Breaking Cobra News

[CSX 4027]

I have always agreed with your philosophy and was a Shelby owner. I too would only own a car that had Shelby heritage at the time but, the facts of the last 8 years are confusing.

1996 or about - Shelby announces 4000 glass series to combat the kit car industry and re-claim what is his. Those cars needed a lot of work and many had around $90,000 in them. The cheepies at $68,000 plus lacked lots of detail and subsequently remain unsold on the secondary market when offered.

1996 or about - Kirkham announces that they will build a dead on aluminum body car in Poland. All kinds of negative statement were made about these guys and Shelby himself wanted nothing to do with them.

1997 and on - Shelby 4000 customers scream "WE WANT ALUMINUM" so Shelby has the usual suspects(Kimmons, Leahey, Kemper, McClusky etc) start the labor intensive and $$ process of mounting aluminum bodies to the 4000 frame at an up-charge of 20-25K. Then the cars still needed more detail work bringing them in finished well into the $120+ price range. HRE bought glass cars, threw away the glass and re-bodied them at Joe Staffords place in New England who works on Ferrari's. Were any of these real original Shelby's or 4000 glass re-bodies?

1999 or so - Shelby gets in bed with Kirkham because they put out available Aluminum bodies at a price that Shelby can re-sell as CSX cars which in my opinion, he should have done from the start and never even bothered with the Las Vegas fiberglass car because it was too much trouble to get right. Also at that time, Kirkham sell their own painted out the door rollers for around $55K or less. That was a deal but the car was not perfect yet but well on their way to getting there. They were certainly 110% committed and going to be the best game in town for aluminum cars. Shelby now sells Aluminum Kirkham cars with their suspension instead of Kirkhams which in my opinion made no sense. Why pay to do something that 1 was already done and done right and 2 have the opportunity to make it more expensive than it needed to be and potentially make it less right than it was. Kirkham already had Dave Dralle dial in the suspension with certain components. Heck, it wasn't broken so why fix it?

2000 or so - The price wars start. Superformance sells a lot of cars because they come through nice and tidy at an attractive price. They have the up on the glass market because the reality of the 4000 glass car is that you have to spend a lot of $$ to get it right. The Aluminum Kirkham takes off at a price and the Shelby Kirkham goes out the door with non Kirkham suspension at a high price.

Now - Shelby goes after the Superformance market on the low end at 39K hoping to take away their market share with a car built in the same place as SPF. Will it work? Maybe, if the CSX car is really good quality. Shelby goes on selling CSX kirkham cars at a 20K premium over Kirkham. Kirkham does a 39K Aluminum car that needs more than that to get it out the door but still a very significant savings over Shelby but no CSX provenance. But then what does the Kirkham CSX provenance really mean? A lot of CSX emotion?

And Now Again - Another addition to the mix. Defunct a few times over, AC gets back into bed with Shelby to make the cars he probably should have made from the start back in '96 with the 4000 series. Remember the COX cars from Angliss? They were suppossed to be CSX 4000 cars but Shelby and Angliss had it out for eachother and couldn't agree on who made the Cobra semantics. Now Lubinsky and Shelby are together with the AC deal. Will they make cars in quantity that will make sense? Will they hurt their Kirkham Shelby sales? Will the price have to come down on those to warrant the AC price or will everyone now want an AC? Will the AC be made by great craftsman or will it just be a name? When all the smoke clears, who will be left standing? I have my bets down as to how the future history will sound but I will keep those ideas to myself for now.