Shelby's Cobra: Ford Wants Out

[Cal Metal]

After the Nassau race in '63, wherein the Cobras got tagged by some GM fiberware in a very public setting (lots of press), another shoe dropped on the SAI facility. According to Levine,

"......The other setback was of a more permanet nature: In June of that initial racing campaign, at approximately the time the cars started to show their potential, the Cobras (at least in present form) were written off as interim vehicles. There were various reasons for this, all of them justified in the light of developoments at that time. The negoiations to purchase Ferrari had fallen though in the middle of May, and as a result the decision was in Dearborn to build a long distance sports-racing car capable of beating the Ferrari at its own game. The logical extension of this program would be the build of a limited production passenger car which would employ the same basic design as the competition cars (mid-engine). This would be the vehicle to replace the Cobra as the image builder for Ford prodiucts, much, and even more so, it was hoped, as the Corvette did for Chevrolet. So the Cobras became much like the bumblee, which no one ever bothers to tells its wings are too small to allow it to fly. Not knowing this, it simply flies anyway......"

".........For '64 it was obvious that the Cobra would have to fly faster than the previous year, and in the fall of '63 work was started on a coupe body........

"......Peter Brock, the young stylist, race driver and jack of all trades who was SAI's first employee, made the drawings. Remington was in charge of most of the construction, when he could find time to get away from Ford's GT40 program (he spent most of the fall of '63 and the winter of '64 in Europe, working on the prototypes of this new series...."