Turnips,
Welcome.
Your enthusiasm is admirable, but rest assured the kit makers while great people generally expect you to work a lot of things out for yourself. As a person who has rebuilt and restored many cars in my youth, I can tell you that a Cobra kit build is completely different to a restoration. Its a construction, not a rebuild. It's a completely different skill set and you will quickly discover (as I have) that the best resource to help you is the Cobra community and it's primary vehicle of communication is this very forum.
If you are passionate about it, get along to some local club events in your state, meet some of the people and see the amount of work that has gone into their cars. Even basic non-showy ones, are a very large, long term project. and you simply cannot do it for less than $60K.
It's bloody good fun though and there is nothing more satisfying than they day you drive a car you hand built, yourself. I'm grinning like an idiot just typing that, the memory is so vivid.
Good luck, keep us posted.
Oh and you can check our journey
here .