Britain's "remarkable automotive cottage industry"

[What'saCobra?]

In the interests of candor and helpful but spirited debate, consider the following:

Nothing wrong with kit cars in my book.

They have kept the flame through all the CS's wilderness years with treks to Kenya, Chrysler, court suits and now re-manufacturing as many as 6 different cars with perhaps 4 or 5 kinds of materials, global suppliers and the perennial court depositions.

Not does our interest in historical detail make us any less forward looking than yourself, your wonderful kin or your lovely race-heritaged country.

Some of us find keeping some of the details as straight as possible most interesting, always a source of new learning as we discover what we knew for sure wasn't even so, a great source of entertainment and pleasure, an excellent study of human heroics and foibles, a valuable source of engineering change, market flux, economic variance and whatever else I can scribble here.

Your mildish rebuke of our lack of forward looking is welcome, but needs to be squared with American prominince in most engineering (ever hear of glass or carbon fiber construction?), science (have you seen the spectral analysis of rocks on Mars via a mini-telescope?) and lots more, as you surely know.

We are not only the largest group of kit buyers (and everything else) and magazines of every ilk in the world, but if you are lucky and get with the wide spectrum of Cobraphiles over here, you might even find us the largest consumers of your new mag; which is a welcome to the field.

Perhaps the exploits of champions like Ken Miles (who believed no Cobra should have ANY anti-roll bars per Bob Negstad), John Wolfe (I drove one of his championship cars that went from 0 to 60 in much less than 3 seconds, anyone hazard a guess which one?) are not your cup of tea. OK by me.

Maybe even the fact that the vaulted Aston Martin needed the masterful driving of a chicken farmer from Tejas to cinch their Le Mans win isn't pretty interesting to you. Maybe you are not interested that he and Dale Duncan raced a Cad-Allard in Buenos Aires in 1954 and it doesn't give you a hint about what helped CS envy the concept of a big USA V-8 in a sweet spot chassis.

And, maybe the fact that some early and not always successful alloy FORD transmissions broke under competition use doesn't hint about the potential problems of installing a newly designed alloy case toploader in your kit isn't helpful.

Maybe you don't understand that it was the seven GT victories and two second places during 1965 by Cobra Daytona coups, winning the international Manufacturer's Championship for Grand Touring Cars explains why the Daytona is the hottest and most desired kit car in the current and near future.

Maybe you are not interested in the fact that no less than 4 non-American drivers helped win the championship, Jo Schlesser, Sir John Whitmore, Joachim Neerpasch and Jack Sears which made it not just an American car with American drivers.

For many of us, the facination of both the equipment and men of the not so far distant past, in which we may even have personally participated in some small way is both interesting and important to keep.

The world of kit cars and their current superb accomplishment (of some) and disasterous theft and trash are also as interesting to some of us as the "olden times."

Who can possibly summarize accurately the current state of AC/Shelby/Price negotiations/machinations? You don't think that is interesting? OK by me.

Only in the future will we know the rest of the story and some of us look forward to finding it out, as we drive/race/polish our new and old machines and read our new and old magazines, which will include yours if you can measure up.