A long time ago, seeing a Cobra was a rare treat. It didn’t matter if it was a small block or big block, both were unmistakable and whenever you saw one everything stopped as you watched it go by, or if it was parked, you had to check it out. It was a masterpiece of American muscle and almost every motorhead had a dream of someday owning one.
Fast forward to the recent days of the Cobra kit car and besides the many shops that came and went producing Cobra clones of varying quality, a few did a decent job and made kits you could be proud of. Some, like Factory Five, still make superb kits with all of the performance of the original, sometimes more.
Today, every car show or even a decent cruise in will have several Cobras and though some are very well built, some don’t reflect very well on the original they copy. The less knowledgeable looking at the clone get the idea the Cobra isn’t anything special. Once in a while an original shows up but that’s usually at a Barrett Jackson auction fetching unbelievable money for a car that probably won’t be driven.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the number of Cobras was just a little lower and the quality a lot higher?