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I knew this was an unusual combina-
tion on a Cobra. But I didn’t think it
was out of the ordinary enough to
burn up more than one frame of the
Ektachrome Pro film in my Nikon.
Seeing a car like this, after all, wasn’t
really that unusual of an event when
I was in high school and college.
The tall guy is my dad. The kid
was Larry Caldwell, Phillip Caldwell’s
son. Mr. Caldwell was, at that time, a
Ford VP. Later he would be the first
ever chairman of Ford who was not
named Ford. The Cobra was a com-
pany car, and Larry (with his dad’s
blessing) was breaking the rules about
company cars only being driven by em-
ployees.
On many weekends either my dad,
who worked at General Motors, or a
couple of other friends whose fathers
were Ford engineering executives or
Chrysler senior officials would bring
home all kinds of high-performance
cars for the weekend.
Other cars that I rode in during
this time included an early Shelby
GT350, one of the first production
Mustangs, a Maserati Ghibli that was
ordered for Henry Ford’s wife, Char-
lotte, 427 and 429 SOHC Galaxies,
and a lot of non-Ford cars, including
GTOs, Corvettes, and various other
top-of-the-line muscle cars.
Sometime in the next year, the son
of another Ford employee was out
joyriding in a 427 Cobra company car
on the streets of a Bloomfield Hills
neighborhood. I don’t know exactly
where this happened but the particu-
lar neighborhood had winding streets,
lots of trees, and no street lights. The
way I heard the story, a police car
started following him from a distance,
and he tried to out run them. He fi-
nally stopped and shut off the lights
and the engine. He could see the police
car’s lights reflecting off the trees as it
slowly drove around looking for him.
He decided to try to push the car be-
hind the nearest dark house, at which
point, he was caught.
The result, was a memo which
Larry Caldwell showed me, to all Ford
employees, reminding them that com-
pany cars were to be driven by em-
ployees only. That was also the end of
Cobras being loaned out to employees.
One of the guys I sent the Cobra
picture to, who also rode in it, asked
me if I remembered the green Mus-
tang with independent rear suspen-
sion that Larry’s dad brought home
one day. I had forgotten about it until
he reminded me about it. We both re-
called that, at the time, according to
Larry’s father, the car was headed to
Shelby American the next week. It
was about a month after this conver-
sation a couple of years ago that I
watched an auction on TV which
showed the “Green Hornet” GT500
crossing the auction block.
Keep in mind that the “Green Hor-
net,” a 1968 GT500 prototype built by
Shelby Automotive’s chief engineer
Fred Goodell, was powered by a num-
ber of engines while it was used as a
prototype and also received an IRS
unit. Once it was no longer of any use
to Shelby the car was supposed to be
sent to the crusher. This was standard
procedure for Ford engineering cars
which did not meet production stan-
dards; the company had no desire to
let these cars get into the hands of the
public lest they become involved in an
accident and, hence, a law suit. Some-
how the car escaped being crushed
and found its way to a FoMoCo em-
ployee used car lot where it was sub-
sequently purchased by a Ford
employee for his son to use to drive
back and forth to college.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2016 59
CSX2571
We asked our resident Cobra ex-
pert, Ned Scudder, if he could iden-
tify the red Cobra in Harry’s
photo. He produced a handwritten
note from his files showing the car
as CSX2571. It was delivered to
Ray Geddes, the Ford liaison at
Shelby American, on January 7,
1965. Usually any car sent to Ford
was invoiced to Geddes for ac-
counting purposes. The car was
red with a black interior and was
equipped with Group A acces-
sories, dual 4V carburetors, a large
oil pan, C4 automatic transmis-
sion and a radio.