There is nothing nice about a Cobra! It is a small car with a big engine, large tires, a loud exhaust, smells like gasoline, makes your feet hot, arms ache, and about runs off the road every other minute. They’re so damn wonderful you can’t believe it!
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 engine and transmission from the Ford Motor Company. Carroll Shelby had a very successful racing career and won the LeMans 24 hour endurance race in 1959 while driving for Aston Martin. His racing career ended in 1960 due to heart problems. This provided him the time to pursue his dream of building his own "sport car" to compete with Ferrari. Shelby got Ford to provide several of the newly designed light weight 260 cu.inch 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 cubic inch Ford motor was introduced in 1964 and increased overall performance. The Cobra Daytona coupe was introduced in 1964 to compete with Ferrari on the high speed circuits in Europe. The Cobra Daytona eventually won the manufacturers championship in it’s class. The 427 cubic inch Ford V8 engine was introduced into the Cobra roadster in 1965 and would run 0 to 100 mph in 8.8 seconds and a reported 0 to 100 to 0 in 13.2 seconds. Brutally fast! Most original Cobras are in collections and valued in the millions of dollars.
Many of the replica Cobras are built to similar specifications and offer the same thrilling performance in street and competition driving.