CSX2000 color

[Harpoon PV2]

I noticed, no one mentioned the first and probably, the most important color schema for CSX2000! In the first photo of CSX2000 in Dean Moon's shop, taken by Dean himself, as are all the photos from that night! In the upper left we see a bluer, that is Roy Gammell, the young man in the Moon Eyes shirt is his son, Doyle, the man pointing is, Chief Petty Officer Fred Larson Ret. (a Bonneville Salt Flats racer, with many records,) and the young man with the unenviable task of applying the color scheme on the boot with steel wool, is a High School friend of Doyle who sadly has been lost to time. All were Moon employees, though Carrol tried to poach Larson, who said no thanks! The Man in the upper center of the photo needs no introduction. If he looks real pensive, it's because he is. He still had not driven CSX2000, since it was not even a rolling chassis when he blew into AC unannounced, and left before it was running! He only had time for a short drive that night in Santa Fe Springs, then off to make phone calls, and catch airlines to sell the yet unnamed car. To Carrols left is the man Shelby would latter call, the Godfather of the Cobra, John Christy! John would go on to write a way over the top article about CSX2000, in the May 1962 addition of Sports Car Graphic! CSX2000 did have a name by then, "AC Cobra!" And, while it is true that the Dean Jeffries yellow was the first paint job that the world saw a Cobra in, it was the brushed aluminum, with Shelby scrawled on the nose and tail that most gear heads would see it thanks to Christy and it was Dean and John who went Corvette hunting that night! In the second photo you can see Shelby and his secretary in the publicity shot, and you can see where the AC medallion was unscrewed not pried off! For decades, I wondered, who hand painted Shelby on CSX2000? Well, in the last photo, there is no question who did it, Christy is the culprit. That's one of the things I love about the Cobra story, truth really was stranger then fiction!