bcompy: THANKS for the kind comments AND YES I have been "bitten by the SNAKE!!" One of my FAVORITE TV shows is "American Muscle Car" (geez, since I've owned around 50 of them over the years, I can't quite figure out WHY I like that show so much....DUH) and when I watched the show that featured the Cobras (probably for the upteeth time), it FINALLY sunk in that these replicas might just be fun to own. I have always known about the Cobras since Shelby first started building then way back when, BUT I was then, as I am now, a DIE HARD MOPAR Muscle car NUT!! I grew up in Indiana and the MOPARS were THE car to own. Max Wedges, Hemis, and Six Pacs.... oh my!! My first car was a 1959 318 2bbl Plymouth Fury that couldn't get out of its own way and I got laughed at AND beat by all the rich kids who's Mommy and Daddy had bought them nice, expensive fast cars (I had to pay for my cars on my own with money I earned working after school and on weekends.... I paid $150 for the Plymouth). Well, my BEST BUDDY, Ed Brockman was a real MOPAR nut and he told me to sell the Plymouth because he had another friend who would sell me a 1958 Sport Fury (350, 2x4bbls.... yeah a REAL Christine way before Steven King put pen to paper and created that monster) for $250 and he GUARANTEED that I would no longer be beat as easily as I was in the 318. WELL, he was right. The '58 was FAST and an absolute blast to drive until we blew the engine doing 130 MPH coming home from Indianapolis late one Friday night and I didn't have the money to rebuild it. I traded the 2x4bbls intake for a 1956 Chevy 265 that I drove during my senior year of high school and I GAVE the rest of the car to a friend's of Ed who wanted to put a 383 in it (the car WAS MINT other than the blown engine). That experience got me TOTALLY hooked on MOPARS!! I have owned 'Cudas, Road Runners, Challengers, RTs, GTXs, SuperBees, and even had a Christine Clone a few years ago. I never took much interest in Cobras and I attribute that MISTAKE to the fact that I knew that I couldn't AFFORD a REAL ONE and IF it wasn't a REAL ONE, I just didn't want it. Well, as I said at the start of this post, when I watched the "American Muscle Car" show and saw how NEAT and GREAT looking the replicas were and how much FUN the owners were having with them, I decided to sell my '84 Lotus Turbo Esprit (a GREAT car in its own right and FUN to drive, BUT VERY EXPENSIVE to fix if it ever broke and I knew nothing about doing my own work on it... I just bought it in October of last year and was very uncomfortable every time I took it out because I was afraid I'd break something and then I'd have an expensive toy just sitting in the garage waiting for the money to fix it) and buy me a Cobra replica that I COULD work on and fix myself without having to sell my first born!! I did weeks worth of research on the net and devoted countless trips to Ebay, Auto Trader, Deals on Wheels, Hemmings et.al., checking on selling prices and what was available in MY PRICE RANGE (had I the money, I'd buy one of the newer aluminum bodied Shelbys with the 427 and be done with it... that's kinda my "Holy Grail" now and my Hemi Bee MAY just lead me to one someday in the future, who knows??). Interestingly enough, VIP Affordable Classics in downtown San Diego had 3 Cobra replicas for sale (one was yellow with an automatic that I wasn't really interested in and was sold before I actually made time to drive over there and take a look at the other two). The CR WAS in my price range AND the great guys at that dealership also offered to take in and SELL my Lotus for me (I had NO PLACE to put it if I bought the CR since the Hemi takes up 1/2 the garage and the Lotus was taking up the other half and NEITHER CAR is one that anyone with any inkling of intelligence would want to store/park in the driveway... AS IS the CR!!!). So, when I got to VIP I fell MADLY in LOVE with the CR!!! I actually wanted the OTHER Cobra that they were selling.... dark Indigo Blue, real knockoffs, BUILT to the hilt 351W and a MUCH HIGHER PRICE.... about $15K more than I could afford without suffering a divorce or selling the Bee, which, come to think of it would have had the same consequences!. Anyway, I made a deal on the CR and called them back and bought it later that same day. BEST THING I have done in many, many years (the exception would be buying the Bee back from my buddy who I sold the car to in 1987). NOW all I have to do is reconfigure my CR to the way I want it. Of course I could win the LOTTO and buy one of the 427 Shelbys, but I won't hold my breath!! Still, there are Kirkhams easily within my reach IF I sold the Bee (POSSIBLY even a real Shelby). But for now, I am quite content with the CR (even though my wife isn't) and am looking forward to dressing the little lady the way I want. You know, my TV room is in the back of our house and I have to pass the garage door every time I go to the kitchen or another part of the house. THAT garage door has DEFINITELY been opened MORE the past two weeks than it has in the past 10 years that I've owned this place. WHY?? THAT'S a MYSTERY to me. MIGHT be that AWESOME LOOKING little car sitting out there
) GEEZ, I love cars!!!