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Originally Posted by Nedsel
Not hardly. Just two people who are passionate about the legacy of these cars and want their histories to be recorded truthfully and appropriately.
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Amen to that.
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It still leaves some grey areas for cars that were clearly built by the factory as drag cars, but whose precise specifications were never fully documented in the day, with respect to their legitimate claim to the Dragon Snake moniker.
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That's really at the core of it, Ned, especially when an authenticated Dragon Snake can easily bring twice as much (three times in the case of my car) than a sparsely documented wannabe.
My view of what makes a Cobra an authentic Dragon Snake is basically a distillation between factory specs and what SAAC says: " ... equipped with a specially built 289 Ford dragracing engine, slicks, wide base wheels, hardtop, and specially set up suspension" (Shelby) and " ... complete, turnkey drag cars" (SAAC). And you're right, that does leave grey areas for cars not specifically invoiced as "Dragon Snakes" or "Drag Cars".
The first thing I eliminate from that area is the engine. Shelby filed three engine combinations with NHRA. One of those was the stock 289/271 HP for D/SP. That means a Cobra equipped with the stock 289 could have been sold as a Dragon Snake.
Conversely, the fact that a Cobra was sold with a high output motor didn't automatically make it a Dragon Snake. People did buy high performance Cobras for the street. I commuted with mine for a while, and even made a few deliveries for the print shop I owned. All with the original Webers, high lift cam, 380+ HP, and a 2,040 lb pressure plate. What makes perfect sense when you're thirty tends to be somewhat less of a good idea in retrospect.
Next, the hardtop. Not a mandatory requirement back then for sanctioned drag racing, as long as you had a roll bar. It was either or, your choice. CSX2427, one of the six Dragon Snakes, competed with a soft top and a roll bar. That's her in the black and white attachment.
Finally, the special drag suspension. In light of Shelby's haphazard record keeping during the early years, having to prove that a car was delivered with altered leaf springs and drag shocks is probably asking too much.
That leaves slicks, wide base wheels, and something every drag car absolutely had to have, the mandatory scattershield. You didn't need it for stoplight drags, but you couldn't race without it. Scattershields don't have much of a personal preference factor ("I like mine in blue"), so if someone custom ordered a competition drag car, having a scattershield installed at the factory would have been a given.
That scattershield has to be documented. And since most cars ordered for road racing also came with scattershields, so do slicks on pin-drive mags to separate a drag racer from a road race car. Documentation can be in the form of an invoice or other factory record, or, if invoiced as a "Race Car" or "Racer," proof that the car competed in an NHRA sanctioned event.
Two simple requirements that qualify a Cobra as a "factory prepared turnkey drag car," i.e. a Dragon Snake. Not too much to ask to have spelled out somewhere, when what's at stake are a few hundred thousand extra dollars at the auction.
BTW, one thing I really wish the sporadic barn finders would refrain from is describe their car as "one of the six original Dragon Snakes." What gall! Which of the six authenticated cars do they want eliminated to make room for their discovery, or are they so mathematically challenged that 6+1 doesn't equal seven?
I guess it's the age we live in.
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