O/T: Cobra Body?

Theres a old MIG factory in Poland that make ally Cobra bodies. I saw one at a Kit Car show in the UK last year - it cost around £8K or around $15k US. Fantastic quality from guys who make fighter aircraft. I bet Bluto has been to the factory.......

 

hay, if you want to build a 289 , i have a male 289 buck for $500, we pulled it from a new alum. body. was going to build a alum body copy of a 289 [my favorite],after a trip to jack roush's shop to photo the ch***is of one he was doing for bill elliot [1991] on the plane home i thought hay i am going to all this trouble to copy an orig car ,but when someone asks if it was areal one, i had to say no,might as well build a fibergl*** kit car...so i thought i would just build my own car from scratch, then it would be a real one....after 17 years i just had a friend get the motor running for me [4.6 ford/compu.]car is all alum. tube ch***is ,awsom looking, still need paint , upolst. inner panels....its a real one.......

 

I use to be really into the Cobras when I was in high school back in the early 80's and when there weren't too many options for the kits and when a real 427 would set you back a whopping $100K or so. But, I do sort of recall ERA had a very nice looking kit that seemed a bit more accurate to style and detail than some of the others. I got one of there brochures but never pulled the trigger on getting one so not sure how they were in reality. And not sure if they are still around or not.

Well, with the magic Google, it looks like they are:
http://erareplicas.com/

Also, not sure how they stack up to other players these days, etc.

Regardless, I now get a little bored with all the Cobra kit cars everywhere and so many are honestly pretty lame from the start or in the execution. But, have to admit, if you're going to do one, these Kirkham bad boys are pretty sweet looking and pretty respectable. If I had an extra $70K or so, laying around, I would take one of the non-polished ones and clean up the surfaces just enough and then just clear coat it - finished up with sticking a correct 427 motor and trans. in it and then hit the road. Still waiting for that extra $70K though unfortunately.

 

i remember seeing a show on the guy and the bodies looked great! also heard someone over there was taking good bodies,cutting them in half and then having the rest made ending up with 2 complete bodies with enough original parts and p***ing them off as original. yhose ****ing cars were cool but built for midgets!

 

LOVE them Cobras...

Most beautiful car ever conceived.
Yes... even more beautiful than the 32 Ford.


JOE

 

If you're looking for aluminum and accuracy, these guys are the best:

http://www.mccluskeyltd.com/

 

None of the Superformance cars are accurate reproductions of the originals.....they are interpretations with improvements (depending on your point of view). In any case they are damn nice cars.

 

factory five is a great manufacturer, i went to their shop when my dad worked for them, he built their ch***is'. i remember how solid and beefy they were. my dad's boss at the time decided to build one in our driveway, that was a cool experience!

 

I regularly have a friends/customers Factory Five at the shop, not as clean as Brigrat's. Don't know who built it but they did a sh!t job. Do know he paid way too much and it runs 93ish Mustang gear. But... Driving down the road it looks Bad***! And is fun as hell to drive!

 

Very true...and for that matter, most of the available replica makes have some type of mod in order to gain leg room...Superformance did a much better job than some others out there.

There are differences in the original Cobras as well, so in the long term it's all about what a guy wants. Myself, I'd sacrifice a tad bit of originality for driving comfort/control any day...being a cheap *******, if I'm forking over that much $$ for a car that isn't all that practical for street use in the first place, I wanna drive that thing all the time.

So far as the Factory Five Daytona goes, if memory serves they don't really claim it to be a "Daytona" as such...more of a loose interpretation or tribute, I guess. So far as I know F.F. & Superformance are the only companies taking a swing at the Daytona right now, although I understand one or two others have plans in the works.

 

Took another look at that Kirkham site again. Man, that is some nice stuff and really not bad prices for what you get. Hard to find much wrong with this besides the price I can't afford:

 

Wait til' you see one in person, in the brushed finish....oh my.

Kirkham makes a FIA body that's quite sweet as well.

 

Contact me about the cobra bodys. I built quite a few of ac's from acrods.com. Rich

 

You know, there are numerous distributors out there that actually sell Shelby Cobra 'component' cars. These come from Shelby's factory and feature CSX vin numbers. Most of these distributors will finish a car for you (install engine/drivetrain). Then at least you have about as REAL a car as you can get without pushing past some "gold-chainer" at BJ auctions. CSX 4**x are the large BB cars...CSX 7**x are the 289 cars and you can get FIA, Daytonas etc. Shelby also has their own ALUMINIUM 427FE engines for installation. Last, but not least, if you own one of these, you can be in the Registry.

dj

 

I just painted a FFR body I thought the qaulity was good.

 

Please don't get all bent outa shape here but...... what is there about a car that looks EXACTLY like the next one that's so appealing? Yes, I have driven several over the years and yes, I have thought often about having one of my own. I just can't get past the skunk stripes, side exhaust, chrome roll bar etc.. They all look alike.

I'd like to see someone (maybe even me) do one that looks as un-typical-cobralike as this Falcon looks un-typical-falconlike.

 

Contemporary Cobra is somewhere in in North Dakota and they sell bodies.
I bought an Unfinished CMC kit and needed a body. I bought mine from Street Beast which was CMC (Cl***ic Motor Carriage). Nice thick body, Very straight. Only one low spot next to one headlight but the people end of the deal was not a good experience. Shipping from Florida was over $1200 for just a body in a wood crate, and the body was 5K alone. To do it a gain I'd have used the ch***is for an Anglia project and bought a Superformance Cobra

 

As I mentioned before, I am a bit bored with the proliferation of all the Cobras out there, and probably will never own one myself. But, seems to me the current Shelby 'component' cars are just as much or less recreation kit cars as the others and mostly are just for people who are name droppers. Shelby is a legend and deserves to be, but he got into the market way late only after he saw the demand remain strong for years and years and he just saw the opportunity to cash in and offer his name to something that really isn't fundamentally much different than the others. His stuff just has his name on it and that does mean something to a lot of people for sure. But, to me, doesn't mean much as they are still just recreations and not the real ones. Just like you can't make real patina, you can't now make new 'real' Cobras, not even Shelby himself. There are only so many of the real ones, and no way to change that no matter who makes them or signs the glove box door.

Not sure how the Shelby cars stack up to the Kirkham ones, and not really interested enough to even figure it out. But, in a way, as nice as the Kirkham ones are and probably the Shelby ones too, I kind of have more respect for the guys who buy the gl*** cheaper kits and put all there own blood sweat and tears into building one themselves and doing as good of a job as they can vs. paying Shelby or Kirkham or other company to build one for you and then you write the check for it and drive away.

And if you are going to make one, might also be more interesting to change a few things to show some creativity vs. just trying to exactly duplicate an original one for whatever reason unless you are building one to smash up in a movie or something.

 

a friend just sold one. the body came from a place in gadsden alabama, the finish on the basic body is great.