Quote:
Originally Posted by twobjshelbys
By signing them in advance? This was likely planned well in advance.
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Story time
My guess is they were signed by Carroll many, many years ago. This project first started in the late 80's/early 90's with Mike McCluskey. Mike told me Carroll was asking some $250,000 for them in the beginning. Quickly, the project got massive publicity (maybe too much publicity from CARB's point of view).
At the same time, Cobra prices skyrocketed. So, Carroll raised the price (and maybe some of the "story" too) to some $500,000--which was around the price of an S/C at the time. However, at such a high price, Carroll only sold a few and Mike ended up with a ton of parts and a few chassis.
Mike did a fabulous job of reverse engineering most of the parts at that time for the project. I remember walking through row after row after row of parts he made and stored above his paint booth in Torrance. I was gathering up parts to restore original Cobras to pay my way through college.
Side note:
DenBeste now owns most of what's left of those McCluskey parts. Carroll also bought a TON of original Lucas/Girling parts for the project. Shelby ended up with them and Shelby has now transferred what is left to DenBeste. DenBeste and Conway are working together on the project. They are a great team.
Back to the story...20 some years ago...
I was on my way to medical school when I heard about a MiG factory in Poland. As you see, I already knew Mike from original restorations I had done. So, I asked Mike to loan me one of those chassis to reverse engineer so I could make an entire car...Mike didn't know I had already started in Poland at the time. We kept that secret for a long time.
Mike said sure and so I asked him to send the chassis up to us in Utah. He said he didn't want to sent the chassis commercial freight because the chassis is/was extremely fragile (true enough). If you bend one of the body tubes it is a major pain to get everything straight again. He said shipping commercially was too risky.
So, right then and there, I jumped in my truck and drove down to LA. I picked up the chassis and drove it back to Utah. Upon arrival I put it on a truck and air freighted it to Poland to reverse engineer. It was an enormous risk, but I wasn't going to be deterred
Here is a picture of that chassis in Poland. The engineer in the photo has sadly passed away. Staszek taught me an incredible amount about engineering, metallurgy, and manufacturing.
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