2004 Ford Shelby V-10 Cobra Concept Ride Review: Still Venomous
We take another shotgun spin in the 605-hp stillborn Viper slayer.
A concours-condition example of a 1991 Dodge Viper RT/10 or 2005 Ford GT should set you back somewhere between $115,000 and $350,000 in today’s market. That’s the Hagerty #1 condition valuation range currently covering used examples of these vehicles. Those were the two passion projects that preceded the car you see here, the Ford Shelby Cobra Concept, in lifelong engineer and perennial MotorTrend Car of the Year guest judge Chris Theodore’s storied career.
As we mentioned in our first report of the impending auction, the Ford Shelby Cobra Concept, known as “Project Daisy” at the time, was conceived as a way to leverage much of the bespoke engineering and capital costs Ford sunk into the all-aluminum GT. It also offered the Blue Oval the chance to more directly compete with the Dodge Viper, as well as high-end versions of the Chevy Corvette. Thus, to shorten its potential time to production, the Shelby Cobra Concept was engineered and developed to a level not seen in concept cars since the 1960s.
A viable aluminum chassis was developed to match the torsional rigidity of the contemporary Corvette, and the GT’s suspension components were tuned to demonstrate the roadster’s dynamic potential. The car was fully modeled in CAD, and its 6.4-liter (390 cubes for you Ford history buffs) modular twin-cam V-10 was dyno-tested to its 7,500-rpm redline.
Why The V-10?
Classic Cobras were all V-8s, and the GT’s 5.4-liter engine was almost through development, but Theodore and his team foresaw the horsepower war on the horizon. They believed that a high-revving naturally aspirated V-10 good for 605 hp and 501 lb-ft out of the box could easily be twin-turbocharged to hit 700 or 800 horses in the years to come.
Relative to the GT’s supercharged V-8, the V-10 of the Cobra Concept is lighter, has a lower center of gravity, and measures only 0.4 inch longer when fully dressed. And let’s face it, a high-revving V-10 with a proper exhaust system incorporating a crossover “X-pipe” sounds awesome.
Why Didn’t Daisy Get Produced?
Despite the team’s thorough engineering and business plan development, the timing was poor to launch another low-margin halo vehicle. Ford was still recovering from the Firestone debacle, a recession was looming, and certain members of the company’s management team simply underestimated the value of Shelby’s name and affiliation.
Theodore and Shelby briefly considered licensing the concept from Ford and producing it as a Shelby, but with a forecast budget of $83,000,000 to bring it to market (well down from the estimated $150,000,000 spent to bring the GT to production), breaking even would have required selling 5,000 cars or more—a tall order only a company with an established dealer network could possibly achieve.
Sabotage Only A Chief Engineer Could Reverse
Because of all the press coverage that demonstrated the fully developed and certified concept’s performance, Ford felt compelled to “defang” this Cobra, rendering it undrivable for liability purposes prior to its sale in 2017. (Auction proceeds from the sale were applied to the cost of restoring Fair Lane, the Ford patriarch’s Dearborn home.)
To do this, the service plate used to access the connection between the output shaft connecting the flywheel/clutch assembly to the quill shaft (which sends power to the rear transaxle) was disconnected. The coupling was slid rearward and welded to the quill-shaft splines, while the output shaft splines were filled with weld, ruining the output shaft and permanently disconnecting the engine. The service plate bolts were ground off and welded shut to make the driveshaft inaccessible.
Theodore rectified this using replacement parts fabricated to the original designs by the same company that first produced these pieces. Of course, that wasn’t all Daisy needed after about a dozen years of sitting still. The rubber bladder in the 10-gallon fuel cell was shot, the clutch was burned out, the hydraulic system that raises and lowers the hood was leaking, and the show-car electrical system needed to be converted to something more akin to production-spec. The team that originally assembled the chassis, Technosports in Livonia, Michigan, handled most of this restoration work.
How Does Daisy Run 17 Years Later?
After I read Matt Stone’s reports of riding in and driving Daisy, Theodore took me for a spirited drive on the access roads ringing the M1 Concourse Champion Motor Speedway track. Well, as spirited a drive as Theodore dared, given the Cobra’s 17-year-old slick-tread show tires. The 90-degree, uneven-firing V-10 roared with the same baritone “devil gargling gasoline” sound Stone described all those years ago, its rear-exit exhaust channeling a far more sonorous tone than the Viper’s side pipes ever did.
The V-10 pulls ferociously when Theodore uncorks it in second gear. The suspension absorbs the few bumps on these roads with a ride quality that easily equals that of the contemporary Viper. The shifter feels as light and precise as Stone described, with oddly longish throws and a high pivot point. And everything on the dash still works except the tachometer, which features Stewart Warner guts in a bespoke housing behind custom graphics. It’s been fixed at least once, and Theodore has a fresh replacement, but he’s going to let the next owner install it.
Road Legal
Making Daisy roadworthy was step one; making her legal presented yet another challenge. Montana regulations require a rearview mirror plus a working horn and turn signals, so these were added, operated by switches under the left side of the dash. Wipers, side mirrors, and a top are not required.
At Ford’s request, the original fabrication team engraved a serial number plate on the front chassis rail reading “002003SHELBYCOBRA”; that’s what’s on the Montana title, and it’s licensed and registered for the road, though the buyer will have to check local state regulations. Theodore is obviously selling Daisy “As Is, No Warranty,” but the sale includes the original build book and other technical details. The original Daisy team is dedicated to keeping the Cobra Concept alive and ready to bite. Several members have promised continuing support for their dream project.
Theodore has complete faith the car could withstand many more miles of the kind of driving Carroll did at Irwindale. One wouldn’t want to risk blowing that engine block (there are no spares), but the internals are all Modular V-8 bits, so the parts are robust and easily replaced. Of course, any such driving should be done on the BBS wheels used during development, shod in new DOT-approved tires—not the billet-milled show wheels and no-tread tires with “NOT FOR ROAD USE” molded into the sidewalls.
What’s Daisy Worth Now?
The question of the car’s current valuation will be definitively answered by the most determined bidder at Mecum’s auction in Monterey on August 14, 2021. There’s no official pre-auction estimate, but given the car’s historical importance, the rarity of any modern concept car reaching the public (let alone one that can be driven more than just on and off trailers and show stands), the provenance of it being the last Cobra developed and driven by Shelby, and the fact it’s been restored and made roadworthy by the engineer and technicians who originally built it, well, it all seems to add up to a figure many times the $825,000 Chris reportedly paid for the car in 2017—back when it was just a lovely piece of pushable garage art.
Source motortrend.com
