Great article!!!
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/2...on/3041444.htm
Posted on Thu, Apr. 11, 2002
This car club puts the pedal to the metal every Saturday
DRIVE BY the parking lot of Dublin's Athens Burger restaurant on a Saturday morning and you're likely to see 15 to 20 nearly identical racing-style cars all parked in a row and surrounded by a number of (mostly) middle-aged men.
Welcome to the weekly meeting of the Bay Area Cobra Club. Cobras, as I was quickly educated Saturday by some of the very friendly enthusiasts, are super-powerful, super-fast cars manufactured in the 1960s by the legendary Carroll Shelby and represent the fastest production cars ever made.
Most of the Cobras in the parking lot are reproductions, that is to say replicas of the originals, which in the mid-1960s sold for about $6,500. Today, an original Cobra will fetch nearly $250,000, while these replicas are worth a mere $50,000 to $60,000.
The cars have a unique body styling that resemble race cars you might have seen in an old Elvis Presley movie. They're nearly all convertibles; some have white racing stripes and numbers, and most are painted the same electric blue. They're all V8s, between 400 and 500 horsepower, and average about eight and ten miles per gallon of premium gas.
Not surprisingly, nearly all the members of the BACC are professionals, ranging from Silicon Valley high-tech engineers to civil engineers and a few Wall Street types who have decided that driving fast cars is more fun than driving little white balls.
"It's a guy thing. If we weren't doing this, we'd be out playing golf," said Curtis Johnson of San Ramon.
The club chose Dublin as its meeting place because of its central location to all of the members, who come each week from as far away as the San Joaquin Valley, Marin County and south of San Jose. The folks at Athens Burgers were more than happy to oblige, since the whole purpose of the club's weekly meeting is to eat breakfast at the restaurant, show off cars and get a few tips from other members on ways to make the very sharp-looking beasts even sharper.
"These are the cars we could never afford in high school," said Tony Ripepi, a BACC president from the Tri-Valley. "It's the car that just kicks every other car's butt."
By the way, every member of the club is a president, and they all carry business cards with the club motto: "No fees, no membership, no rules. Everyone's a president. Have fun."
Upon the prodding of a few members, I agreed to go for a ride in Dave Voorhies' Cobra. A civil engineer in San Jose, Dave took me on a leisurely drive down Dublin Boulevard and onto Interstate 680. In what seemed like two seconds, we went from the beginning of the on-ramp well into -- and past -- most of the traffic on the freeway (not that we were speeding, Mr. CHP Officer!).
And I know Dave wasn't pushing down all the way on the accelerator. These cars can just flat-out fly.
It wasn't hard to notice Dave and all of the guys at the club meeting were flying solo. So shouting over the very loud exhaust pipes and wind noise, I asked Dave what his wife thought about his No. 96 car.
"She thinks it's too fast, too loud and is just another one of my midlife crises," he said.
Club member say they welcome car lovers and gawkers to stop by on a Saturday. You can also check out the Web site at
www.clubcobra.com. Look up the BACC chapter for local info.
Hey BACC, You are in the Contra Costa Times :)
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