[Dangerous Doug]

Another good book, which I am reading currently, is "Carroll Shelby: The Authorized Biography" by Rinsey Mills. Mr. Mills is on this forum, and if you search Amazon for "Rinsey Mills" you'll find some other really great Cobra books that I've found informative.

Regarding the 428's in the original Cobras, I think they were about 10-20 hp less than the 427 SO. They were the "PI" or "Police Interceptor" engines used in cruisers, and were procurred due to the 427's becoming scarce. I personally don't see any ethical issues here.

On the "extra chassis" that Mr. Shelby found... well, I certainly don't know all the details but this move was of low ethical grade, and I'm sure a quite regretable moment in his life.

I admire Mr. Shelby for his accomplishments, but stop short of hero-worship. At 47, I've learned enough to know that any life---ANY life---examined close enough will yield moments of weakness and compromise and lapse ethics or morals to taint even the finest upstanding individual. Furthermore, I also know that if you could tap the deeper conscience of any individual you could see moments of sheer altruism that would stagger your imagination.

One thing I've seen on this forum is the sheer anger of Cobra replica owners when Mr. Shelby started to sue different Cobra replica manufacturers. He must have seen these other guys (FFR, SPF, et cetera) as eating his lunch, but he wanted to charge so heavily for his replicas of the original cars that they became unaffordable. Lots of bad blood there. I think this is where most of the venom comes from, as very few were actually affected by the chassis debacle back in '67.

DD