Shelby Cobra, 50 anys, aniversari.

For 50th Birthday of Shelby Cobra, Vintage Snakes Convene in California

In February 1962, Carroll Shelby set out to beat the Chevrolet Corvette by inserting a Ford V-8 engine into a lithe A.C. Ace roadster from England. Born humbly in the speed shop of Dean Moon near Los Angeles, the resulting Shelby Cobra would achieve nobility. And the road-going production version, built on Princeton Avenue in Los Angeles’s Venice neighborhood, sold well for a specialty model, a less punitively priced alternative to the Ferrari.
Cobras in the adjoining lot at the museum.Ronald Ahrens for The New York TimesCobras in the adjoining lot at the museum.



To mark the 50th birthday of the Cobra, a potent concoction of horsepower and star power was convened last Saturday under the name the Ford Cobra Shelby Reunion at the Wally Parks N.H.R.A. Motorsports Museum in Pomona, Calif. Displayed outside the museum entrance were dozens of original Cobras, seldom-seen siblings like the open-cockpit King Cobra racing car and recent continuation models produced at Shelby American’s facility in Las Vegas.

In the adjacent parking lot were about 150 cars wearing Shelby nameplates, including an original 1965 Ford Shelby GT350, painted white with twin blue stripes, which ambled away late in the day with roughly the same gait as Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino.” The slinky Ford GT40 in attendance served as a reminder of Mr. Shelby’s involvement in that bellwether endurance-racing program as well.

As an exclusively Ford-flavored event, neither of Shelby’s most frowzy creations, the Dodge Omni GLH nor the Dodge Daytona Shelby Z, marred the occasion.

Original employees of Shelby American gather for a group portrait.Ronald Ahrens for The New York TimesOriginal employees of Shelby American gather for a group portrait.

Though Mr. Shelby did not attend because of reported ill health, a panel discussion inside the museum included the former racing drivers Bob Bondurant, Parnelli Jones and Jerry Grant, all of whom experienced turns behind the wheel of a Cobra, and Peter Brock, designer of the Kamm-backed Daytona Coupe, which fought Ferrari in European competition during the 1964 season.

Original employees of Shelby American also participated. The team fabricator Wally Peat recalled the difficulty of “managing a car meant for a 4-cylinder.” (The Ace actually had a feeble in-line 6.) Because Shelby’s original 260-cubic-inch Ford V-8, which later grew to 289 cubic inches and then to 427 cubic inches, overpowered the Ace chassis, laps on the track would cause fittings and clamps to fail. “You had to stay on top of it,” Mr. Peat said.




The contributions of the racecar driver Dave MacDonald, who raced for Shelby American in the ’60s and who did much of the development, were remembered by Mr. Peat and Sherry MacDonald, Mr. MacDonald’s widow. In the Monterey Pacific Grand Prix, run at Laguna Seca on Oct. 20, 1963, the King Cobra’s transmission would pop out of gear, so Mr. MacDonald steadied the shift lever with one hand, keeping the other on the wheel, a pose that left him with terrible blisters, severe fatigue and the winner’s trophy. Mr. MacDonald died seven months later in a horrific, fiery crash at the Indianapolis 500.

Another panelist, Allen Grant, recalled starting as a welder before moving into sales and occupying an office within earshot of that of the colorful and sometimes volatile Mr. Shelby. “We learned a lot about Shelby, both good and bad,” Mr. Grant said.

Parnelli Jones and Jerry Grant renewed their long-running dispute over the Cobra’s cornering characteristics. Mr. Jones remembered the car as benign in a turn, but driving the car could nonetheless be a hair-raising experience. “I tested one,” he said in an interview before the panel was seated. “They had such a large opening for the radiator, at high speed, they’d tend to get a lot of lift. They needed a spoiler underneath it.”

Despite their differences on cornering, they agreed that the Cobra was a handful on fast straightaways. “You’d bounce from side to side,” he said. Approaching a slower car on the track, a driver would hope “that the damn thing bounced the right way.”

After the discussion, Cobras outside the museum started up with loud barks for the drive back to their garages. Ready to load his 1965 model was Hank Williams, 87, of Fontana, Calif. Mr. Williams, who believed he was one of just seven original Cobra owners left, paid $6,397.27 for his car, buying factory-direct and taking delivery through Pomona Ford. Under the hood is a 289-cubic-inch V-8; he figured that with its high-rise manifold and four-barrel Holley carburetor, it generated 340 horsepower.

To date, he has accumulated 139,588 miles. But he said his pace was slowing. A former racing driver, Mr. Williams said he rarely drove the Cobra — and only then between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. “I run it hard for about an hour and bring it back home,” he said.

Uf no em faria res tenir un d'aquests.
El de dalt de curses no l'havis vist mai.

No sabia que el Nelson Mandela tingués un
Eiii, 340 cavalls... tela.

Jo n'he portat un... al Gran Turismo

Precioses joies.