What, you don't know the real Cobra successor?
05/18/2018
How do you build a successor to a sports car that has already become an icon as a new car? Carroll Shelby faced this problem in 1965, because time was not standing still. He continued to hope for support from Ford and began to think about a new design. This was still to have a classic front-engine layout and be equipped with the Ford engines already in use (289, 427, 428, 351).
Because Shelby had little time with all his activities, he had the British company JW Automotive Engineering, which had already been involved in the GT40 program, help him with the development work. However, they decided that the GT40 and its mid-engine layout were the better basis for a new production sports car and built an aluminum-clad prototype with a slightly longer GT40 wheelbase and the familiar 4.7-liter engine with ZF five-speed transmission.
The car was finished in August 1967 and shipped to Carroll Shelby. At that time, he was no longer allowed to use the name "Cobra" and therefore called the prototype "Lone Star".
He handed the car over to Ford because he hoped that the big car company would finance production. But nothing came of it, presumably the car was given little chance on the market due to the expected high price.
In any case, the mid-engined sports car was put up for sale in October 1968 and then changed hands several times until it reappeared at the Amelia Island Concours d'Elégance in March 2018. The restoration work is said to have been enormously complex because, on the one hand, they wanted to preserve so much of the original substance, but on the other hand, they were dealing with a pure prototype in which even the engine was welded into the chassis.
The American website "hemmings" published a more detailed versionof this exciting story a few months ago.
