Leave it to Carol Shelby to take a “cute” outdated British roadster with a pre-war engine design and fair-to-midland performance and turn it into the most brutal, most iconic car in the history of cars! There’s nothing I can say about the Cobra 427SC that hasn’t already been said, including that its performance remained unequaled by any other road-legal car until the mid 1980’s, and only then was it beat by multiple turbo-chargers, and that it has been copied hundreds of times for decades by modern replicas and is still being copied today. The experience of accelerating in one of these monsters has been likened to being fired from a canon, with results that could be equally catastrophic, for the Cobra was as hard to handle as it was fast, and some who dared open one up in anger didn’t live to tell about it!
Though the Cobra has been rendered in its small-block versions as a HO slot car originally by Aurora and then later by Johnny Lightning and Auto World who copied the original Aurora design, Dash Motorsports did us one better and gave us the hairy big-block version in this elaborate, beautifully designed T-Jet body that captures the excitement of the real thing. These bodies are expensive, and up until now I have acquired only 2 of them, but now that I’m hell-bent on raising my sports car fleet to a total of 96 cars, I figured the popularity of the Cobra in vintage racing meant there was room for one more. My previous two were silver with black stripes and black with gold stripes, and since I also have the JL/AW small block version already in white, red, and green, and I was looking for something new, I went with this gold one, as it always seems to me like a color that epitomizes the 1960’s. The gold body was made with both black and red stripes, and I found both available when I went looking, but I opted for the red stripes for variety. That meant a red racing number-or in this case a red roundel with a white number-in order to look right, and I picked #97 as one of the few numbers not yet assigned from my decal stash.
Riding on a brand new AW Ultra G that’s never touched a track and fitted with the “spare” set of Vincent Halibrand wheels I acquired for my previous new addition, the blue Cobra Daytona coupe, this beauty got the full-sized Road Race Replicas silicone tires on the shortened axles I buy in bulk from Slots N’ Stuff in NY, and is now ready to rock!
Named “BANDOLERO” and driven by Dirk “SPARTAN” Spurlock, a native of Flint, Michigan with a reputation for toughness, this car is a family heirloom that his father bought on a used car lot when it was only 2 years old and kept ever since, passing it on to his son when he became old enough and experienced enough to handle it on a racing track. Spurlock has previously raced primarily on the East Coast, but last year decided to relocate to sunny Southern California to try his hand and his car at the infamous Drag City Raceway. Now we’ll see if his reputation can match the skill needed to tame this beast of a car on this beast of a road course!
I wonder what it would be like to drive a car like this in real life. I bet the experience would be unforgettable. I hope that Dirk can handle this beast into the winners circle!