I forgot all about this one-off Cobra, built by Ghia on a csx3000 chassis (csx3063)
It was noted to have been displayed in 1965 at the Turin, Italy motor show, only to vanish afterwards.
https://porterpress.co.uk/blogs/news/ghia-shelby-cobra-gt
The front 3/4 view sort of reminds me of a Japanese roadster of the era.
Ali McGraw as the spokes person?
Reminds me of an Intermeccanica Italia;
(https://www.supercars.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/778868-1.jpg)
That Intermeccanica Italia is a much nicer looking car to my eyes!
The body is sexier and the windshield rake is much nicer at the low angle on the pillars
(Ally Mcgraw; I see some similarities in one photo, but not in the others.)
I think that the Italia has similar styling features but is much better refined.
The Italia has been compared to the NART Ferrari's and I think that is a very favorable compliment.
It's very easy for me to see the faults in the departure from the Cobra lines by AC for this design but I have to think that the Cobra's success was because of Shelby's promotion of the car and would have been a non-entity without it.
Even as such, how can anyone consider the Cobra a sucess with the paltry production numbers?
The last batch of 427's that dealers had were hard sells to say the least and that was with the 427's put back in instead of the 428's.
This AC attempt at refining the design didn't help anything. Those cars were aimed at a market that hardly existed at all and maybe just stimulated by speculators that they would somehow be discovered by the "general population" and catch fire?
For whatever the last version of the coil spring chassis Cobra was, it wasn't an Aston Martin wanna' be like this design is. Anything but.
You can't rewrite history. It is what it is. This design never went anywhere.
The Cobra WAS a brilliant design. It wasn't for everyone, just hardly for anyone
I think there were two of them because I have seen pictures of two headlight treatments. One was dark blue with a saddle tan interior.The question is if Shelby placed the order with Ghia why was there no subsequent publicity? The answer might be that DeTomaso, his erstwhile buddy, was buying Ghia and might have hoped Ford would order it, But then Shelby and DeTomaso soured on each other so Shelby didn't want to champion him. But contradicting that is the display of a Mangusta at Ford wearing the grille badge Shelby Mk.V so it's possible those two collaborated more than once how to get into Ford's pocketbook.
Not familia with all the history and corporate politics, but did the AC 428 Frua come later develop AC project with any connection to these Ghia projects?
Tail is too long.
Quote from: 557 on November 08, 2021, 01:21:29 AM
Tail is too long.
From one rear perspective it resembles the Triumph Stag.
Quote from: HistoryBuff on November 07, 2021, 10:26:40 PM
I think there were two of them because I have seen pictures of two headlight treatments. One was dark blue with a saddle tan interior.The question is if Shelby placed the order with Ghia why was there no subsequent publicity? The answer might be that DeTomaso, his erstwhile buddy, was buying Ghia and might have hoped Ford would order it, But then Shelby and DeTomaso soured on each other so Shelby didn't want to champion him. But contradicting that is the display of a Mangusta at Ford wearing the grille badge Shelby Mk.V so it's possible those two collaborated more than once how to get into Ford's pocketbook.
This Ghia Cobra was noted as CSX3063 (mentioned in the first post)
I believe only one was made (why we only heard about one CSX number)
The different headlight treatment just might be the reflections off of the headlight covers.
There are not many photos of it.
This subject comes and goes, this quote says there were two. His source? SAAC Registry. Does anyone have that magazine (Kit car?--can't read it) looks like quads to me. Maybe the registrars will recognize the SN...
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My SAAC Cobra Registry shows CSX 5001 & CSX 5002 as prototype MK III cars bodied as convertibles for Shelby by Ghia, Italy 3/7/66 with 7 litre engine.
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Either there was a second car or they reconfigured the headlights under the covers for the USA market.
If I recall correctly the square headlight were outlawed in the US, but not in Europe.
CSX5001 and CSX5002 ?????
This car, CSX 3063, is currently being auctioned on line as a "1965 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra." The ad states that restorer Chuck Gutke, now deceased, said that the Ghia Cobra was eventually returned to AC Cars for disposal, but was instead built out as a 427 Cobra Roadster and used a demonstration vehicle before it was damaged and tucked back away in AC's workshops. It was supposedly sold several years later in poor condition. One could question why, if the car went back to AC Cars, there is no record of that in their file on the car. And if AC Cars got the car back, it would have been in 1967 or later, when they were no longer making Cobras, but were making the AC 428 by Frua. Would AC have logically cut down a 96" chassis to build a car they were no longer producing? Or would they more logically have used the 96" chassis to construct an AC 428? And had they actually built a 427 comp Cobra, and it got damaged in some way, why would they hide it away in their workshops? It's the bloody FACTORY. Might they not have simply repaired it instead? Sorry, folks. Too many things simply do not add up on this one.
As food for thought;
perhaps that long tail got away from somebody driving the Ghia Cobra?
Crashed it, and then hid it away back at AC ?
Then when it came time to do something with it, an old Ace / Cobra body was placed on the chassis ?
All had been discontinued as mentioned above, and over all value then played into it?
Richstang, I agree, the Italia is a far better looking design.
Shelbydoug, yes many do consider it a brother / sister car to the 275 swb Nart Spyder.
Long debated story about who designed, Scaglione or Cumberford,
Sold off my last Pantera in 1990 to buy a basket case Italia
The black one pictured may have webers , if it is the one I am thinking of.
John
auction site with photos current and past.
https://www.pcarmarket.com/auction/dealtank-1965-shelby-cobra/
According to the auction statement, AC Cars rebuilt the Ghia show car into a 427 competition Cobra. But after it was damaged, they stuck it in a corner and never touched it again. Roughly 10 years later, Mike McCluskey found the car, brought it to CA, and "catalogued and stored the parts." But this is what was displayed as the found remains of 3063. Anyone else sense a disconnect somewhere along the way?
Is that a picture from McCluskey or "sometime" before he got it?
Is that picture showing the extended chassis?
Would Angliss have something to do with it?
That photo is reported to have come from Mike.
I think it's a crying shame that the Italian alternate body was not saved as it showed where the Cobra could have gone. Ironically I think the tail was wretched excess with pizza-pie sized taillights and the nose boring but at least it was the Italians adding their two cents worth.
What happened to the Ghia roadster (with lift off hardtop) body? Well, it probably went into the dumpster in the UK and it would cost maybe $200,000 today to make a duplicate in aluminum from scratch .And who saved the blueprints? Probably nobody.
I think if Giugiaro had listed it on his resume (like he did the Mangusta) it would have been worth more in Ghia clothing than it is now with an AC Cobra body. I can see his design input particularly in the side vent, lifted off his Maserati Ghibli design, done at Ghia
The Mecum history includes several time gaps--but referenced paperwork included in the sale documents AC Cars invoiced Ford Motor Credit for this order on June 1, 1965 with invoice no. A7948 and that Ghia removed unneeded substructure, installed a body on the car as a styling exercise and displayed it at the Turin Auto Salon.
When Gutke got it it was later crashed and the car was cut in half following the crash and that's when Mike McCluskey,a famed Cobra restorer in Los Angeles, bought it in the late 1970s. He sold to Larry Dubas for Scott Grissom in 1984 and then later it sold to Steve Forristall in 1986. Forristall sold the car in 1989 to Ted Thomas who rebuilt the chassis, including replacement of the damaged rail.
The car then went to Cobra Restorers in Kennesaw, Georgia to begin the rebuild.They sent it to Bruce Kimmons of Kimmons Coachworks in Lake Havasu City, Arizona for completion and installation of a full aluminum body. It finally rolled out into the sunlight in 1993 at SAAC 20 with the words "last comp chassis" written on the nose. It then went to sleep in storage for 14 years, until September 2011 before returning to Cobra Restorers to complete the restoration and a new owner.
At Kissimmee at th mecum Kissimmee auction on Jan. 14th, 2023 , it sold for a high bid of $660,000
(corrected 1-23-23)
Tail resembles a Mazda cosmo....
History Buff: I am under the belief that the CSX 3063 Cobra clone sold for a bid of $600k at Mecum in Kissimmee. Can you advise where you got the $1.3 million figure?
Here is the 2023 Kissimmee sale
I stand corrected. Just over $600,000. The editor of MyCarQuest feels by not being a full bodied Cobra bodied car
from the beginning, that affected the price at the Jan. 2023 auction
https://mycarquest.com/2023/01/a-comp-ac-shelby-cobra-427.html
Would the Ghia Cobra be worth MORE or Less then the Car now being an actual Cobra again?
More if only Giugiaro would acknowledge it as his offspring. He has done other one offs (including a Ferrari he owns) and they are always
worth more than the mass produced ones.
But if the original is not around to measure,how would you know how off you are proportionately, even a few inches could make the car look different, and then you went to all the expense for nothing.
There is still another 427 Cobra chassis with an Italian body, still running around in the UK, fortunately that still has the body, which was made for a Fiat 8V Supersonic by Ghia. It was once at a used car lot in Marina Del Rey,CA. That one is worth keeping the body because Fiat 8V Supersonics are collector cars themselves.
I'd research it more but want to know if it ever had an AC Cobra body in the first place, or is it like the Ghia roadster,it had no body? I may have run across the first owner of the Ghia body, a Mrs. Campbell . When I met her I never knew she owned one but read since that the ex-wife of the land speed record Campbell had a Fiat 8V Supersonic that was sent to a junkyard and maybe that's the same car and she knows what happened to it. She lived in the mountains East of Los Angeles but I have yet to look her up
To clarify, CSX 3063 sold for a hammer price of $600k plus an extra $60k in the form of the "buyer's premium" (read that as Mecum commission, which they collect from both the buyer and the seller). And most certainly, building a "1965 427 Competition Cobra" from a chassis that was 6" longer than a Cobra chassis and was built as a prototype as a different car altogether, then modifying it 25-30 years after the fact into a "Cobra" has a definite effect upon the sales price. I would submit that Marilyn Monroe in a blue dress may indeed by the same a Marilyn Monroe in a red dress, but a cousin in a satin dress some 25 years later is something else altogether.
Quote from: Cobra Ned on January 24, 2023, 04:06:06 PM
To clarify, CSX 3063 sold for a hammer price of $600k plus an extra $60k in the form of the "buyer's premium" (read that as Mecum commission, which they collect from both the buyer and the seller). And most certainly, building a "1965 427 Competition Cobra" from a chassis that was 6" longer than a Cobra chassis and was built as a prototype as a different car altogether, then modifying it 25-30 years after the fact into a "Cobra" has a definite effect upon the sales price. I would submit that Marilyn Monroe in a blue dress may indeed by the same a Marilyn Monroe in a red dress, but a cousin in a satin dress some 25 years later is something else altogether.
So how did you come to know MM? Or was it her cousin Fred in a red dress? I think I misunderstood, right? ;)
By coincidence I stumbled last week over this Ghia 450SS convertible with a separate roof top (1 of 57 built in 66/67).
(http://www.ponysite.de/Ghia_450SS_blue_23a.jpg)
Although US business man Sugarman never mentions his relation to the Cobra from 1965, he narrates his visit in 1964 to Ghia, when he wanted to buy the 230S from Ghia. Turned out it had no engine.
Which triggered his search for an american engine and suitable chassis, he tells (Autoweek interview).
Out of this sudden sponsorship and Ghias failing in getting Fiat on board, experiments with others may sound logical, yet ending with a Barracuda sent over and finally turning it into a 450SS convertible for Chrysler for 66/67. Just saying the 65 Turin show may fit these experiments done with italo-american combos, which were popular in Europe as well.
Sugarman build his own Ghia sales outlet in Beverly Hills. Not saying that he triggered also the Cobra, maybe just the search for something that could work.
Rather Ghia was interested to build its own car after the interest in the 230S and using all channels incl. De Tomaso to get chassis and engine into their bodywork.
Money was needed and obviously not available for the Cobra GT bodywork in 1965 from Ghia.
Claude Dubois in his book says that there was little room for playing with Cobras due to the contracts, when he was looking for additional business opportunities. He (much later) connected to Frua and the AC428 and of course De Tomaso.
Again no hard facts here, but some sort of explanation for the exercise maybe.
The 450SS appeared as a Fiat concept car. Sugarman saw it on R & T cover, flew to italy and studied it then asked i buddy Hn DeLorean to get GM interested but according to tory on Hagerty's website DeLoreans previous two seater idea was shot down so he recommended Chrysler. Chrysler greed to provide the drive train but it was imported for Sugarman not sold in Chrysler showroom. Nowhere in the Hagerty story doe it mention Ford being offered the car but I was surprised to her OSI built the cars when previously I thought Ghia did. The Hagarty story says when DeTomaso ought Ghia in '67 the last Ghia 40/SS was built