Colin Comer’s last book was a very detailed look at the whole range of Shelby cars but this one, “Shelby Cobra: 50 Years” concentrates itself on just the iconic Cobra that put Shelby on the map and into the halls of automotive immorality. The book is a large coffee table style affair printed on nice heavy paper. The 256 pages between the covers are jammed with photos, interviews, history, and an amazing level of detail.
The Shelby Cobra is one of the few cars that will forever be cool. It transcends the typical biases most car guys have for their particular brands and models. If you love cars have have been alive for the last 50 years, you have at some point dreamed about jamming four gears in a 427ci FE powered Shelby Cobra. Anyone who denies that is a liar.
Comer is a Corba owner himself, his weapon of choice is a vintage 289ci powered silver roadster. His passion and love for these cars as an owner definitely bleeds into the book and I think it elevates the tome from just a simple recounting of history to something with more depth. Something along the lines of watching your favorite local sports team with the local announcing crew versus a dispassionate national broadcast crew. The local guys always have the extra piece of info, the extra passion on their voice, etc.
All of the various iterations of the Shelby Cobra are covered in this book. The 289 and 427 cars, Dragon Snakes, Super Snakes, and Slalom Snakes to boot. I found the interviews, expecially those with guys like Phil Remington (who remains a living gearhead legend) particularly cool. There is a lot of detail in the book that would really speak well to diehard Cobra guys, which I am not, but I am a gearhead so it did not mire me down.
Virtually everyone involved with the Shelby program and those guys that races the 289 and 427 cars all preferred the 289s. The workers at Shelby’s operation had a distain for the 427 cars apparently due to the fact that they compromised a lot of the things that made the small block cars highly successful. Yes, the 427 cars are more mythic due to the incredible power to weight ratio and performance that keeps them in the realm of modern super cars even 40 years later, but the 289s were more pure and definitely more race worthy than the fatter and less balanced big block machines.
I’d recommend this book to any gearhead that has a genuine interest in one of the coolect American car stories of all time. There’s lots that can be said about Shelby and his business practices, but his creation of an immortal automobile cannot be attacked. You don’t have to be a dyed in the woll Shelby-file to love this book. I’m not and it engrossed me. The photos and stories alone are worth the price of admission.
If you are shopping for a gearhead this winter, this could be a winner for you.
This book is available at Motorbooks.com – Amazon.com – and other book sellers.
