[Excaliber]

Jim Wintz, tough to put most of us in a 'box' labeled 'gear head' or whatever. Through the years I've put together various projects (unrelated to cars) and found immense enjoyment and satisfaction 'specifying' the details and over seeing the project that others built.

Just picking the car, deciding options, choosing the motor, trans, rear gearing, cam and carb can be quite a challenge, even if you simply write the check(s) in the end. I think most of us fall some where between a complete builder and a partial installer. Of course, and I'm guilty of this as well, we love to bash the 'check writers' on occasion and 'puff up' the 'real' builders, but we each choose our road to the same end. A Cobra we can call our own.

There generally is more respect for the guy that really does build his car from a kit, like there is a certain respect for the guys that drive the cars and drive them hard. I did not build my car, but I searched for it, knew what I wanted and was thrilled when I found it. When the motor blew up I was OK with that! I had a great time building my new engine to MY specs (and I wrote a LOT of checks along the way, with an original 'BIC' of course). I would NOT have done it without Club Cobra and being able to stand on the shoulders of giants who came before me.