The story of the Sunburst Wheels
All the Cobra experts that have seen our wheels have been amazed. Peter Brock himself was upside down when he saw it, and had tears in his eyes. He simply said: « if ever we had it at that time, I’m pretty sure we would have sold hundreds of 427 street”. Caroll himself did not like the last version of the 427, that he was calling dispizingly” bicycle wheels”. He abandoned it, meaning he stopped developing it (and so did Ken Miles) for concentrating on the GT 40 (and the Daytona Coupe to a lesser extent). He ended the contract with AC Cars (after having produced the last one, CSX 3359) and shamelessly got a 428 “Police Interceptor” mounted instead of the 427 FE, keeping all the literature reading “427” Of course it was a real swindle, and when an officer of Ford found out he made a fuss and got it rectified. You wonder in what does it relate to us ?
There were 149 Cobra 427 street “Batch two”made, out of which 146 were Sunburst shoed. Even though nowadays their owner are ready to pay crazy amounts for getting their car back on it, the result is horrendous, whereas the same cars on our wheels catches all eyes better than Pamela Andersson.
When Nick Acton saw it, he remained silent for a while, and then perspired ’’How God, it is so sexy !” And the members of the old Team Shelby that I met had all the same If Caroll could have seen it, he would have cried too.
We are proudly continuing on Shelby’s path, warshipping only the original 427: It is accepted without discussion that, if your car was delivered on Sunburst the presence of 7.5’’ at the back was “temporary, CS and PB having desperately looked for a solution suiting their needs, and never claimed the correctness of it. Today a car of that serial will be classified as Truly Original if on 9.5’’ Sunburst and 428 engine. The latter has been almost entirely eliminated, and I guess the same will happen with the old rims, then presenting the exact appearance and configuration dreamt by its will find below a subscription form which please fill in completely. Finally Sunburst !
If you read this, you are not an absolute Cobra illiterate ;0) You all know the iconic Sunburst wheel drawn by Peter Brock on the table cloth of L.A. ‘s old airport. But what very few people know is the full story. At the fall of1964 the Cobra 289 was THE car to win in America. This was the response of CS to GM which had refut »sed to contract with him for producing a « US Sport car », considering that the Corvette Grand Sport was doing the job well. But CS did not give up with his idea of building his own car. He was a real car lover, and he had to stop racing because of a severe heart problem, but he could not see himself doing anything but racing. He was first growing chicken, but he went bust, this was not his thing. He started racing with an MG A tuned by him, and became rapidly known as a good driver, « free lance ».
This is the reason why Ray Salvadory hired him for the Le Mans 24 hours in 1956…and he won !!! Overnight he became a hero, being the first American winning a major « Continental event ». He had to be in the U.K. for a while, preparing LeMans at Aston Martin’s, and he met with AC Cars. These guys had just been informed by Bristol, the supplier of the 2 litres engine propelling the AC « Ace » and « Aceca », that they will stop fabrication. They were BMW subsidiary before the WW2 war, producing engines for the aircrafts, but during the war they had to give up with the aircrafts because of their « German origin ». For keeping their set up alive and using their expertise they started the production of engines for cars. At that time there was a huge demand for engines from people building kit cars, then Bristol signed an exclusive agreement with AC, making the AC Bristol one of the best cars at this time. CS proposed to buy from them the cars and equip them with a Ford engine for selling on the US market. Then he went to ford, and proposed to put a Ford engine into the AC Ace for racing in the uS and nbecome a « Corvette Killer ». Henry Ford II loved the idea and he almosbt gave a blank cheque to CS, who had ba very little knowledge of mechanics. But he had a friend pilot having a little garage, being a very good driver and mechanic, called Ken Miles, who accepted to build the first « Shelby »car. They shoe-horned a Ford 260 CI V8 into the car sent by AC Cars and the story started,
I will not tell you all (I trust you know it all), I will only tell you the « wheel side » of it (I trust you know very little about it)
It was originally fabricated by Kesley and Hayes (K & H) width 7.5’’ and the plan was to produce also width 9.5’’for replacing the Halibrand Cobra at rear., but – thanks to the beautiful design of P.B.-, they could never make one. AT the time Halibrand was also unable to supply wheels, being tight with the BlueOval,so CS got K&H to produce enougth 7,5’’for equipying the 427 awaiting F.I.A. ‘s insdpectors. And during 59 years almost everybody tried to do it, in vain. But now, WE DID IT !!!
