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meet in Anchorage on Sunday, July 15,
and depart for our two-week tour of
Alaska on Monday morning.
We departed the Home2 hotel
Monday morning under cloudy skies
and a slight drizzle. Because “real” 289
Cobras have no trip odometers, I noted
the starting mileage on my car was
73,285. My son Brian took a week off
from his job at Mercedes-Benz to ac-
company me for the first leg of this
trip. For most people, a Cobra is the
most powerful car they have ever
driven. But Brian is the AMG Product
Manager for the United States, so
after driving 700-horsepower station
wagons, 271 horsepower is, ah, cute.
Nonetheless, we would enjoy a father
and son week with great friends, an
amazing car and incredible scenery.
Plus we both enjoy craft beer, so we
would consume a decent amount of
that…
I brought Brian to Alaska when he
was about 12 years-old. He and I spent
a week in a rented camper driving
many of the same roads we would be
driving this week. Just as in the Lower
‘48, or as Alaskans call it, “
The States
,”
our four 289s got attention wherever
we traveled; gas stations, restaurants,
attractions and lodges.
We stopped for lunch in Wasilla,
where mothers brought their children
to see our cars in the Smashbuger
parking lot. A couple of car guys
proudly showed us photos of the
replica Cobras they had at home. We
quickly discovered there are lots of car
enthusiasts in Alaska, even though
they only have three months a year to
enjoy them.
We spent our first night in the
small town of Talkeetna, which was
used as the model for the television
show Northern Exposure. We stayed
in a couple of cabins and walked one-
quarter mile to town for dinner. To me,
Talkeetna seemed like an ideal
Alaskan town, but my cousin Bill Cot-
ter, who lives a few hours north, said
it’s not authentic. “
It’s too much like a
Cape Cod town,
” he said. We all en-
joyed it anyway.
At breakfast the next morning, we
walked into a Breakfast All Day
restaurant. When I asked about the
food, I was scolded by one of the own-
ers for not first reading the menu.
Well, excuuuuuse me.
We decided to drive the entire
week without installing our convert-
ible tops regardless of weather. This is
a practice of Drew Serb’s West Coast
Cobra Tour group, and it’s taken a
while for we Easterners to become
comfortable with it, but we now grin
and bare it. (Some of you may have
seen photos of our topless Cobras
crossing a mountain pass in Big Sky,
Montana, last year during a driving
blizzard. Remarkably, most of us re-
mained married.)
So we made a practice of covering
our cockpits with tonneau covers each
evening before going to sleep. But we
made a pact:
NEVER
leave food in the
cockpit because a bear might catch the
scent and tear the car apart. Brian
and I made a point to scour the car
each night for any sign of food.
The next morning, as we were wip-
ing down our cars because of overnight
rain storms, I struck up a conversation
with Dave Kohler, who, with friends,
was visiting Alaska on a fishing trip
from Phoenix. Dave told me he was
the original owner of a 289 Cobra
when he lived in Ohio. “
My brother
bought it for me in 1964
,” he said. “
I
kept it until 1974. It was my daily
driver.
”
I did what all Cobra owners do
when we meet an original owner: I
gave him the secret handshake and
asked if he still had the original tool
kit lying around his garage. Sadly, he
said no. “
That was a long time ago and
a big move from Ohio to Arizona
,” he
said.
He remembered that his Cobra
“ate” water pumps; he changed six
during his ownership. He also drag
raced a Fairlane Thunderbolt and
complained that “Dyno” Don Nichol-
son always beat him because he
cheated. “
Only after seeing Don’s car
at
the Barrett-Jackson Auction
decades later did I realize that he had
moved
the engine back
several
inches.
” What are the chances of hav-
ing that conversation in a rural Alaska
town?
We drove north on the Parks
Highway toward Denali and stopped
at the Alaskan Museum of Trans-
portation and Industry. Some might
say it looks like a junkyard, but it was
actually quite educational. There were
rows of old trains, trucks, mining
equipment, snow plows and even a few
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2019 66
Our first night on the road after leaving Anchorage, we rented a couple of cabins in the
town of Talkeetna. The TV show “Northern Exposure” was modeled after Talkeetna.
Over the course of two weeks we lodged in a variety of establishments: traditional ho-
tels, cabins, condos, AirBnB and even tents. If planning a similar trip, make your lodging
reservations at least six months in advance because options are limited and the summer
tourist season is so short. (
Lee Cross photo
)