Cobra Information

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The Cobra was an Anglo/American creation. Carroll Shelby was the catalyst for naming the car and bringing together the car from AC cars LTD in England and the V8 engineand transmission from the Ford Motor Company.

Carroll Shelby had a very successful racing carrer and won the Lemans 24 hour endurance race in 1959 driving for Aston Martin. His racing career ended in 1960 due to heart problems. This provided him time to pursue his real dream to build his own race car.

Shelby got Ford to provide several of the newly designed light weight 260 cu.in. V8 engines which were fitted to the AC Ace cars in England. The first Cobra (CSX 2000) was tested in the United States in 1962. Performance with a light weight car and 260 hp was stated to be 153 mph top speed, 13.8 seconds in the quarter mile, and 4.2 seconds from 0 to 60 mph.

The first 100 cars were completed by April 1963 and sold for about $6000. The 289 cu.in. Ford motor was introduced in 1964 and increased overall performance.

The Cobra Daytona Coupe was introduced in 1964 to obtain higher top speed necessary to compete in Europe. The Cobra Daytona eventually won the manufacturers championship in its class.

The 427 cu.in. Ford V8 engine was introduced into the Cobra in 1965 and would run 0 to 100 mph in 8.8 sesonds and a reported 0 to 100 to 0 in 13.2 seconds. Brutally fast!

Most of the original Cobras are in collections and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many of the replica Cobras are built to the same specifications and offer the same thrilling performance in street and competition driving.