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Old 11-02-2009, 01:57 PM
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Cobra Make, Engine: ERA 707, 446ci FE
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zrayr View Post
There is substantial documentation that details the development work done by Shelby, Phil Remington, and eventually by Ken Miles.
Of course there is - but as much as I would like to believe the PR presentation that CS personally gave birth to these cars, grunting and sweating all the way, the evidence is that he took largely (entirely?) off-the-shelf technology, had someone else do nearly all the work, and did no more than any other racer of the era in tweaking, tuning and prepping the cars.

I'd suggest that when one of us calls Kirkham or ERA and places a highly customized order, then builds the car from those parts and others we select, and track-tune the result into fitness, we have done neither more nor less than Team Shelby. We merely have their track record and experience to start with, just as they had their own and the experiences of other body+engine builder/racers of the 1950s to draw on.

I'm not out to denigrate Shelby, man or team. But the mythos (as implied in certain posts of this thread, for example) does get tiresome.
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