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be 25 or 30, that is the car of his
dreams. And that’s what he will grav-
itate towards. The car on the wall is a
subliminal image.
SCUDDER: I guess that’s my point.
When I go to the SAAC convention, I
see a lot of the same faces that I’ve
been seeing for twenty or thirty years
at these conventions.
SAAC: The convention represents a
constant that flows through our part
of the hobby. They are like family re-
unions where you see each other every
year or every few years.
SCUDDER: We don’t tend to see that
many kids. If you think back to the
1970s, in 1977, for example, I was 28
years old. An awful lot of club mem-
bers were in their 20s, 30s, etc. You
don’t see that same age group today.
There are a few of them, sure. There
are some kids with their graying dads
but they are there because of their
graying dads. The pool of potential
buyers for these cars as million-dollar-
plus artifacts may, at some point, start
to shrink. And the younger, upcoming
generations may veer off to, I don’t
know, something from the 1980s or
1990s; something that has been the
object of their lust on their bedroom
wall.
SAAC: If you look back at cars like the
Model A Ford and 1955-56-57 Thun-
derbirds, and look at what happened
to their values over a period of time, it
may be where the values of Cobras
could be headed. You don’t see very
many of these cars at car shows today
because not many people in their 40s
or 50s are really interested in them.
But the people who grew up with them
or were too young to own one at that
time were excited to buy one as soon
as they could afford one. These cars
went up in value, but when these own-
ers began aging out of the hobby and
the cars started to get sold off, there
wasn’t a large pool of buyers willing to
pay what they had become worth, so
their values dropped.
SCUDDER: And the reason for that
is, let’s suppose a guy is out there look-
ing for a car, and he says, “
Let’s see, I
can buy this 1957 T-Bird for X or I can
buy this new Toyota Supra that is
faster and handles better for one half
that. I know the Supra better, the
parts are available and it’s more my
generation’s car
.” There’s no question
which one he’s going to buy.
SAAC: There is definitely something
to that “my generation’s car” idea. If
you let someone who is 20 or 30 years
old today drive a 1957 Chevy or any
car from that era they cannot believe
how crude and unresponsive those
cars are compared to just about any
car built today. And they cannot see
why there older people have so much
enthusiasm for them.
SCUDDER: That’s correct. And there
is an interesting lesson there. But it is
not the same across the board. The
brass cars, for example, reached a
peak, they plateaued and then flat-
tened. They have really dropped in
value. Except for a few iconic cars. It’s
the same thing with a handful of the
1940s and 1950s sports cars. The real
icons, the top of the heap, are still
bringing really good money. And I be-
lieve that’s going to be the case with
Cobras. They are iconic and they were
the fastest car of the sixties. They will
always be a high water mark in their
own right, for various collectors, irre-
spective of their age or generation.
SAAC: They became the high water
mark for performance cars because in
1968 the government began clamping
down on manufacturers, mandating
safety and emissions requirements
and insurance companies began rais-
ing rates on them. Cars of the 1970s
were not as fast and when the per-
formance tide went out it left the Co-
bras at the top. Until the Vipers were
produced, some thirty years later, the
427 Cobra was the fastest production
car made. The Cobras became an icon,
in part because of what they were and
because of what they were compared
to. Their success was an unintended
consequence of the restrictive require-
ments after 1968.
SCUDDER: Another aspect is that
Cobras were produced in very limited
numbers in relation to so many of the
other cars that are still being written
about today from the 1960s and 1970s.
Be they considered musclecars or
sports cars, they still command an
awful lot of awe and interest.
SAAC: We can recall when the first
Cobra replicas were made, in the early
1980s, and original Cobra owners had
an immediate distaste for these cars.
It’s taken a long time for them to re-
ceive grudging acceptance. Probably
because there are so darned many of
them now, you cannot ignore them.
SCUDDER: I don’t mind that they’re
out there. I understand that there are
people who simply say, “
It doesn’t mat-
ter to me whether it’s an original or a
copy. I don’t have the money for an
original so give me something that I
can drive that lets me feel like I imag-
ined it would after looking at the
poster on my bedroom wall for so
many years
.” Where I really get
frosted is when you go to some kind of
a show and there’s a guy with a car
that was built two years ago and he is
happily calling it a 1965 Shelby Cobra
427. I politely explain to him that it’s
a lovely car and all the rest, but it ain’t
a ‘65. And it ain’t a Shelby. And it re-
ally ain’t a Cobra. It’s a replica and
people really need to be told that it is
a knock-off. It used to be that a lot of
these cars were cobbled together from
parts off of all different kinds of cars.
You’d look in the engine bay and see
unfinished fiberglass. I would hear
other spectators say “
Huh. I never re-
alized Cobras were
fiberglass
.
I
thought they were aluminum.
” You’d
see crappy upholstery, horrible stitch-
ing, vinyl and you’d see wires sticking
out. I wish somebody could gather
everyone around and say, “
Hey folks –
this is not the level of quality that a
true Cobra has. A true Cobra is alloy,
it’s leather, it’s neat, it’s tidy if it’s been
maintained.
” When I see these crap-
wagons and their owners claiming
they are AC Shelby 427 Cobras, it
turns my stomach.
SAAC: One of the problems leading to
some of this lies in semantics. The
manufacturers certificate of origin is-
sued for the CSX4000 cars by Shelby
American describe them as “1965
Cobra 427 S/Cs.” This was done on
purpose, to assist owners in register-
ing their completed cars without hav-
ing to comply with current federal or
state DMV regulations. The cars were
replicas of the 1965 Cobra 427 S/C.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
338 Fall 2015