[Tony Ripepi]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for asking but, the Daytona is sitting in my brothers garage in Nashville all pretty and perfect waiting for Intercity to pick it up and deliver it here to me.

My brother has driven it and all of my other cobras and his feedback is that this one is the top of the heap....the sampling is SPF w/460, Unique Stroked 427 and Shelby w/427 SO.

I really enjoyed this thread a great deal of serious detail, I just took a look at the September 2002 Car and Driver article "10,000 - HP SHOOTOUT " 15 supercars $1,900,000 dollars worth of Supercars Last-Man Standing Performance Test. Everything from SPF Cobra (7th place) Porche 996 twin Turbo(2nd) to the tuner cars from Lingenfelter Corvette(1st) with stops at Viper ACS, Beck Lister etc. etc. Top speeds were in the 160 + range and some of the exotica broke getting there. HP ranges from 425 - 800......Going 150+ takes serious hardware , space and Cojones when you have access to a track and the precise measuring gear to determine how fast you are really going.

I think to Daytona will top 150, we'll see after I get it here , put some miles on it to break it in properly and then start the tuning process. Jay and DV are planning to come here and help with that last bit of tuning to get it to the edge of its perfomance envelope.

Also spent some time in high operformance aircraft for the USMC....going from standing start to 180 MPH in 4.0 seconds during a carrier CAT launch...you get the feel for acceleration and from there speed.

Best Regards,

Tony R.