If this car doesn’t get your heart beating faster you must be dead. The Shelby Cobra is an icon of the go fast ’60 and this car in particular is a sensational example. The car was shipped new to Tasca Ford in Providence, RI on April of 1966 and purchased by Eliot Grant for his son Steve. Is that a great Dad or what! Steve was a student at Parsons College in Fairfield IA. The Cobra was Steve’s daily driver and made many trips between Providence and Fairfield (about 1400 miles) averaging 100 MPH. By the summer of 1968 with 20,000 showing on the odometer Steve decided to trade the car in on a new Corvette. Bill Moyer of Four Wheels, Inc in Des Moines, IA made the deal. Steve warned Moyer that this was a much more powerful car than Corvettes he was use to but Moyer assured him he could handle it. Well not quite, on one of his first drives with the car Moyer lost control of on a damp road and damaged the right side.
Moyer decided to sell the car “as is” to Rube Cronwell of East Towne Motors in De Moines. Cronwell purchased new body panels from Shelby but never got around to fixing the car. He ended up selling the car to Bob Ash in 1969 who then sold it one year later to Curtis Jackson of Oxford, GA. Jackson kept the car for six years. He started the repair process but again the car was never finished. He eventually sold the car to Gordon Gimbel of Sacramento, CA who resold it to Brian Angliss (the owner of AC cars) of Surrey England. At AC the car was stripped to the bare frame and totally restored to new condition. At the request of his customer a 289 style dash was installed along with a custom hood scoop and leather steering wheel. New SC style side pipes, and a chrome roll bar were also fitted. A competition style flip top gas filler was installed along with a 42-gallon tank. To finish off the competition look the star burst wheels were replaced by 9.5” Halibrands.
When finished the car was sold to John Bendall in England. In 1984 it was purchased by Eric Weissburg of Woodstock, NY. At SAAC 10 in Great Gorge, NJ the car won the 427 Cobra class. In 1991 it was sold to Larry Thomas of Lebanon, IN. Thomas eliminated the custom features and returned it to stock form replacing the dash, steering wheel and gauges with stock SC items. A proper SC hood scoop was installed with proper SC rear flairs and had Gus Zuidema rebuild the 427. Now painted dark blue with white stripes the car placed second at SAAC-19, third at SAAC 20 and second at SAAC 21. The total mileage on the car as of 1995 was just 35,000. In 1997 the car was purchased by Norm Dinnsen of La Jolla, CA. He kept the car for three years before selling it to Pat Hogan of Littleton, Co.
Hogan performed a complete restoration on the car replacing anything that was “ worn, cracked, leaking or deteriorating”. The car was brought back to “new” condition including a complete repaint to its original Midnight blue. A new black leather interior was installed and the car detailed for show. All the mechanical components in the car have been rebuilt and a new wiring harness installed. Everything on the car works and it runs perfectly. The car comes with a tonneau, top, and side curtains. Also included are new front and rear bumber guards and chrome tubes.
It was featured on the latest cover of the “World Registry of Cobras and GT-40’s”
