OPtions on the original Cobra

[Dan Case]

Originally Posted by Harpoon PV2

Hay Dan, you see lots of period photos of small block cars with AMCO luggage racks, the most famous with Steve McQueen in the car he stole on a test drive, and used during the filming, including cameos on the set of Soldier In The Rain, (not that Carrol complained.) How many survivors have you seen with the original rack still on the boot? Cheers, Dennis

Few.

One of the option sets included a rack kit included loose with the cars ordered with that group of options. Not every car shipped with a kit apparently had the racks installed. Of course, cars that did get them installed sometimes had them removed as the cars moved through series of owners. A significant trend since the 1970s that continues to this day is for buyers to morph the car(s) they managed to obtain into the car(s) they wish they had. The changes go every direction, just a few examples:
- Low optioned to highly optioned
- Pure street to street-n-strip
- Pure street to road racer to all kinds of levels of modification
- Some kind of previously modified ‘racer’ back to some version of street car
- Road racer changed to drag racer
- Drag racer changed to road racer
- Stock standard induction system removed and replaced with all kinds of different ones
- Factory installed 2-4V systems removed and replaced with something else
- Factory aluminum 4V systems removed and replaced with something else
- Stock wings (a.k.a. fenders in the USA) to wider to wider and maybe even to super wide
- Make a street Cobra look like a 427 Cobra (yes, some were so modified)
So on and so forth


Very few Cobras escaped being modified in some way or another each time somebody else obtained them. One of my favorites was the declining odometer readings, i.e. between owners the ‘documented’ odometer readings decreased between owners….hmmmm. In four steps, the odometer in our black car decreased 29,862 miles between April 15, 1967 and February 13, 1976. I have a thick stack of old papers, for sale advertising, and work receipts dating back to early 1964 with the car. A few years ago I put them all in chronological order and noted any odometer readings recorded in a dated document. Interesting.