Quote:
Originally Posted by mrmustang
Buy used, let the first owner take the depreciation hit  .
Before you buy, make certain to have the car professionally inspected.
As for what you have owned in the past, they mean nothing now, as the Cobra is a car all to itself. Remember this, and repeat it as soon as you walk up to the car "this car will try to kill me as soon as I sit in the drivers seat", keep saying it, respect the car, it will try to kill you, disrespect the car, and it just might kill you, or someone around you. Yes, really.
Read the link in my sig, it's not rocket science, but can seem like it even if the car was factory built.
Most of all, enjoy the ride.
Bill S. |
Thanks Bill. Bear with me here. Let me see if I can explain a little bit as to who I am. I can appreciate the fact that many new or prospective new Cobra owners are in for quite a rude shock when they turn their Ken Miles dreams into reality- these are not 'new' cars in a very real sense even if they were built last week. After
Ford v Ferrari came out, there had to have been a lot of boyracers finding out about the wonders of what "high response/high gain" could
really mean. You must also in general read things here to some degree, even if it is not put as bluntly as this type of thing: "No ESC? No Stabilitrack? No AWD? No ABS?? No side curtain airbag?! Why can't I drive this car like my Altima???!?! " I know I read the essense of that on the other car club forums I have been involved with.
Even many people my own age have precious little experience with obsolete car systems and the facts of life necessitated by those systems. Generations of cars exist now that are the product of manufacturers striving towards allowing you and I (and everyone else) to be ignorant, innattentive, sloppy, braindead fools behind the wheel. We've trained drivers to be morons who think nothing of plunging a 5,000 lb SUV into an offramp turn at 60mph, because the car will save them 999 times out of 1000. It's in the name of "safety", but I can't agree that training people to be terrible drivers is ever "safe". It's not safe because they never have a bad experience that shows them the envelope the car is pushing to save their bacon. It is in fact difficult to find people, in my experience, who even
recognize that.
Your advice is very well made about the car's capability and potential to kill a driver, passenger, and onlookers. But it's not that a vintage or replica competition-type car (or any car built to mimic vintage building techniques materials and equipment)
can try to kill you or others.
It's that it will
happily try to do so, not just once per time you get in it, but each moment you're twirling the wheel. And all the more so if it is not in good working order when you pull out of the driveway, or you do not know what vintage-type systems have been telling you with those feelings in the wheel, pedals, and body, or those sounds, or those smells, or you don't understand what potential dangers exist when doing common maintenance. There's also considerable danger in how you view and react to the vehicles around you- your size in these cars is small.