400k good deal for that orginal cobra at B/J?

They were hyping up what a "good deal" it was trying to get a couple of drunks to bid until it wasn't a "good deal".

 

what are your impressions of the overall tenor of the BJ LV event. seemed even more cynical toward the consumer than usual...

 

Just my opinion of course, but I think they treat buyers like "marks" in a con-game.

This is not unique there, there's another auction company where it seems every car is described as "the best of the best of the best" no matter what they're selling.

 

About two years ago when I was hanging around the shop of
Lynn Park, who now owns 11 cobras,
he got a call from someone who said
"What's a unrestored 289 Cobra worth" and he said $300,000

Then the same person asked "Well what's a restored one worth?" and he said $300,000

It took me weeks to figure that answer out. I interpret it to have meant that no matter how good it is restored, the new owner will take it down to bare metal and do it over so
all that money wasted on restoration is wasted.

I think now, though the 289s are more toward $400,000. Not sure about the big blocks, maybe $400K to 500,000 and Daytona coupes 4-5 million.

There's still some oddballs that haven't reached the auction block yet, like the rubber bodied one (maybe 427) roadster called the XD Cobra (Bordinat Cobra) and the fiberglass bodied 289 coupe with brushed metal roof in cold storage in Detroit.
And what about the Ghia bodied roadster designed by Giugiaro (blue with blue lift off hardtop) or the Ghia bodied coupe built over a 427 chassis that's been kicking around UK car lots for 30 plus years (and scaring the hell out of anyone that's driven it).

So we haven't seen the end of Cobra price rises, there's only 998 of them if you'e counting the ones from the Sixties only.

 

(This story is written by the threadster so it's not a copyright violation)

Godzilla's Ride: Shelby's Personal Cobra:
Is it the ultimate big block?





One would expect, back in the day, that Carroll Shelby would have picked out one Cobra for himself to keep.
And he did. As a matter of fact, he kept several cars. Among them is the first Cobra ever made, CSX2000, which he claims he has been offered $5 million for, and the last 289 Cobra, which now sports a 351-C and an automatic, and a couple of 427 Cobras.
He did, however,eventually let a Daytona coupe go, one he had retrieved from Japan, that sold when he needed $1 million to start up his Las Vegas operation, and he also let go a car that recently made headlines worldwide in car circles when it fetched an incredible $5.5 million dollars when the latest owner sold it at the Barrett Jackson auction in Scottsdale in January.
That was the twin Paxton 427 Cobra. Shelby liked superchargers ever since he sold them as options in the GT350 Shelby Mustang. In the Shelby he promised a 46% power boost. Now it is unlikely that the twin Paxtons in the 427 side oiler FE produced a similar boost as Octane magazine in their latest issue says that they ran at low boost, only 2 lbs. each, but still Shelby claimed 800 hp.
The odd thing is that the car, CSX3015, also was fitted as per Shelby's orders with an automatic. Not a regular C4 but something called a M6, basically a Lincoln Continental trans with an iron case. Now why a Lincoln?
Because the Lincoln had a massive 460 cu. in engine so was the only automatic on Ford's part shelves that could handle the torque.
Why an automatic? Because unbeknowst to most people, after Shelby's '57 accident at Riverside where he crashed his face into the windscreen when he spun into a dirt bank in a Maserati, Shelby had bone removed from his leg to repair his face and always had a bum leg, in spite of the fact he spent three more years racing.
So he prefers automatics in his personal cars, and has one in his 289/351 Cobra as well.
SN 3015 also has a surplus of gauges, that going back to Shelby's test pilot days during WWII. The author has seen the car but didn't make a list of each gauge, suffice to say there's a big tach, a big speedometer, and about 6 to 8 other gauges including two boost pressure gauges, and a rear diff temp gauge.
Strangely Octane magazine says there is no gas guage because the car came from the ranks of Comp cars. The car wasn't built until at least '66 because at first Shelby thought the big blocks were going to sell like hotcakes but when he failed to make 100 by the time the FIA inpector arrived, the homologation application was denied and demand fell off. Shelby was left with a sea of unsold 427 Cobras. He only saved the day by putting enough street equipment back on the race cars to make the S/C model. He had the car built just as a fun car to drive around, and used it for his annual trips to Elko Nevada with a renegade group of aging playboys who relished in the fact that, back in those days, Nevada had no speed limits out in the countryside, plus in some counties there were still parts that were "wild West" in respect to libidinous pleasures, packing a sixgun and the like.
Shelby claims the car would do 185 mph, it had the power to do more but the shape was more of a brick than the Daytona coupe which coudl do that with a smaller engine.
The car was sold by Shelby American to songwriter Jimmy Webb, one of the best selling songwriters in American history ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix," etc.). Webb kept it for several years, through at least one divorce but finally had to surrender it to the U.S. government to settle a tax lien. They sold it through an ad for over $300,000, then a high price for a big block Cobra.
It changed hands a couple more times until it got into the hands of Harley Cluxton, who knows Cobras and GT40s and arranged for it to be sold at the Barrett-Jackson.
That would be the end of the twin Paxton big block Cobra story except that there was a twin to the car. That one came about when Bill Cosby , a comedian, ran across Shelby in a grocery store and Shelby started ribbing him for buying Ferraris and such. Cosby said "I'll buy a Cobra if you make one that goes 200 mph" so Cosby was sent a copy of the Shelby twin Paxton. Reportedly he scared the hell out of Cosby's wife so he sent it back, but not before making a record album called "Bill Cosby at 200 mph."
That car was sold by Shelby to a man who drove it on the street and resold it, and it ended up in the hands of a man in San Francisco, last name Maxey, who unfortunately let it get away from him and crashed it, some say into the ocean, others say into a lake. He died of his injuries soon after.
Though one Cobra expert says that he bought it"in a pile of rubble, bent tubing and such" another owner ordered a replacement frame and body from Brian Angliss in England, who by that time was making Cobras in England, and that car was assigned the number of the crashed car. Shelby, in Octane magazine, claims it is not the real car anymore and at the same time took a dig at Angliss, with whom he fought many a battle in print during the early days of the Cobra clonester wars.
That second car is coming up for auction someday and the Cobra world will be curious to see if, despite its dubious history, if it fetches anywhere near the price of the pristine original....

 

Bitzman I have always loved the Willment Cobra. That's the ghia bodied one you mentioned. I always wondered how they managed to screw up the car with a 427 chassis. Like you said that car has been scaring people for forty years. I always wanted to buy that car and take it to somebody that could sort the suspension. That car has always been on my list of the cars in my money no object garage.

 

I think that the value of a 427 Cobra now is
sufficient at around $400,000 to $500,000 to justify
taking the body off this car and rebodying it. The body could
even be sold to some Itaian car nut, somebody who owns an Alfa or Fiat 8v, both of which came with the Supersonic body at one time or another. The car as is is sort of an odd duck,
a backyard custom when it could be a genuine 427 Cobra roadster by virtue of the date of its chassis construction. If it had been built by Shelby it would be different, you could keep the original body. By the way I heard that the chassis had been ordered for Sir Malcolm or Donald Campbell's wife; never got the whole story

 

Having driven 600 HP replica Cobra's that were exceptional in ever aspect, I wouldn't pay $100K for an original.

That is one car I just don't get, nor desire.

 

kind of sounds like a 0846 sort of thing...