[Robert Evans]

McFez,

First of all, I am an admirer of you...You and Mac Archer have done someting that no other 427 driver have done, and that's to be commended. You have taken your car to the next level.

Now, you are right about the 289's being obsolete and were really on borrowed time...they just lucked out because GM wasn't involved more extensively in racing .

You hit the nail on the head when you say that the 427 was just a front for anything else Shelby wanted to do. The car was never intended to be an all conquering racecar, but it was built to satisfy the consumer market...I know because I got that right from the horses's mouth. (...but, some people don't want to believe that.)

The reason that this whole thing has gone as long as it has is because the BB proponents here toot the horn of the ultimate Cobra...something that is faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings, etc., etc. They have this notion that the 427 was the killer racecar that never got a chance to succeed, when in fact it was no better than the obsolete dinosaur 289 Comp. Cobra that preceeded it.

I never said that the 289 was the ultimate racecar, just that it was the preferred "Cobra" as a racecar. Everyone at Shelby knew that the roadster was an ill-handling pig of a car...that's why the Coupe was born so quickly in 1964.

I ask some of the 427 guru's here; If Shelby American knew by 1964 that the 289 roadster was an aerodynamic disaster and had reached its speed limit with the small block, (hence, the Coupe again) why in the world would anyone put a bigger engine in the thing with nearly the exact same aerodynamically-challenged body shape as before??? What good would that do?...It would just make matters worse!

That's because it was supposed to be used as a street car all along, not a racecar, which is what I've been saying.

And, I'm not tooting my horn over my choice of engines, just the choice of which Cobra was the more successful of the two. If I wanted to go fast on a race course, I certainly would not be driving either one of these two beasts. That's why my car will never again see pavement that resembles a racetrack.

BTW, the 427 Coupe was DOA long before Pete Brock knew it was DOA. Read the Daytona Coupe book for some very interesting turns of events which lead to its' demise. There was never a chance that it would ever turn a wheel on a track.