Original CSX’s in Central Wisconsin

[Blackbart]

Back in the early/mid 80’s I was restoring a 1960 BN7 Austin Healey at a friend’s body shop near Marshfield, WI. I remember he had a 427 Cobra (white) in the shop that he was shrinking out the stone dents and star cracked paint in the fenders before painting the car. I have often wondered what happened to that car.
Year’s later I was racing a Bugeye Sprite in Vintage races and often saw the red 289 Cobra owned by a Dentist in Marshfield, WI. He would drive the car to Road America, compete in the vintage races and then drive it home. Super nice guy but again, I often wonder what happened to that car.
I do not have any other information (forgot the Doc’s name) on these two original CSX cars but am putting this out there in the hope someone has some history and possible whereabouts on these two Cobra’s.
Thanks in advance,
Gary

[CSX2345]

George Stauffer, based out of Wisconsin was very active in the 80's buying and selling Cobras and GT40s. He might have some info. www.staufferclassics.com

CSX3216 (white, 427 non-SC) was in that area in the 1980's as well. It sold at Gooding Pebble Beach back in 2012. Not sure who the current owner is.

Good luck

[Blackbart]

Thank you for the reply. I've been to George's shop back in the 80's on a couple of occasions, super place that's for sure.
Also was racing at Road America, believe it was 1988 when Bob Bondurant put Rollie Stephensons CSX 2350 into the guard rail. I wish I had taken a picture of what Bob had written on the trunk for Rollie after the incident. CSX 2350 has an interesting history as it was converted to FIA specs by Rollie with aluminum bits from England as I recall. He was by far the fastest Cobra at the early Chicago Historic races at Road America and a real treat to watch him master those 4 miles.

[snakeeyes]

Colin Comer is a Wisconsin boy and author of several Cobra books. He seems to have owned about half of the Cobras out there at one time or another. He might be able to shed some light on those cars.

I lived in Grafton, WI from 1982-85. I was already a young Cobra fanatic before we moved there but being so close to Elkhart Lake only magnified things. I saw my first Cobra--a silver 427 Street model--blasting down a county road one fine sunny afternoon, and gave chase in my underpowered sedan until the owner tired of being shadowed and cracked open the dual quads on his FE. I'll never forget the sight of that car disappearing down the road. Around that same time I attended the first of many vintage events at Road America and floated around the paddock about three inches off of the ground, in awe at all of the Cobras. Back then, in the pre-FFR, pre-Superformance days, Cobra replicas were actually rarer than real cars, so the "is it real" question wasn't generally the first one out of peoples' mouths--if it got asked at all.

I'm searching my memory banks for the white or red Cobras you mention, Blackbart, but I can't recall them. I still have grainy photos I took from those early vintage races and will have to see if I have any matching your description. It was a different era even for the vintage events; Ferrari GTOs and Daytona Coupes were certainly valuable but hadn't gone into the stratosphere of pricing, and regular folks still brought them out and ran them alongside the more mundane machinery.

[flipper35]

A guy near Mt Horeb had an original he used to take to Jefferson and a couple other meets back in the late 80's early 90's. He also had an LM-002 and an RS-200. Really nice guy. Don't know his name.