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in Oklahoma, the Ozarks in southern
Missouri and across the great Missis-
sippi River. I drove through Illinois,
Indiana and Ohio and back into the
Appalachians in Pennsylvania and
eventually home. What a trip: two
weeks and almost 8,000 miles and
now it was back to the daily grind of
work.
A few months later, as I was work-
ing at the dealership, a customer
bought in an Excalibur for a state in-
spection. While it was there the seller
came back into the parts room and
asked who owned the Shelby out back?
Dave pointed him in my direction and
I found out he bought and sold exotic
cars and he said he had something I
might be interested in. It was a 1962
Shelby Cobra, a real, genuine Cobra
roadster.We made arrangements to go
see it that weekend. It was in a ware-
house in Arlington, Virginia where he
had a bunch of stuff. The car’s serial
number was CSX2017 and he told me
it was the first car with Halibrand
wheels and the second car retrofitted
with a 289 engine. It looked beautiful
even though it had stars and cracks in
the paint. It had 14,000 miles on it and
a set of Weber carburetors in a box in
the trunk. The engine had two AFB
4Vs on it. What it didn’t have was a
top or a heater.
He wanted $3500 and my car. My
brother had just gotten out of the serv-
ice and he had $3,000 he would loan
me. I tried to get the guy down on the
price but he wouldn’t budge. He of-
fered a wrecked 427 Cobra with a
spun rod and main bearing and a bent
frame rail for $1500, but I didn’t want
that. I still think about it today, but at
the time I really wanted a car that was
a daily driver.
The guy did tell me one story: the
back of the mirror of my car was
painted red and he said they did that
at the airport (my car was rented at
National Airport in Washington, DC)
and that was the color of the cars at
National. I have never heard or been
able to get anyone to verify that but I
still have the mirror.
The next year, during Hurricane
Agnes, my brother and I drove to my
sister’s house in Ohio and back in
twenty-four hours, with the hurricane
following us out. We followed it back,
passing swollen rivers and flooded
streams.
On one of the west coast trips I
took I had the exhaust break loose on
the original header collector. They
were now about eight years old. I used
a coat hanger to wire up the exhaust
and about a mile later I had to rehook
it to the emergency brake cable. I
wired it back to another place but the
smoke from the rear brakes told me I
had tied it up wrong. So I got to drive
to the west coast and back with open
headers on one side and eventually on
both sides before I got home. Driving
more than 4,000 miles with open ex-
haust isn’t as much fun as you might
think.
During this time I also started
hearing a noise from the engine that I
thought was a valve out of adjust-
ment. It turned out it was the bottom
skirt on number-seven cylinder. When
I got back to the dealership I had my
friend Dave, in the parts department,
order a new short block. You could still
get a new Ford service short block for
$325. He ordered one and it didn’t
come in, so he ordered another one
and it still didn’t come in. Finally he
ordered ten of them and a week later
one showed up. We open the box and
discovered that it had been dropped
and the lip for the rear pan seal was
broken. The parts manger was
adamant that I had to buy it but I was
not going to accept a new engine block
that was broken. The problem was
solved when the other eleven blocks
showed up. We picked the most un-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 74
Imagine driving through an average
residential neighborhood and seeing
what looks like a derelict Hertz car sit-
ting in the driveway. How can you not
stop and ask?
After ignoring a car like this for so long, you know when it’s time to take action.
And as you start digging into you realize it’s worse than you thought. That kills
a lot of dreams, right there. But not so with 6S1431.