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A relative few auto aficionados have
experienced the ownership of an original
1960’s Cobra. Those who have had the ex-
perience, and who have remained car
lovers thereafter, now recognize that they
were, if not still are, the custodian of an au-
tomotive icon. I became the custodian of
CSX2306 in late spring of 1971 just after
graduating from medical school. It was my
sole mode of transportation. I sold my ‘69
Fiat 124 Sport Coupe and borrowed money
from my youngest brother’s college savings
account to raise the $4,950 it took to wrest
the leaf spring car from its owner, whose
wife had decreed that he had to choose be-
tween her and that rowdy silver beauty
with a red leather interior. She had suf-
fered through his ownership of two small
block Cobras and was ready for something
more “civilized.”
I had coveted Cobras since the early
1960s when I read about them in the car
magazines that had kept me sane while I
earned my B.S. at a small, academically
demanding men’s college in North Car-
olina. Frequenting Ford dealerships that
had both small block and big block cars
languishing in their showrooms, I sat in
those unsold, shopworn Cobras and imag-
ined roaring exhausts and the wind tear-
ing at my hair while I worked the clutch
and moved the stubby shifter through the
gears. I went to see the Cobra Caravan in
1965 at Young Ford in Charlotte and met
Carroll Shelby and Denise McCluggage as
they promoted the 427 Cobra and the
GT350. Alas, I could not qualify for a ride
around downtown with Denise as I had not
yet turned 21 – due to some insurance silli-
ness. Cobras were tired, outdated sports
cars by the time I acquired mine, but they
were then, and still are, a truly exhilarat-
ing automotive experience. However, only
if the driver is young in fact or at heart, not
to mention a bit masochistic, is a Cobra
suited for basic transportation.
The engine in my car had been slop-
pily transplanted from a B/Production rac-
ing Mustang. It was highly modified and
marginally streetable, but it made the de-
sired racket and it could take the car to
highly illegal speeds in the blink of an eye.
Sunoco 260 was relatively cheap in 1971
and at 7.5 mpg on a typical driving day,
that was a good thing. The transmission
would pop out of second gear from time to
time, but only on deceleration, requiring a
hand on the shifter when two hands on the
wheel might have been preferable. I had to
give up wearing contact lenses because
they blew off my eyes when I drove the car
the way it was meant to be driven, mostly
on little traveled rural roads. The car of-
fered up the marvelous smells of Castrol
GTX, unburned fuel and hot antifreeze, not
to mention that musty odor that emanates
from virtually every old British roadster.
I rarely assembled the top and side
curtains, having quickly discovered that
one got no wetter driving in the rain while
wearing a jacket and a ball cap than with
that impossibly leaky appliance affixed to
the car. Except in the coldest weather I
preferred to use the tonneau cover when
the car was parked outdoors, rain or shine.
The heater in my car was inoperable, but
the foot wells were toasty warm in the win-
ter, and so hot as to melt the soles of my
sneakers in the summer, so “top off” was a
tolerable year ‘round configuration.
Even before Cobras became collector
cars, aficionados would follow me up the
driveway or into a parking lot to get a
closer look at CSX2306. They were usually
driving an MGB, a Triumph Spitfire, or an
Austin Healy. One fellow was driving a
gorgeous triple-carb XKE. “
Is it a real
one?
” was not a question I ever had to
field – there were few, if any, replicas back
then. I gave any number of fellow sports
car drivers exhilarating rides, and initially
I let some of them drive the car with me in
the passenger seat. But, after a few terri-
fying experiences I abandoned that suici-
dal practice, keeping the driving pleasure
to myself.
One sad morning I discovered that the
souped-up engine was pumping antifreeze
out of the exhaust pipe serving the left
hand cylinder bank. Ford drag racing spe-
cialists Buddy Criscoe and Hunt Palmer-
Ball ran a speed shop in town where the
engine went in for a rebuild, using a new
302 block and a mixture of old and new
parts. It cost me every cent I had at the
time, but the fun I had when I wasn’t
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2016 74
– Ed Maxwell
In the last issue of The Shelby American, Ned Scudder
referenced CSX2306, the first Cobra he owned. That mention
caused Ed Maxwell to reminisce about his stint as the car’s owner.
CSX2306