[Cobra #3170]

Your car is never ready but your skewed concepts are, you just don't get it do you? Wheel base / track comparisons may give you an ideal ratio but it won't give you the optimum width or length for a given car. I will put my Cobra up against anything you or any of your buddies in the "Original Cobra owners group" have in any contest you would like autox, road course, drag race 0-100-0 or top speed. That said, I still say the Cobra is inferior to new vehicles. I believe my work experience with Ford Motor may give me a little more insight than somebody quoting magazine statistics. So let’s stop the BS and put up or shut up. Your car experience seems to be based largely on research and not much on driving. I have been around Road America in 2:12 in an old Atlantic car, have you even driven there? How many modern cars have you driven at speed, and what were your lap times at any current race tracks? I think you are a book boy and not knowledgeable in real world terms or you would realize your claims are not based on sound engineering principals but on wishful thinking. So, enough of the BS, lets talk about a car test or discontinue the discussion.



Yes, but as with everything else comparative assessments are paramount. Doesn't the ratio of wheelbase to track come into play? I found the following pertinent info online:

"The ratio between the wheelbase and the track (taken as an average between the front an the rear track) seems to be an important parameter that is relevant to handling characteristics of cars. It is quite interesting to see in, that the average wheelbase-track ratio for seven GP racing cars (Brabham, BRM, Coventry, Eagle, Ferrari, Lotus and Murasama) is, 1.617, which is quite close to the Golden Mean, (1+sqrt(5))/2) = 1.618, which is also called, the Golden Section. While the data given in the site above was used as an input for a race car simulator, they nevertheless seem to give real life values. I wouldn`t automatically dismiss the curious coincidence above as meaningless. After all, an optimal handling of cars designed for best handling (rather than, say, optimal fuel consumption) should reflect a compromise between two extremes described (see the site above) as, Long, slim cars ==> "improved stability at high speeds." Short, wider cars ==> more "responsive on a tight course." In other words, the optimal wheelbase-track ratio and the Golden Mean ratio (which, for example, represents the "ideal" length to width ratio of picture frames) may have something in common after all".

Yes, the Cobra is relatively narrow, but when you look at the wheelbase to track ratio, the Audi TT is 1.594 and the Viper SRT10 is 1.62, compared to 1.607 that I calculate for the 427 Cobra.....so it doesn't sound all that out of whack.

I'm all for enjoying the cars for what they are. A Cobra provides quite an experience on the street, which includes making you feel faster than anything else on the road. The new technology thing is just vastly overblown. If you really look at and analyze most new cars, you find that aside from computer appendages, most technologies employed are many, many decades old. New high end Porsches come with rinky-dink McPherson strut suspensions. I bet those camber curves are not ideal. The superior feel is from everything being tight and coming from the factory more optimized/tuned, as opposed to Shelby American back in the day expecting the buyer to do the final configuration and setup.

On the track challenge, my car won't be ready, but it's interesting that a similar modern supercar vs Cobra track comparison scenario was brought up in our original Cobra owner's group not too long ago. We had potential interest from a "best of breed" track tuned original Cobra and one of the guys in our group writes for a major automotive magazine, so the thought was to do it as the subject of an article. Comparing to something like a Z06 or ACR Viper seemed like the most interesting, naturally competitive comparison, but the advantage in lap time the Cobra looked to have would probably not be palatable by the editors, since they receive alot of funding in one way or another from the car companies and if the indications are true that some of the new supercars would look bad, it may have repercussions.[/quote]