The building of the Shelby Cobra 427 S/C
This is a Revell kit, with inner engine-detail
Some background......" Carroll Shelby is always associated with unusual road vehicles with well nigh unbelievable performance, very pleasing lines and a unique acceleration. On this the son born in 1923 to a Texan farmer based his fame as an American racing driver. In 1952 he drove in his first race in a borrowed MG and immediately left behind the whole of the competition inclu- ding some much more powerful cars. This victory was followed by many others, some of them in Europe. The man designated "Driver of the Year 1957" also participated successfully in Formula 1 in 1959 and in the same year he also won the 24 Hours Race in Le Mans. Unfortunately health problems put an end to his racing career. However Shelby took the opportunity to devote himself to the realisation of his second dream - the conversion and design of sports cars. He planned to build cars that would beat the best vehicles in the world on the racetrack. The basic idea was relatively simple: he looked for a big powerful engine and put it into a small, light-weight sports car. For this he chose an English two-seater made by the firm AC Ace Sports Car, which had an aluminium body and very good handling characteristics. The engine, which had also gone into the Fairline Series, came from Ford. Shelby built the high performance version of this new little 4260 cc V8 engine into the Ace, made some modifications to the car and then began to enter it in races. Weighing just a ton, the car was unbelievably fast. Shelby increased its performance still further when he later put in the 4.7 litre 289 V8 engine. This second Shelby was only top- ped by the variants that were introduced from 1965 onwards. The world-famous designer responded to the Corvette with the powerful engine that emerged in the mid-sixties with a V8 427 engine (7 litre) that was positively bursting with energy. All Shelby's cars were built both for the road and for racing. Unlike most of the American muscular cars of the period, Shelby's designs had the engine relatively far to the rear. This gave the cars a much better weight distribution, enabling them to keep up high speeds and hold the road, not only on the straight stretches but also on the bends. As Shelby saw it, the 427 Cobra with its light body combined with a powerful engine would produce a higher performance and, above all, it would be fast. In the Semi-Competition (=S/C) ver- sion, the Cobra offered a massive 425 bhp for a weight of just over a ton. This concentrated power gave it acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in just 4 seconds and a top speed of a good 260 km/h. Hardly any car could beat the 427 Cobra either on the race track or on the road. For years there was hardly any car that approached its performance. Thus the 427 Cobra won the A Production races of the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) year after year. Harold Keck decisively won nine of these A Production Class races in the 1965 season thus securing the title. Sam Feinstein, the well-known racing driver of the late sixties and early seventies could also look back on many wins in this class, including the 1973 championship. "........
Note: The chromed parts (as supplied with the kit) were soaked/cleaned with sodawater and resprayed with Alclad Chrome
Fitting the exhaust-pipes to the engine is difficult
A nice little car!
