a funny thing happened to me today on the way to the pissing contest....a forum broke out
back to debate at hand
1. Race prepped cobras, and cobra cobras are two different things. Dick Smith raced for a living.
http://www.csxinfo.net/427cobra/spec...b/csx4180.html
2. Pulling numbers out of my butt cheeks, I would hazard to guess that Smith's car weighed 1500-1900lbs.
3. Mr Bruce has previously posted that the Cheetah was clocked at over 220 in the same time period.
4. Richard Hudgins has stated that the track was much easier to go fast on back then and had personally done 236mph in a big fat aerodynamic camero on the previous track configuration.
5. The cobra is not a total brick as many folks love to say. David Kirkham has stated in previous posts that one of their car owners took his car to Willow with all the equipment and tested it out to be in the 0.42-0.45 CDx range. Now take that same car and remove the window, add a front spoiler, tape up some ducts and block the front and you might get into the 0.38-0.40 range. I'm sure Dick Smith's team would do everything they could to minimize drag. The trouble the cobra and speed, is more about wanting to fly, than pushing wind. Most cobras become Cessna's at 165.
6. Gordon Levy has gone over 180 on a couple of occasions in a cobra.
7. I think it was Dominik in a previous post that worked the calculations backwards and determined you would need 700HP in a cobra to do 200. My guess is that race prepped engines had this.
because of this, I tend to believe that Dick Smith came close to 200mph, in a cobra, in the 60s.
Andy