[Rick Parker]

It's all about Money. Shelby was a retired race car driver that had a dream to build a car and no money. (sound familiar) He has stated openly more than once that he built the earliest cars to finance a racing effort with the 260/289 AC Cobra. They are the cars that created the lore and reputatin for racing not the 427. It is easy to forget the time frame these cars were from. However all of the 289's racing except for SCCA for the most part was over by 1965. There were still many "Afordable" English sports cars coming into the market at that time that made the Cobra seem archaic by comparison. The 427 Cobra was an extension of that on another scale, Built to directly compete heads up with the 396 and 427 Corvettes. They could handle the Corvettes but were outclassed by any other car that it was classed with and very quickly it became a rude, hot, did I say HOT, expensive rough riding race cars. All of the Muscle cars were coming to market and were portrayed by the Mfgr's to much more sexy & desireable. We currently purchase these as an extension of our personality and desire to own somthing we percieve to be the quickest accelerating car ever made in the US. When the racing was done so was Shelby, Ford jerked the funding and began to focus on the new 64 1/2 Mustang. Shelby was given the opportunity by Lee Iococa to make a sport version of the Mustang, hence the GT350 & GT500.

Just my .02 worth

Rick