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It’s some time before 8 AM on a Sunday in Indio, California. I roll over on the couch of my Airbnb to fight off the morning sun slapping me in the face. Factor in the dry desert air and a friend’s wedding the night before and it’s a miracle my headed isn’t splitting open. After a while I collect myself — breakfast is in order. This quiet little neighborhood would prefer I not do this, but I need a chorizo and eggs Benedict from Sloan’s diner and the 7.0-liter V8 in the Superformance MKIII Shelby Cobra I’m driving needs warming. Half wincing, half smiling, I turn the key — saying “sorry” in my head to the neighborhood — and pump the throttle, trying to coax the engine to life with the starter. There’s a throaty bark and then a steady drum solo from under the hood. A car alarm sounds off from inside a closed garage down the street. Adrenaline and dopamine are fending off any hint of a headache. This car is that good just idling, sitting in a driveway.
Two words come to mind when Superformance crops up in conversation: sacrilege and caveat. There are countless ways to get your hands on a car that looks like an original Shelby Cobra MKIII. Do a quick search, and you’ll find professionally-assembled replicas and home-built kit cars litter classifieds across the internet. They may come with the same curvaceous mid-century styling and familiar soundtrack but rumble up to a Vintage Sports Car Club of America gathering, and you’ll be scoffed at or, worse yet, met with outspoken condescension: “Oh, it’s not a real Shelby MKIII?” According to these folks, if your Cobra wasn’t built at the original shop on Princeton Avenue in Venice Beach or Shelby American’s Hanger near Los Angeles International airport, it’s a false idol and sacrilegious. The caveat? Superformance is the only outfit building Cobras and Daytonas with an official license from Shelby American and official approval from the legendary, late Carroll Shelby himself — think of Superformance cars as new ’65 models. Nonetheless, continuation cars like those Superformance builds are incredibly polarizing.
The original AC Cobras were born out of the hot-rodding spirit sweeping the US in the ’50s and ’60s. The British manufacturer AC Cars was bolting straight-sixes in the front of its factory coupes, but Carroll Shelby approached them asking to drop in a V8 so he could go racing. AC agreed to the job; Shelby just had to source his own engines. He asked Chevrolet, but in fear of competition for the Corvette, GM turned him down. Naturally, he went down the road to Dearborn next, where Ford obliged and gave Shelby a new small-block Windsor V8. The cars weighed next to nothing, put down more power than drivers knew what to do with and took turns like they were on trolley tracks. You can absolutely see why outfits like Superformance, Factory Five or any of the companies selling build-it-yourself kits never want this car to disappear from the road.
Late in the day before my friend’s wedding, when a friend picks me up at LAX, we make our way to Hillbank Motor Corporation, a Superformance distributor in Irvine, California. It’s dark by the time we get there. The massive aluminum warehouse doors might as well be pearly gates — they open to a warehouse full of GT40s, Cobra coupes and Daytonas parked fender to fender, glistening in blinding fluorescent light. The shopkeeper walks us over to an all black MKIII — black gloss body, black wheels, dual side-exit matte black four-into-one exhausts, and a matte black roll hoop. He does a walk around, fires it up to warm up the engine, and I’m already thinking about making a run for the border with it. I’m also already nervous and intimidated.
As with the original Shelby Cobras, the Superformance MKIII has neither ABS nor power steering and dishes out 427 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of push for my feet to play with. It’s already desert night-cold, and it’ll be pitch black by the time we get to the mountains. The headlights only have two settings – off or high beam – there’s no roof and the heater doesn’t work. There’s just a single driver’s side mirror no bigger than the bottom of a pint glass, plus a rear-view mirror no wider than a letterbox opening which vibrates enough to provide me a mini laser-light show in the reflection… and not much else. None of that bothers me. Thanks to my experience riding a motorcycle, I can handle the cold and the raucous ambiance of the highway, even being eye-level with the underside of an 18-wheeler. I’ve been dreaming of driving a 427 Cobra – replica or real-deal – since my automotive obsession sparked to life.
