Shelby Cobra GHIA SPYDER

[shelbydoug]

Is that a picture from McCluskey or "sometime" before he got it?

Is that picture showing the extended chassis?

Would Angliss have something to do with it?

[Cobra Ned]

That photo is reported to have come from Mike.

[HistoryBuff]

 
   I think it's a crying shame that the  Italian alternate body was not saved as it showed where the Cobra could have gone. Ironically I think the tail was wretched excess with pizza-pie sized taillights and the nose boring but at least it was the Italians adding their two cents worth.



   What happened to the Ghia roadster (with lift off hardtop)  body? Well, it probably went into the dumpster in the UK and it would cost maybe $200,000 today  to make a duplicate in aluminum from scratch .And who saved the blueprints? Probably nobody.

   I think if Giugiaro had listed it on his resume (like he did the Mangusta) it would have been worth more in Ghia clothing than it is now with an AC Cobra body. I can see his design input particularly in the side vent, lifted off his Maserati Ghibli design, done at Ghia

   The Mecum history includes several time gaps--but referenced paperwork included in the sale  documents AC Cars invoiced Ford Motor Credit for this order on June 1, 1965 with invoice no. A7948 and that Ghia removed unneeded substructure, installed a body on the car as a styling exercise and displayed it at the Turin Auto Salon.

   When  Gutke got it it was later crashed and the car was cut in half following the crash and that's when  Mike McCluskey,a famed Cobra restorer in Los Angeles,  bought it in the late 1970s. He sold to Larry Dubas for Scott Grissom in 1984 and then later it sold to Steve Forristall in 1986. Forristall sold the car in 1989 to Ted Thomas who rebuilt the chassis, including replacement of the damaged rail.

     The car then went to Cobra Restorers in Kennesaw, Georgia to begin the rebuild.They sent it to  Bruce Kimmons of Kimmons Coachworks in Lake Havasu City, Arizona for completion and installation of a full aluminum body. It finally rolled out into the sunlight in 1993 at SAAC 20 with the words "last comp chassis" written on the nose. It then went to sleep in storage for 14 years, until September 2011 before returning to Cobra Restorers to complete the restoration and a new owner.

    At Kissimmee at th mecum Kissimmee auction on Jan. 14th, 2023 , it sold for a high bid of $660,000
(corrected 1-23-23)

[557]

Tail resembles a Mazda cosmo....

[Cobra Ned]

History Buff: I am under the belief that the CSX 3063 Cobra clone sold for a bid of $600k at Mecum in Kissimmee. Can you advise where you got the $1.3 million figure?

[SCJSTU]

Here is the 2023 Kissimmee sale

[HistoryBuff]

I stand corrected. Just over $600,000. The editor of MyCarQuest feels by not being a full bodied Cobra bodied car
from the beginning, that affected the price at the Jan. 2023 auction

https://mycarquest.com/2023/01/a-comp-ac-shelby-cobra-427.html

[tesgt350]

Would the Ghia Cobra be worth MORE or Less then the Car now being an actual Cobra again?

[HistoryBuff]

More if only Giugiaro would acknowledge it as his offspring. He has done other one offs (including a Ferrari he owns) and they are always
worth more than the mass produced ones.

But if the original is not around to measure,how would you know how off you are proportionately, even a few inches could make the car look different, and then you went to all the expense for nothing.

There is still another 427 Cobra chassis with an Italian body, still running around in the UK, fortunately that still has the body, which was made for a Fiat 8V Supersonic by Ghia. It was once at a used car lot in Marina Del Rey,CA. That one is worth keeping the body because Fiat 8V Supersonics are collector cars themselves.

I'd research it more but want to know if it ever had an AC Cobra body in the first place, or is it like the Ghia roadster,it had no body? I may have run across the first owner of the Ghia body, a Mrs. Campbell . When I met her I never knew she owned one but read since that the ex-wife of the land speed record Campbell had a Fiat 8V Supersonic that was sent to a junkyard and maybe that's the same car and she knows what happened to it. She lived in the mountains East of Los Angeles but I have yet to look her up

[Cobra Ned]

To clarify, CSX 3063 sold for a hammer price of $600k plus an extra $60k in the form of the "buyer's premium" (read that as Mecum commission, which they collect from both the buyer and the seller). And most certainly, building a "1965 427 Competition Cobra" from a chassis that was 6" longer than a Cobra chassis and was built as a prototype as a different car altogether, then modifying it 25-30 years after the fact into a "Cobra" has a definite effect upon the sales price. I would submit that Marilyn Monroe in a blue dress may indeed by the same a Marilyn Monroe in a red dress, but a cousin in a satin dress some 25 years later is something else altogether.

[shelbydoug]

To clarify, CSX 3063 sold for a hammer price of $600k plus an extra $60k in the form of the "buyer's premium" (read that as Mecum commission, which they collect from both the buyer and the seller). And most certainly, building a "1965 427 Competition Cobra" from a chassis that was 6" longer than a Cobra chassis and was built as a prototype as a different car altogether, then modifying it 25-30 years after the fact into a "Cobra" has a definite effect upon the sales price. I would submit that Marilyn Monroe in a blue dress may indeed by the same a Marilyn Monroe in a red dress, but a cousin in a satin dress some 25 years later is something else altogether.

So how did you come to know MM? Or was it her cousin Fred in a red dress? I think I misunderstood, right? 

[TransamEd]

By coincidence I stumbled last week over this  Ghia 450SS convertible with a separate roof top (1 of 57 built in 66/67).

Although US business man Sugarman never mentions his relation to the Cobra from 1965, he narrates his visit in 1964 to Ghia, when he wanted to buy the 230S from Ghia. Turned out it had no engine.
Which triggered his search for an american engine and suitable chassis, he tells (Autoweek interview).
Out of this sudden sponsorship and Ghias failing in getting Fiat on board, experiments with others may sound logical, yet ending with a Barracuda sent over and finally turning it into a 450SS convertible for Chrysler for 66/67. Just saying the 65 Turin show may fit these experiments done with italo-american combos, which were popular in Europe as well.
Sugarman build his own Ghia sales outlet in Beverly Hills. Not saying that he triggered also the Cobra, maybe just the search for something that could work.
Rather Ghia was interested to build its own car after the interest in the 230S and using all channels incl. De Tomaso to get chassis and engine into their bodywork.
Money was needed and obviously not available for the Cobra GT bodywork in 1965 from Ghia.
Claude Dubois in his book says that there was little room for playing with Cobras due to the contracts, when he was looking for additional business opportunities. He (much later) connected to Frua and the AC428 and of course De Tomaso.
Again no hard facts here, but some sort of explanation for the exercise maybe.

[HistoryBuff]

The 450SS appeared as a Fiat concept car. Sugarman saw it on R & T cover, flew to italy and studied it then asked i buddy Hn DeLorean to get GM interested but according to  tory on Hagerty's website DeLoreans previous two seater idea was shot down so he recommended Chrysler. Chrysler greed to provide the drive train but it was imported for Sugarman not sold in Chrysler showroom. Nowhere in the Hagerty story doe it mention Ford being offered the car  but I was surprised to her OSI built the cars when previously I thought Ghia did. The Hagarty story says when DeTomaso ought Ghia in  '67 the last Ghia 40/SS was built