Carroll Shelby was a motorsport legend whose legacy helped shape high-performance cars as we know them today. However, there is a particular Shelby project that stands out more than anything – the 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake.
Coined the “Cobra to End All Cobras”, the Super Snake has become one of the most notable cars ever built by Shelby American. In fact, it was one of only two high-performance examples produced and originally belonged to Carroll Shelby himself. Now, the rare roadster is on sale at Barrett-Jackson, so grab your wallet and get ready to spend it elegantly, because it won’t come cheap. Seriously.
Shelby’s personal Cobra for sale may look familiar – and it should, given that this will be the third time he has crossed the auction block in Barrett-Jackson. Previously, the car raised $ 5.1 million when it was last sold in 2015, and $ 5.5 million when it was sold in person under the watchful eye of Carroll Shelby in 2007.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. $ 5 million It is a beautiful coin, even in the world of car collection. So, what makes this particular car more valuable than a normal Cobra?
In addition to being Carroll Shelby’s personal car, it was also a direct result of his explosive rivalry with Ferrari.
This particular example started life as one of the 23 Shelby Cobra racing cars built. After a brief stint in Europe, it was returned to America, where it was reclassified as Semi-Competition to make the car on the streets legal. That meant adding a windshield, mufflers and bumpers to really make Shelby comply with regulations.
Legend has it that Shelby – who loved to travel – used to travel to Lake Tahoe with his personal friend and former lawyer Stan Mullin. Stan had a Ferrari that could outperform Shelby’s 427 Cobra, and one day Carroll got tired of seeing Ferrari’s taillights and stormed Shelby’s headquarters to do something about it.
The result was something completely exaggerated: the Cobra to end all Cobras, the Super Snake. Allegedly, the Super Snake was a difficult animal to tame, as its already large V8 was supplemented with the help of two Paxton compressors that fed compressed air through a pair of four-cylinder Holley carburetors. The standard four-speed Borg-Warner manual transmission was also switched in favor of a three-speed Lincoln Cruise-O-Matic car.
The Super Snake is believed to have produced around 800 horsepower when it was produced in the 1960s and was capable of firing from zero to 60 miles per hour in just three seconds if the tires braked. And, as Barrett-Jackson CEO Craig Jackson recalls – Cobra “ate that Ferrari alive”.
In 1970, Shelby sold the car to famous composer Jimmy Webb for $ 10,500. Webb owned it until it was seized by the IRS and sold at an auction in 1995, where it was bought by Ferrari collector Chris Cox for $ 375,000. In 1998, billionaire Richard Scaife bought the Cobra and kept it for another eight years before selling it back to Cox. The car was auctioned at Barrett-Jackson for the first time in 2007, guaranteeing a hammer price of $ 5 , 5 million by collector Ron Pratte, and in 2015, the car went up again where it earned a little less – $ 5.1 million.
It is important to understand the legacy that makes people covet this car. It is the vehicle with which Shelby himself woke whole cities by increasing the accelerator in the early hours of the morning. Shelby’s car grabbed the wooden steering wheel while turning off the engine during a race and left it near the ditch. The car that was stopped by the Nevada Highway Patrol for apparently going at 190 mph, which was considered “reasonable and prudent” – something that only happens when you are Carroll Shelby.
Shelby was ecstatic with this car when she saw it sold in 2007, and that kind of memory lives on through her signatures scattered throughout the car.