[Russ Dickey]

My first drive was with a local guy who was selling his Contemporary Classic last summer. It had a fairly-built 428 with a toploader in it. During my test drive, we rolled up to a 4-way stop behind two Harleys. The Cobra was louder than their hogs, so they looked behind them to see what the heck was making all that noise. When they saw a 427 Cobra behind them, they smiled and gave us the thumbs up. Then they waved and proceeded to bolt away from the stop sign.

The owner of the car was sitting next to me and said "Well go get 'em!" and told me to romp on it. We were on a pretty desolate stretch of two lane highway that was very flat and open, so I laid into it. And this is no joke: within about 8 or 9 seconds I was shifting to fourth and we were blowing by the Harleys at about 110mph. Those guys couldn't believe we had caught them and passed them that fast.

They caught up to us at the next stop sign, and one rider said "That's the fastest g*d-damn car I've ever seen". They waved and turned off. I knew from the time I was a small child that I wanted to have a Cobra, but on that day, I knew I HAD to have one. I couldn't manage to buy that one at the time, but my little FIA is no slouch and plenty of fun!

My first ride was when I was 13, at the SAAC Convention, with Ken Eber in his original 427 S/C at Pocono Raceway. I'm thinking that was SAAC 10, it was the convention at Great Gorge, NJ. Anyway, talk about thrilling...I'm pretty sure we were in the 165-170 zone on the front straight. It was forever burned into my memory as one of my greatest life experiences.

Russ