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Old 04-18-2005, 02:59 AM
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chuckbrandt chuckbrandt is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Kansas City, KS
Cobra Make, Engine: ERA # 665, 390 (to start with) Toploader
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Default I drove on Greenwood Roadway yesterday!

My son Duncan and I had the rare priveledge of driving my cobra yesterday on the historical Greenwood Roadway 3 mile road course near Indianola Iowa. It is in poor shape but you could still get a feel for what it must have been like when Ed Leslie in the King Cobra and Ken Miles in a Cobra raced there.

I, and I'm sure some of the others that were there, will post more info and more photos later in the week, but here is an interesting story I heard at the meet. This was told to a friend of mine by John Morton and later coroborated by Caroll Shelby himself, so I'm pretty sure it's true.

While preparing the cobras to race at Greenwood the mechanics just couldn't get chassis set right. They decided they needed an alignment rack and arranged to use one at Capitol Ford in Des Moines that evening. Rather than fool with the transporter some of the drivers and mechanics decided to just drive the cars into town. (note there were 5 cobras at the July 19th, 1964 race, not sure if this is when the story happened or not) For the first part of the drive they had a Warren County sheriffs department police escort but the escort pulled over when they got to the end of their jurisdiction. The Des Moines police were all over them as soon as they got into town. They did manange to talk the police into letting them deliver the cars to Capitol Ford before all of them were hauled off to jail! Somehow they got ahold of Caroll back at the track and he came in and bailed them all out, but he evidently wasn't any too happy about it.

More later, Chuck





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Last edited by chuckbrandt; 04-18-2005 at 03:30 AM..
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