It always cracks me up when I hear, "CS wanted to use Chevy engines in the first place."
That makes not one hill of beans difference. Why? Because no Shelby Cobra had a Chevy engine in it when it was all said and done.
If you're building a replica of a Cobra, it needs to have the engine that the original Cobras had in them. It doesn't matter if CS considered Ferrari, it doesn't matter if he considered Buick. What does matter is what they rolled off the line with in the end.
Sure, it's your car, you can do with it what you want. But when you go to sell it someday and you find out that a Cobra with a Chevy engine in it is worth as much as a Cobra with no engine in it, then you'll forget that CS
considered using a Chevy engine.
There are replicas and there are hot rods. If you're into hot rods, then just go with the cookie cutter cars and put a cookie cutter 350SBC in it with a cookie cutter 350TH. Put a big honkin wing on the back too while you're at it. Make sure you chrome everything on the car and paint flames on it too.
BTW, an FE can be several different sizes. Just because the BBC outran another Cobra with an FE in it doesn't mean anything at all. What if that Cobra had a 352? What if it had a 361? That statement didn't have any logic in it whatsoever. That's like saying my Cobra with a 408ci SBF out runs all the SBC Cobras around here.....oh by the way, I forgot to tell you that all those SBC Cobras have 265's in them.
Funny how that works, isn't it?