by Ross Finlay (06 Jan 04)

Fifty-two years after Carroll Shelby drove in his first competition with a Ford V8-powered dragster, and decades after they were involved in the GT40 Le Mans project as well as the original Shelby Cobras, Ford is collaborating with him once again in the 2004 Shelby Cobra concept car unveiled at the Detroit Show.

Based on the space frame and suspension of the latest Ford GT, the new Cobra doesn’t include the basic design mistake which made Shelby’s prototype Cobra 427 of 1963 so "treacherous" (Ford’s adjective) to drive - a huge engine and leaf-spring rear suspension.

Despite their similarities, the Cobra concept car has a front/mid engine installation instead of the GT’s rear/mid application. And it’s quite a power plant - an alloy-block 6.4-litre V10 specially developed from Ford’s MOD engine family.

There’s 605bhp on tap, as well as 501ft/lb of torque, which Ford reckons is good enough for a 0-60mph time under 4.0 seconds. Not quite as quick as the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve, but brisk enough to be going on with.

The whole idea of the new car came from Ford’s Advanced Product Creation team - an "in-house think-tank cum skunk works" - which took to thinking along the original Cobra lines of a big engine in a smallish sports car, and produced the concept vehicle in just five months.

That’s only a third of the time it took to design and build the prototype Ford GT, and was possible because of the high degree of commonality between the two cars.

An Ace Idea

While the 1960s machine stuffed a Ford V8 engine into an AC Ace, its 2004 descendant has a Ford V10 in a body roughly the same length as a Mazda MX-5. A near 50/50 front/rear weight distribution is achieved because of the use of a rear transaxle which includes a Ricardo six-speed manual gearbox. Shelby himself and Chris Theodore of Ford’s APC came up independently with the idea of using a transaxle. That layout also allows for more driver and passenger legroom than would otherwise be possible.  

Weight is something the 2004 car has very little of. It turns the scales at just over 3000 pounds, thanks partly to the fact that it has no side windows, no wipers, no external door handles, no door mirrors (although there are three rear-facing cameras linked to a digital version of a rear-view mirror), no hood and no audio system. If you want an enjoyable sound, says chief designer Richard Hutting, "the tuned exhaust makes its own music."

He also says: "We let the powertrain, the space frame and the suspension dictate the architecture for the body." But there are plenty of original Cobra styling cues, from the vertical front bumper bars to the bulging rear wheel arches. The specification includes BBS wheels with BF Goodrich tyres, and the braking system uses Brembo discs.

Is the Ford Shelby Cobra destined to remain just a show-time concept, or will Ford build it in some kind of series? According to J Mays, group vice-president for design, the answer is: "We’ll see. If we get the same overwhelming reaction to the Cobra concept as we did to the GT concept, anything is possible."

And the GT is, after all, going into limited production, with potential customers falling over themselves to get a slice of the action.

Back to Product Features index
Back to main Features index