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Originally Posted by ChrisBlair
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.
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Chris,
It sounds like you get it in relative terms, and that you are going in to this with your eyes wide open. This is a good start, but to add to it, as Alpha02 above has, a Cobra is unlike any other car you have ever driven, even with my 20+ years in SCCA/NASA/NHRA racing, I was unprepared for my first (I've owned more than a few since then, with over 100K miles of road and track time under my belt with them) Cobra (an early FFR with a simple 351W/385HP Ford crate engine). I was lucky enough to have survived with little more than my dignity rumpled. It taught me I was not quite as prepared as I thought, but a slow, methodical learning curve had me tearing around Poconos combined infield course and beyond in no time at all. Take it slow, enjoy the ride, and you'll be just fine. As for the car itself, again, take your time, if you are unsure of what you are looking at, reach out to us here, or perhaps a local Cobra club, and ask.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alfa02
my Last Cobra? will be an ERA 289FIA.
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Not to get off track, but I have first dibs on the one here in SC
Bill S.