Racing Snakes: The Cobra That Captivated the World

1963 Le Mans Cobra

For the Cobra’s Le Mans debut, the works AC roadster was one of two 289s given an extended hardtop in an attempt to persuade the air of La Sarthe to slide smoothly over it. That meant a new shorter bottom-hinged boot and a fuel filler poking through the roof. In the enduro Ninian Sanderson and Peter Bolton took 39PH to seventh place and a class win, scoring a Mulsanne max of 167mph – hardly spectacular but it helped diminish the gap to Ferrari’s GTO and the Lightweight Jaguar Es. Team manager was Stirling Moss, and two Ford men spent the race in the AC pit quietly making notes for next year… After its weekend exercise the rumbling beast was driven home to England.

Thereafter the Willment team turned it from metallic AC green into red with white stripes, installed British Saloon Car champion and frequent Cobra wrangler Jack Sears into the driving seat, sorted its handling and began to score.

Throughout ’63 and ’64 Sears and Frank Gardner rattled the GTOs, Jags and Astons, but 39PH’s extensive career peaked with the infamous ‘black flag’ race at Brands in July ’64, when a furious Sears bullied his way back from an unfair penalty stop through a top-ranking GT field to a sensational win and a new GT lap record. By the time it was ousted by Willment’s new coupé, 39PH boasted over 350bhp and many mods, and at Goodwood with Sears at the helm proved it was capable of mixing it with Shelby’s new Daytona Coupés. Thankfully not much meddled with it in the interim time, this legendary racer was returned to ’64 TT form in the 1970s and has appeared often in the Goodwood Revival TT and other events.

1963 289 Shelby team car

This was the whole point of the Cobra exercise – a light chassis bulging with bhp which would thrash GM’s Corvette at home and Ferrari’s GTs around Europe. The early Cobras may have the ‘small’ V8 – only 4.7 litres – but these team cars, now fitted with rack and pinion steering, would dominate the domestic USRRC scene for three years, in a way the later 7-litre cars never did.

One of six cars prepared for the ’63 Sebring 12 Hours, CSX2129 had a sensational season in the hands of Shelby’s development driver Ken Miles, and Bob Bondurant and Bob Holbert, numerous podiums and class wins helping to collar three US championships and cement the Cobra legend. Especially notable was the second place behind team-mate Carroll Shelby in the Bridgehampton 500, the Cobra duo beating privateer Ferraris and E-types and helping to fuel Shelby’s desire for the FIA GT Championship. But with its dated aerodynamics a roadster would never score on Europe’s longer tracks; it would take the streamlined Coupés for that.

Raced during 1964 by Graham Shaw, 2129 then returned to the works team and was put on display at the New York World Fair. Under further owners it raced into the 1970s, but in the ’90s was restored to its unique works red livery.

Sleeker than the 427, a works team 289 with its narrow arch flares, prop-forward rollbar, quick-lift jack points, twin bullet mirrors and lean-back, or sometimes single wraparound, screen is perhaps the defining image of the racing Cobra.

1963 Willment Cobra Coupé

By 1963 John Willment’s team was bursting with ambition. He was running Frank Gardner in Formula 1 and, fresh from a Le Mans class win with the hard-raced hardtop Cobra 39PH, he wanted one of Shelby’s new Daytona Coupés for the French event in 1964. When the US outfit wouldn’t sell him one, he looked at the spare chassis in his workshop and decided to build his own.

Helped by drawings Shelby sent, the team constructed an even lower-drag version, with chopped roof, lay-flat rear window and lower tail, on a strengthened chassis packing a 289 with quad downdraught Webers. With its right-hand wheel and Lucas electrics there was no doubting its place of birth. It wasn’t ready for Le Mans, but painted in the Willment red with white stripes and piloted by Jack Sears it won on its debut, the 3 Hours of Snetterton, and went on to a successful tour of South Africa under Sears and Bob Olthof.

Back in the UK for ’65, Frank Gardner ran it in the TT and Sears won the Guards Trophy at Brands, but though entered again it did not make the ’65 French classic it was built for. After Brian Muir took another victory in late 1966 it became redundant, overtaken by GT40s, and was turned into a wild street car.

Thankfully it was rescued in the 1970s by vintage racer Amschel Rothschild before its value as a roadster outstripped its historic importance as a Coupé, and he raced it frequently. After passing through several hands it is now with a private collector and normally on show at the Shelby American Collection.

1964 Shelby Daytona Coupé

It was Ferrari’s own fault. By squeezing its svelte GTO through a tiny ‘body option’ loophole in the GT regs, it made room for this, the fastest Cobra of all. With Target One, the Corvette, comprehensively licked in 1963, Shelby’s sights switched to the FIA GT title. But for the faster European circuits the roadster’s draggy shape chewed up horsepower – until Pete Brock shaped the streamlined blue beauty dubbed Daytona, which posted an impressive 186mph, a match for the all-conquering GTO.

Best of the GTs at Le Mans, and fourth overall behind three Ferrari prototypes, the Daytona Coupés nevertheless couldn’t topple the Ferrari hordes in ’64’s production class, but a year on, after the FIA refused to homologate Ferrari’s mid-engined 250LM ‘variant’ and Enzo stopped his factory GT efforts to concentrate on his prototypes, the Daytonas finally won the FIA GT title that Shelby craved. At that point the GT40 sidelined the Daytonas, and Shelby agreed with Ford not to race them again.

The only one built entirely in Shelby’s California shop (later cars went to Gran Sport in Italy to be clothed), prototype 2287 raced everywhere from Sebring to Spa, Oulton to Le Mans, piloted by Bob Holbert, Dave MacDonald, Phil Hill, Innes Ireland and Chris Amon – and even LSR hero Craig Breedlove, who set records with it at Bonneville.

Apart from its rarity and racing importance, 2287’s history teems with colour – it appeared in an episode of The Monkees, was used as a road car by infamous music producer Phil Spector and then vanished for 30 years. When it reappeared it was the subject of a major legal battle for ownership, but now resides in the spectacular Simeone Museum in Philadelphia, in astonishing original condition.

1964 Ac Cobra 289 coupé

We have the horsepower, it’s time to slash the drag. That was the philosophy behind the various Cobra Coupés, and this was the prettiest. With Shelby taking the plaudits in ’63, this was a chance for AC itself, which after all built most of the Cobra, to wrest some of them back at Le Mans in ’64.

The first the Shelby team knew of it was the car’s debut at the Le Mans test day that year. Designed in-house by Alan Turner and visibly lower than the Pete Brock Daytona Coupé (which had been kept high due to uncertainty over Le Mans screen height regs), its sleek form promised to be a great leap forward on the Mulsanne Straight. To confirm that, AC took the 289-engined car to the nearest test track, also known as the M1, but the story that the resulting 185mph triggered Britain’s 70mph speed limit is a myth.

At La Sarthe Jack Sears and Peter Bolton were clocked at 183mph, matching the Daytona Cobras despite giving away 30bhp to the Shelby entries, and at one point the car was running in third place – but on Saturday evening a tyre blew, wrecking the car in its first and only race. The ruins languished in AC’s workshop for many years until enthusiast Barrie Bird bought them and undertook the huge task of straightening it out, and after a long restoration it is now a familiar sight at car gatherings.

1965 Cobra 427 S/C

Built for FIA homologation to race internationally, the 427 should have been called 390 after the aluminium race V8 Shelby wanted to install, but when those were committed to NASCAR he went with the 7-litre alternative.

To manhandle the iron block (competition and S/C cars had alloy heads) he got AC to bulk up the chassis: main tubes grew to 4in diameter, the width spread and those leaf springs finally went in the skip, replaced by coils and wishbones carrying massive Hallibrand alloys, 11.5in at the rear, which meant spreading the rear wings by a huge 7in. Brake cooling ducts, chin oil cooler and wing filler for the 42-gallon tank shouted its racing plans, but the FIA wouldn’t listen when only 51 had been built in time, 49 short of a ‘production’ model. That put the 427 back in the GT40’s class – clearly pointless. So opportunist Shelby, having only sold 16 competition versions for SCCA racing at home, tacked on a few legalising details, called the result S/C for Semi-Competition, and sold them as “the world’s fastest production car”. Most of the 31 S/C cars saw track action sooner or later, including CSX3006, ordered by a US racer and by mid-66 taken over by the Chequered Flag team in London which made it RHD, painted it white with black bonnet and went racing.

Its greatest event was at Brands Hatch in June 1966, when David Piper and Bob Bondurant triumphed in the rain-soaked Ilford 500 ahead, ironically, of a GT40. It was the only international-level win for a 427. Under different owners 3006 raced into the ’70s before being returned to LHD and its original blue, but during the Noughties was restored to the form of its Brands victory and now belongs to Henry Pearman of Eagle Racing.