drove on TV. http://www.thrillingdetective.com/honey.html
The frame is a rip off, er,I mean similar in design to the 30's BMW sports cars and the body was styled after the Ferarris of the early 50s.
Most of the pre-Cobra ACs were intended for "gentlemen's" sports car club racing I think.
Is it a hotrod just because it's got the Ford V8 stuffed into it? only if you cnsider a stock Dodge R/T, Plymouth Roadrunner, or Pontiac GTO a hotrod.

[Deuce Roadster]

My lawyer had 2.
One small block
One big block.

The small block car did not impress me........remember this was the days of BigBlock Chevelles and other bigblocks roaming the streets. The small block Cobra most likely handled well but the muscle cars would out drag it. I rode in it once.

It must not have been fast enough for him either.....
He bought a 427 Cobra........a few months old and pulled the engine. Put a 428 FE crankshaft in it, bored the block and was 450 + inches (452 I believe) . It impressed me.

He was at a party at Folly Beach one night and got about drunk.......asked me to drive him home........I was impressed. I just could not find anyone to race....



I classify it as Quick.

.

[hatch]

That one at the Ford store was a very early one. It was a 260 v8...Correct me if I am wrong, but I think they produced around 70 with that motor. I remember the 289 in the magazine tests would do a 0-60 time of 4.2 seconds and when the 427 came out it did it in 3.8. A friend of mine in Phoenix had a black 427 in 1976....Definitely would accelerate HARD. It was fun to watch him leave our shop...you almost couldn't spin your head fast enough to watch it launch.....killer cars that did it with two wheel drive and horrible tire technology. I wonder what an original 427 with AWD and sticky tires would do???

[AHotRod]

Sports Car !

[BELLM]

If i remember right they sold @ Ford dealership new for $6,000. Bill Cosby had a comedy routine back in 60s about driving a 427 Cobra, was a hoot!

[flatheadpete]

Only seen one...I'm only 28 though. One was restored at a shop I worked at...10 years before I worked there. Hatch, I honestly think an AWD 427 Side-Oiler would just one thing...break parts! But man would that be fun.

[rikaguilera]

They were classified as sports cars. They were raced in Europe under the GT catagorey. Here in the states they also ran under a "GT" and "GTS" catagorey. AC did not put the V8s in the cars though. They were shipped to "Shelby American" for that. Carrol first put in a 289 that ran in the class with mostly british sports cars. The 427 was installed to qualify for the prototype class in Europe, and its aim was to win at LeMans against the Ferrari's and Jags. A Daytona coupe was built in the late 60's to compete with the Ferrari GTO also in the prototype class. The cars intent was always road racing, and to win in Europe. They only built 5 Daytona coupes, and two finished first and second in the 24hrs of Daytona in 1968.
They are sports cars.

[old beet]

My brothers best friend worked for Ford, he could sell me a 64 Cobra for $4925, as they were stuck with a few. I didn't make enough $ for a loan. Still kicking, still kicking, etc......, but I got to drive the loaner for a while. Still kicking.......OLDBEET

[36-3window]

the first one i ever saw was in 1966 , i was 13 years old at the time. it was owned by a son of a doctor at the mayo clinic in rochestor,mn. i remember it was blue and i was blown away when i talked to him while he was gassing it up...i thought it was in heaven when he showed me the engine,427 cubic inches of ford power.

when he left....a `26 ford T coupe with a flathead V-8 pulled in...is it any wonder i'm car crazy? that's a day i will always remmeber!


i later heard that the guy with the cobra street raced it a lot....and crashed it racing and got some very severe injuries


i would have to say that any car that could go from 0 to 100 mph to 0 under 10 seconds as VERY quick....that's what i've been told they could do

[dusty]

Thanks for the memories guys. For some reason, I heard songs on the radio yesterday talking about "little cobra" etc and after some thought, wondered what the 27t and 30's coupe crowd was really thinking when the cobras and jags showed up on the street to race if that really happened. Kind of like a truth check in the songs I guess. There were never any cool street cars in our area until a local college boy showed up with a pale yellow xke. It attracted all kinds of wannabes like myself everytime he came home from school.

[tommy]

I can still remember the night the first (and maybe the only real) Cobra cruised through the Mighty Mo. We almost shit ourselves. There weren't to many doctors and lawyers kids hanging out at the Mo. There was a lot of race challenges. Everybody wanted to see it go and find out how fast it really was. Could the Friday night regulars deal with it or would it be necessary to bring out the big boys? I remember a Chevy powered Austin Healy tried to hook up with him but I don't know if they ever did. I think the Cobra owner was in over his head and he knew it.

This was the first generation Cobra which WAS a streetable sports car with a SBF V8 motor. I don't think anyone thought it could deal with the barely streetable purpose built drag racers of the day. Drag racing is what the Mo was all about. If you wanted to race through Rock creek parkway they would laugh at you.

One of the semi-regulars had a Griffith (TVR with a SBF) maybe a year or two later. Again, it was a fast street car but not a drag racer.

I never saw a 427 Cobra on the street until the kit cars started to show up years later.

[metalshapes]

A little background on the AC Ace.
It was built by a small company in England, but it was a production car.
AC first bought their engines from Bristol ( I'm pretty sure that engine evolved as a licence built BMW Engine ),
after that they used English Ford Engines.
Both of these Engines were 6 cyl. in line.
The body shape was a clear rip off from an early Ferrari Barchetta, specially the front.
AC was having Engine problems again when Shelby came along,
but I beleve they still built 6 Cyl. cars when they were selling Rolling Chassis to Shelby.
The really interesting Cobra's to me are the 2 Coupes that were built in England.
One was a serious effort for Racing, the other( a street car ) had a Simca Ghia Showcar body on a lengthened Cobra frame.
Both were Hot Rods...