Dash Layout,,what,,where?????

[Streetwize]

FWIW....A friend of mine was building his own Cobra and saw an Original 427 car at a show in Charlotte, He thought it would be a great opportunity to sketch out an "original" dash layout. He tells this story to be the God's honest truth.....He took out a piece of paper and began to draw what he saw and a few minutes later he heard a man's voice over his shoulder.

"Whatcha doin??"

"I'm doing a Cobra kit and I want to make my dash layout as original as possible"

"Awww, you shouldn't bother with that, no two are identical"

My Friend tried his best to ignore him and continued sketching away...

"I'm telling you, they were all done by different people in the shop, they did it according to what kind of mood they were in that day, so no two cars are just alike!"

My buddy is getting irked by this time....

"Do what you want but you're really wastin' your time"

Jimmy turned to give the man a "Who the #@%* are you??" look and froze dead in his tracks.....

The man was Carroll Shelby

Jimmy then took the neat sketch he had just painstakenly sketched-up and tore it in half. He proceeded to do the gauges just the way he saw fit.

I have no doubt they had official drawings of Dash layouts, however in the Illustrated and pictoral history book "Shelby Cobra", by Dave Friedman, which is loaded with the official Archival Historic Shelby American pictures, as well as the two Brooklands Books which are compilations of actual magazine articles on Cobras, there is evidence to support several variations of dash layouts.