1965 AC Cobra 289.
A tach, a wheel, a lighter, and three pedals. That’s really all you need to motate a Cobra. And the lighter’s an option.
The AC (or Shelby, depending upon your loyalties) Cobra came about in the early 1960s when racer, ostrich farmer, chili magnate, tough guy, and all-around gritty old bastard Carroll Shelby shoved a Ford V8 into the little Ace roadster from AC Cars of England. Three engines were used during the car’s brief heyday: a 260-ci, a 289-ci, and a 427-ci. The resulting monsters have been icons ever since.
This 289 was one of the greatest cars I saw during the long automotive weekend in Monterey, California. The thing was scruffy—huge paint chips down to bare metal, dings and dents galore, rusty wire wheels, worn pedals, and 105,000 miles on the clock. A driven Cobra, and wonderful for it.
And that fantastic patina was priced accordingly, as the car hammered sold at RM Auctions’s Saturday night sale for $605,000.
Whether pristinely restored or aged to perfection, good cars seem to garner the same sorts of prices, and that was the case here; $600k is the going rate for a 289 Cobra you’d want to own. A car is only original once, and the new owner would be a fool to take that away from this one.
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