The 2004 Ford Shelby Cobra concept, approved for road use, was offered for auction in August 2021. This unique and compact roadster features a V10 of over 600 hp. It was sold for 2.25 million euros.
Remember: in 2003, Ford and Carroll Shelby announced they were teaming up once again to create a new Cobra. The following year, the manufacturer at the Blue Oval presented the fruit of this partnership in the form of a very muscular roadster concept. More than a style study, it was a working prototype intended to assess the viability of mass production. The marketable of the discoverable was planned for 2007, but the beginnings of the financial crisis of 2008 forced Ford to abandon this project. The modern Ford Shelby Cobra has therefore remained a unique example, and is about to go on sale.
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A V10 under the hood
The recipe for the first Cobra was simple: plug a big engine into a small roadster to turn it into a stormy sports car. The formula has been taken up and modernized here. This two-seater barely longer than a Mazda MX-5 houses under its front hood a 613 hp 6.4L V10, one of four experimental V10s built by Ford.
This unit is associated with a six-speed manual gearbox installed at the rear, which allows the car to display a weight distribution close to 50/50 between the front and the rear as well as a correct habitability. . The car sits on a lattice frame made of glued and welded aluminum. The body is made of double fiberglass panels between which there is a consolidation foam, while the hood is motorized. Like the gearbox and some parts of the chassis, the suspension is the same as that of the Ford GT from 2005, with specific settings. Brembo brakes with four-piston monobloc calipers take care of stopping the beast.
On the look side, the Ford Shelby Cobra Concept is part of the neo-retro trend of its time with curves reminiscent of its illustrious ancestor, some reliefs bringing character and a design which, thanks to a certain simplicity, does not make its age.
A ready-to-roll concept
At its presentation, the concept was tested on the Irwindale Speedway for two days in the hands of the late Carroll Shelby, who traveled more than 240 km in two days at high speed at his wheel when he was 81 years old. In 2017, the concept was acquired by Chris Theodore, who was Ford’s vice president at the time of its conception and is now parting ways with it. The car has been refurbished and, icing on the cake, it is approved and registered for the road across the Atlantic. We are far from a simple living room model. This modern Cobra was awarded by Mecum Auctions in Monterey, Calif., in August, priced at $ 2.64 million (€ 2.252 million).
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