My Cobra Book & Magazine Bibliography is Online

[REDSC400]

Hey!
Just uploaded the first pass at my personal AC Cobra book and magazine bibliography on the web. This bibliography lists the various books and magazines that are in my collection. Therefore, it is not totally inclusive. If I do not own it (yet) then you will not see it listed.

You can find it at:

http://members.aol.com/necobraclub/index.htm

Enjoy... I gotta go shovel some snow.... sheesh!

[foothills gary]

Great biblio,Art!Thanks for posting it -I now feel guilty that my library is so incomplete.Time to assuage with a trip to Amazon.com!Hopefully Santa(or Mrs Claus) will bring you a snow blower for Christmas,instead of the usual lump of coal(HeHeHe).

[snakeeyes]

Nice work, Art. Here is my personal bibliography. I need to compare it to yours and see what I'm missing. I don't have magazines included in mine (unless you consider Automobile Quarterly a "magazine", which seems unfair given the quality and cost):

-Essential AC Cobra, by Rinsey Mills

-Original AC Ace and Cobra, also by Rinsey Mills

-AC Cobra, also by Rinsey Mills

-The SAAC World Registry, editions One and Two

-AC Cobra 1962-69, a Brooklands book compiling old road tests and magazine articles

-AC Cobra Gold Portfolio, another Brooklands compilation

-Cobra, the Complete Story, by Brian Laban

-Automobile Quarterly vol 14-3, which has a Cobra article

-Automobile Quarterly vol 16-3, which has a Shelby article

-Automobile Quarterly vol 22-3, which has a great article on the 427 cars

-Carroll Shelby's Racing Cobra, by Friedman and Christy

-The Cobra Story, by Carroll Shelby

-Ford Cobra Guide, by Bill Carroll

-Road and Track on Cobra, Shelby, and Ford GT40, another Brooklands compilation

-Shelby American Guide, by Rick Kopec

-Shelby's Wildlife, by Wallace Wyss

-Daytona Cobra Coupes, by Pete Brock et al.

-Cobra: The Real Thing, by Trevor Legate

-Shelby Cobra, by Dave Friedman

-Remembering the Shelby Years, by Dave Friedman

-The Cobra-Ferrari Wars, by Mike Shoen

-Cobra Super Profile, by Grainger

-Cobra, by Beki Adam

-Classic AC's, by John McLellan

-AC Heritage, by Simon Taylor

-Shelby, by Steve Statham

-AC (Cobra) Autohistory, by F. W. McComb

-Shelby Buyer's Guide, by John Lamm


Bob

[REDSC400]

Bob:
You have a few that I do not have at all yet.
Wildlife is coming enroute as we speak.

However, I do not have any of the Automobile Quarterly's,
The Ford Cobra Guide by Carroll
The Shelby American Guide by Kopec
Daytona Cobra Coupes by Brock
Cobra Ferrari Wars by Shoen
AC Heritage by Taylor
Shelby by Statham

Bob, of all of those above which would you suggest I MUST add to my library? The Daytona Coupes book is currently bringing large $ on the market.

Thanks for your input. I am slowly adding pictures and will flesh out the bibliography with some editiorial comments as time allows.

[snakeeyes]

Art, IMHO the Shoen book and the Daytona Coupes book would top the must-have list. Both are packed with information. The Daytona book has a lot of information that I've never seen elsewhere, written by those who were there.

The AQ article of the 427 cars is a very nice piece, with some really nice documentation of some significant FE-powered cars including Dick Smith's race Cobra and the Ken Miles "Flip Top".

The Ford Cobra Guide is interesting in that it was published back when you could still buy one of these cars off of the showroom floor, so it is not written from an historical perspective like most of the rest. It is a fairly short book with a few photos, all of which you will recognize from other sources, so I'd buy it only if you're trying to complete a collection. I found mine a few years ago and paid about $75 for it, IIRC.

The Shelby American Guide is kind of the predecessor of the Shelby Registries. I think that much of what is contained in it was used by Rick Kopec et al as the source of the model information contained in the SAAC Registries. There is some good info there about some of the rarer Shelby creations, such as the Dragonsnakes and Tigers, and it's probably worth having if you can find one. My copy is beat to hell; I've owned it for twenty years and would've treated it better if I had known I'd be collecting books one day...

The Taylor and Statham books are pretty easily obtained, I think--you can probably find them both on Amazon--and again are books I'd buy if I were looking to round out my Cobra library--

Hope this helps.

Bob

[PDHse]

Hi, another book worth having is
A.C.Cobra,260-289-427 by Phillipe Hazan . This book is very good as it has a lot of photos from the 1960s from the European perspective. Trouble is its in french.
Also Cobra related Phil Hill- Yankee champion (a lot of CC members must have this). I managed to get mine signed in person.
Automobile Quarterly Vol 36 no 3 has a good and imformative feature on Ken Miles written by Jim Sitz.
As regards to magazines, i collect them but i pull the Cobra related pages out and keep them in binder folders.
One that i have,nt destroyed is Hot Rod dec 1964. This has a two page feature on the first Dragonsnake(full page colour picture of Dragonsnake at speed)
Bye for now.

[snakeeyes]

Paul, thanks for the addition. I've checked a couple of places and can't find the Hazan book for sale anywhere. If you run across another copy please let me know--

Bob

[FUNFER2]

Since you guys have such a great portfolio, can any of you tell me how many 427 Cobras came with the 428,... engine ? I have the numbers for the 427's. The book I have mentions them & how many were used but doesen't give the numbers.
Thanks,
Kev

[Jim Maxwell]

About 100 of the big block cars were built with 428's. Most have had them replaced with 427's. In general, serial numbers 3201 through 3299 had 428's. I counted 11 cars in the latest registry that still had their original 428's. They were sold as "427 Cobras", but the spec sheet listed the engines as 428's.

[jlphill]

I just read this thread while researching sale of two of my Cobra books. I'm selling my perfect editions of "Cobra-Ferrari Wars 1963-1965" by Michael Schoen, signed by the author, and "Daytona Cobra Coupes" by Pete Brock, Friedman, & Stauffer. Please email me if interested.

I concur with the comments above about these books. They are excellent references, and both tell compelling stories about these cars we love.

[Hal Heindel]

Art,

That's as complete a library on Cobras I've seen anywhere. I browsed through it today to see whether I could find a book or magazine article to add to the dragonsnakes-only list at

http://www.dragonsnakes.com/library.html

I'm in the process of adding "Super Stock - 10/65" (Costilow & Larson) and "Hi-Performance Cars - 1/67" (Joel Rosen and Harr Ford 289), but haven't found anything on Ed Hedrick or the King Cobra.

If anyone knows of a magazine article on independent drag Cobras (other than the two magazines above), please email me. I appreciate all the help I can get.

Hal

[Blas]

Daytona Cobra Coupes by Brock...still plastic wrapped
Make me an offer I can't refuse........

[Got the Bug]

It would be great if CC had a Google type search engine. That being said, if you spend a little time you can usually find what your looking for.

Last night, I was looking for some tips regarding good Cobra books. I found this post from late 2003 by REDSC400 with a link to a listing/review of Cobra books.

http://members.aol.com/necobraclub/index.htm

"Cobra, The First 40 Years" seemed like a good place to start, so I ordered a copy from Amazon.

Always fun to bring an old (useful) post back to life.

[Historybuff]

If you have to have everything, here's another booklet to put on your list. There is a registry that was published before the Shelby American Automobile Club Registry existed or even before SAAC existed. It was 22 pages long, included US -based cars and some British COB cars and even some COX cars. The Club was based in Grosse Pointe, Michigan which leads me to think some of its members were sons of the auto industry royalty. The vertical format booklet has a red, white and black cover and some very poorly reproduced photos. It had to be published before 1970 as I was given a used copy about that time by a guy on an exotic car lot (yes, Sunset strip was exotic even then) . Its value is that a modern Cobra owner of a CSX2000 or CSX3000 car might be able to trace an earlier owner of his car. Of course, car buyers could "mine the list" but before you say, well, what chance is there of that since, every car must have changed hands at least a half dozen times. I thought that too until the other day I recognized an owner's name who , last time I talked to him, still had his 427 Cobra (after 39 some years!)

There's also supposed to be a German book on Cobra. This one sounds like of kooky. The cover is made of metal, maybe even a slab of real Cobra body. And it's probably in German and, be forewarned, it might just be ranting and racing as the publisher is a well known German eccentric ( forgot what his eccentricities are but something along the lines of that tobacco heir who would buzz his hometown dressed like a little old lady, etc.) . Still I'd like to hear about this book if anyone has seen it.

[n6opv]

Sadly, AOL dumped all the Hometown pages and the great Cobra Bibliography is now gone... Maybe Art will find another host and post an update here in the future (hint, hint). I knew I should have printed it out...

Jason