I too have stayed out of this, mainly because it’s been done to death. But being an owner builder of a Crown chassied cobra I must defend her! Mine is not your typical crown build, I’ll get to details later.
I must agree, Crown chassied cobra’s have never had a good rep, and for very good reason. In fact I enquired about one in 1983, and promptly ran away as fast as I could. Before fabricated chassis were available, the choice was to find a proprietary chassis that dimensionally came close, and then work with it. There were some very dubious kits in the early days, and these are the ones still doing the rounds, passed on to a new unsuspecting enthusiast, in a state of perpetual incompleteness. They were very basic in design and pretty nasty. Not necessarily the chassis, but the quality of the body etc.
Now if you look at chassis alone, I don’t see much difference between the Crown rolling stock and the Torana. Both fronts are pressed metal cross members and control arms, and unless upgraded, both rears use light duty live rear axles with drum brakes, adequate for a cruiser. The let down of the Crown front end is the slow steering box. Frankly, I see a Crown/G-Force as a better option than a DRB. However, stay far away from attempting any other Crown kit.
My car is a G-Force (reputable builder) with Crown chassis and Jag rear end. I took this route back in 1990 as in ACT and some other states, at the time, using a proprietary chassis was considered, for ADR and rego purposes, a ‘re-body’. This allowed me to build to 1972 regulations, the main benefit being ‘live’ side pipes at 96dba, no argument and leaded fuel. Strip my car to the chassis and apart from the pressed metal front end, appears basically the same as the G-Force MKI, RMC, W.E, and RCM, all respected cars. To back it up, in it’s first outing, I placed fourth overall in the Go-whoa at ’97 WW Nats, have placed 3rd in class at for Wakefield Nats hill climb, and when I was a regular, consistently placed in the first 3rd of the field for class in sprints. The car runs a carburettored mild 302 with street tyres.
So it really does come down to what you as the owner want to achieve. Would I go this route again? – probably not given the quality of most kits today, and what you need to comply with.
The Ferrari pictured is actually a Datsun 260Z. Ian Denner of Classic Revival built these in late 90's