A few years ago I was in Irvine and picked up the local paper and saw an article about a company that supplied the cars for Ford v Ferrari.   I decided to hop on over unannounced and ask if someone could give me specific data on my Cobra. This is how I met  I met Rich MacDonald of Shelby Legendary Cars. Rich was a delight! He  worked on the film, his dad raced a Cobra and he was so very interesting.

When he looked at my pic he was stunned.  He  asked how I got the pic.  I guess not every former Cobra owner wanders in with their old black and white pic of an original.  I wanted info.  He knew and told me  we had owned a 289 MKII, probably a 63.

Even though it would be great to still have the Cobra, one thing is good: having owned an original Shelby Cobra nothing else is ever going to compare so there is no car envy, no “OMG, I gotta have that Lambo”  Had the best, just enjoy the rest.

No more Cobra talk until you’ve listened to  Hey Little Cobra  

So go ahead, click it..This next little story depends on you knowing the song to make it fun.

BTW, fun fact about the song – one of the few car songs written by a female. Carroll Shelby supposedly told the songwriter if she wrote a song about the Cobra  that made #1 on the charts he’s give her a free Cobra.  It got to #4 really fast and was looking great for #1 but 3 days later some guys from Liverpool got off a plane in NYC and rocked the charts.  Caroll Shelby jokingly said in an interview, “I’ll never forgive the Beatles.”  Understood!

I was still in Irvine and  finally watched the film Ford v Ferrari.   I decided to look for the video of the song Hey Little Cobra as I was sitting at an outside coffee bar.     I had the volume up and accidentally played it for a few seconds and people heard it.   Some guy came over and said, “And what is someone who drives a Prius doing with a song about the very cool Cobra? ”  My first response was how do you know I drive a Prius? (He saw me.)

I then asked how he knew the Cobra song. He said something about people of a certain age, soCal car culture in the 60’s and whatever was number one, you never forgot.  And then: “My friends and I always wanted a Cobra.  At the very least we wanted to know someone who owned a Cobra. That would have been so cool to just know someone who owned one.”

I said, “Congratulations. You are now one of the cool kids.”

Not every story has a happy ending. Ours does and doesn’t. We sold the car for $8000 and bought a VW Squareback because there was a baby on the way.  We couldn’t see the future of the Cobra or we would have kept it.  Kept the kid 🙂