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FORD COBRA II
Resurrecting the Shelby GT350, Ford brings you the Son of Snake, EconoRacer
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It's late, and we've been prowling around looking for some action for three hours. So far, everywhere we've nosed our fantastically scooped, spoilered and striped Cobra II has been deserted; the dwellers of the Street RAcer Realm seem to have been swallowed up by the earth. The drive-ins, back lots and street corners they used to lurk are empty, save for the citizens simply going about their innocent business.
But as we begin to lose hope, we catch the telltale glimmer of a Shelby GT350's taillights up ahead of us. As we hurry to catch up, we see that his car is the same color as ours - frost white with two fat blue racing stripes. More important, we note that he has Goodyear racing tires and double shocks on his rear axle.
As w3e come alongside, he glances over at our brand new version of his classic street racer.... and we see a mischevious gleam in his eye as he realizes just what we're driving. He grins and waits for us. We move along in perfect formation, the old street empty at this late hour, the rickety warehouses frowning down through the midnight gloom like disapproving dowagers.
He slows to a stop; so do we. He stares straight ahead down the deserted sulphur-lit road, engages first and waits, bringing his revs up slowly. We snick the console-mounted automatic transmission shifter into first, gently apply power up to the stall speed of the torque converter... and also wait.
Suddenly, he drops the hammer and his bulging GT350 is gone down the street in a searing blast of acrid tire smoke, furious noise and gathering speed. And what about us? We'd dumped the brake and put the hammer down the same second as he, but in our case, all we got was an apologetic chirp from our Firestone Steel radials and a distant whoooosh from the two-barrel carb feeding our docile 302 cid V-8. We were stomped. Humiliated. Blazed. Put on the trailer. In a one-on-one race with the Real Thing, our resurrected cosmetic pseudo-Shelby is about as good as a '41 Dodge.
We look for Volkswagens to awe.
Can it be that bad? Has Detroit sunk to the level of building cars which are mere cartoons of cars which themselves were almost caricatures? What next, a Plymouth Superbird replica built on a Volare?
Well, we're sorry to have to report it, but the truth is...that's right. Underneath this powerful male macho-macho plumage, the Cobra II is a docile Mustang II. The muscle it has is only in your perception; on the street, it's a loser, at least if you are used to backing up your images with action. On the street, the Cobra II can only get you in trouble; cruise into a hard-drivin' neighborhood with this Mustang and, as they used to say at the strip, you'll be writing checks with your mouth that your ass can't cash.
There is hope, though, on two counts. First, the whole street-racer scene is so debilitated that the chances of your having to go on the lines are less than good, maybe even infinitesimal. And second, beyond all that paint and fibeglass, the Cobra II is a pretty nice car.
We say that with some surprise, because recently quality control on this size American car has been dropping. But Ford has been trying to build better and better cars, and the Cobra II is further proof that Henry's boys are still trying harder.
Back to basics. Just what is the Cobra II? Her's how it breaks down: First you buy a standard Mustang II with a V-8, which will cost you around $4000. Then you add the power steering ($117) power brakes ($54), automatic gearbox ($239), the AM radio/tape deck ($192), the slotted alloy wheels (with fiddling, since the Cobra II comes with styled steel wheels, you get a credit: $96), and miscellany like the lock group ($16) and the fake-leather steering wheel cover ($33). After all that, you add $312 for the Cobra II option, which give you your tape, spoilers, badges and image. Voila! Instant bad-ass.
Adding it all up, you get a Mustang II which is a little heavier than normal (standard V-8: 3225, Cobra II; 3460) and which performs only slightly different. We got the Snake down the strip through the lights at 78.2 mph in 17.7 seconds and pushed it around the 200-foot skidpad for an average lateral acceleration of 0.69g. Stopping it wasn't hard, and the 60-0 distance it recorded of 160 feet is good enough to save you in an emergency. Fade was a problem, however, as we dicovered on the handling course; in order to slow it down for the corners we had to shut it off sooner and sooner as the laps went by. At the end of 20 laps, the brakes had just about had it, although they came to life again after a breather of only fifteen minutes.
Whatever the faults of the Cobra II in ultimate performance, in those attributes more dear to anyone who pays for gas the car shines, at least for a "big" V-8. The RT Driving Cycle rewarded the Cobra II with a respectable 18.1 mpg, a figure good enough to offset the car's smallish 13.0-gallon tank. The rear end of the Cobra II still carries the 3.0:1 ratio, and that allows the engine to loaf along at 3200 rpm at 70 mph.... and we even saw 4600 rmp in top gear, which gives a corrected speed of 101 mph.
Without any of the luxury decor groups, you might think the Cobra II's interior would be drab and uncomfortable. Not so; the blue clothlike vinyl and nice use of brushed aluminum for the dash give the car an elegant simplicity belying its cost. Space utilization in the Cobra II is a bad as most of its cousins, but somehow the car felt better.
The only item changed for the driver in the Cobra II is the leather-wrapped steering wheel rim, which is a nice touch. Otherwise his cockpit is the same as any Mustang II's, with the same drawbacks and pluses. The driving position is comfortable if unikey to inspire go-fast antics, and the lack of reclining seats won't bother many people, although the tallest staffer found it a little uncomfortable. Visibility is understandable restriced by the dummy scoop on the hood, and the outside mirrors seemed to combine both a large sheel size and a small mirror size to infuriate the driver. The zoomie quarter-window slot covers are funtionless and allow just about as much rearward vision as you'd expect from a piece of plastic glued to a small window. Those windows still retain their swing-out function to aid ventilation.
A word about the rear seat: don't. Don't climb in there and don't put any other adult back there either. The cushions look good, but like the spoilers, it's an illusion. However, folding the rear seatback down gives you a nicely carpeted deck just the right size for most conventional household carrying chores. Our previous comments about fastback hatchbacks hold true with the Cobra II; you should expect whatever you put next to the lip to get squashed if it's over a foot high.
Consumer functions aside, ther is another aspect of the Cobra II whic we hadn't expected. It felt good. That is, when you simply drive it around, it feels tight, sold and responsive, no matter what the numbers say. You can motor along quite briskly down your favorite byway and feel as though you've got a lot of potential under your hood, potential the steering response seems to be telling you it can handle. The only trouble is, once you test the truth of the inputs, you're disappointed. Despite a rear anti-roll bar the size of your wrist, the Cobra II understeers right off the graph, or road, or whatever you're driving on. Throw it at maximumspeed inot a decreasing-radius corner and all that happens is that you use up a lot of steering lock and tire as it scrub off speed going crabwise across the apex. But back off from real go-fast playing to a more sedate speed and it feels precise and controllable again. It's a little weird.
Something else a little weird is the amount of attention the Cobra II draws. We had the car for testing in the same time period as the Ferrari Dino and thus could exercise a kind of back-to-back judgment of the two cars' affect on the driving population. Result: the Cobra II blew the Dino out of the water. The bulging, muscular American quality of the Cobra II just seemed to be more interesting to people than the wedgy futuresque styling of the Dino, which if nothing else proves that Ford knows Americans, something underlined by the limited-availability-at-selected-dealers sales program for the Cobra II. Not only is it slick, it's also special.
But the Cobra II's specialness is not something we had to find out at the end of our test. That same dank night we finally found and were blown off by a real street racer, we limped with exaggerated care back into the Real World, into a Howard Johnson's restaurant. As we rolled slowly into a parking slot well inside the glare of the interior lights, we noticed a minor commotion in the booths as the respectable citizens craned necks and stood up to look at our car. When we walked in, a lull stole over the late-night diners and a lot of eyes watched enviously as we made our way to our booth. We walked a little more purposefully then, a little prouder; we knew we didn't deserve admiration, but theydidn't.
Who needs the Real Thing?
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