1 of 23: 1965 Shelby 427 Cobra Competition - Jay Leno's Garage

[Music] there's nothing like the rawness of this automobile you know gotta remember this thing is almost 55 years old i don't know how smart it is driving somebody else's two and a half million dollar car on the street but it sure is fun welcome to the episode of jayla's garage pandemic edition the car featuring today an authentic 100 real 1965 shelby cobra sc competition model one of only 23 built uh you all know the story of the cobra and i have to go over that 289 and then they put the 427 in it they wanted up the ante a little bit so they built 23 competition models which were almost impossible to sell back in the day because they really weren't streetable seems hard to believe nowadays but they had a hard time selling them this one has won some championships 1968 it won some championships uh it's been through a number of owners uh it's been converted well it's not converted it's still a 1427 sc it just has more streetable mufflers if barely it it's a street car but you can take it on the track proper four speed now you know so many of these have been modified over the years or and some beautiful replicas factory five even carol shelby itself did continuation cars all that kind of thing this car is kind of a rescue uh in the same way rescue a puppy this was rescued from the fires out here in california you know besides the covet thing we now have these horrible fires which the devastation is unbelievable houses machinery cars motors everything just burned down in its wake this is owned by a company called putnam leasing and the fires were extremely close to wherever this car was they put it in a trailer it's just being driven around the city and i got a call could i sort of give it a home for a couple of days or a week until i find a place to put it and i said sure and i said uh we haven't done a real sc cobra can we shoot at my show and they said yeah go right ahead so that's pretty much the story imagine how sad this would be if this was destroyed in a fire you know a friend of mine had a lamborghini murad during the fires back in the early 90s and he built a fireproof garage and he made it out of cinderblock with something in between some fireproof material anyway the fires came through destroyed his house destroyed all the property the trees everything the garage perfect after a couple days it was cool enough to go back the fire so hot it literally had turned into a kiln and melted the mirror was really just a puddle of melted aluminum i mean it was the saddest thing you ever saw and luckily that did not happen to this car i guess you all know the story of the kobe you know there are so many replicas out there it's fascinating to see one exactly as it left the factory because people go it's all stock except for the five speed except the different breaks well actually the engine is a 351 whatever this is what they look like and it's certainly a mean looking car and in 1968 there was just nothing faster i think this was the fastest accelerating street car in the world you know carl shelby used to have that game he play he'd take people's variety put a hundred dollar bill on the dashboard he taped the dashboard and they and i say grab the dollar bill if you can grab it you can have it and he would accelerate so hard and the guys nobody ever got the hundred dollar bill that's how hard these pull uh nowadays in the era of mclaren f1s and p1s and enzos and all these other cars even tesla's this kind of acceleration is not unheard of but back in the day it was and combine that with the rawness of the automobile the side pipes screaming in your ear you know the wind blowing there's no there's no protection of any kind no side windows no door it's the most visceral experience you can have driving one of these and extremely lightweight i don't know what these weigh maybe 2200 2300 pounds if that uh pretty amazing car pretty amazing car let's take a look at the legendary engine this is the 427 side order let me open up this hood for you i'm going on this side because this is where the the rod is let's go the other way that goes this way this is the famous fe block this is i guess the pinnacle of the big block ford era these are popular from 58 to about 76. notice it has a single carburetor whenever you see a 427 carbon street has the dual quads but i think they're a little over carbureted when they're in racing this is the way they did it with this around the carburetor as well why is it called the side oil you see these spent a lot of time revving above 5000 rpm so they put a passage in the side of the block to direct oil directly to the crankshaft to keep it from well from seizing i guess or from running without lubrication that's where the side oiler name comes from pretty mean looking setup as you can see it's funny how basic this looks now and this seems so complicated to us when we were kids there's your actual uh chassis plate right there with a csx number this is the 10th of 23 built let's see what it says here yeah you know i'm so used to seeing phony versions of this made-up ones to see it actually as it's supposed to be this is exactly as it came from the factory i don't know about that fan i think that's probably added on and that's permissible because you want to drive it on the street i'm not sure if the competition cars even had fans but what did these have some like 12 and a half compression i mean these were just monster motors on the street they were rated about 425 horsepower i think it was closer to 475 some people say 550 it could be but in a body this light just incredible incredibly fast this car has been beautifully restored i would prefer actually all original i would have liked to have seen it with some of the scratches and cuts and you know after being in a bunch of fights you want to see that patina you know and this did win a couple of championships back in the 60s so it's got real race history the body was damaged and it was fixed the chassis was never damaged so the body work was all corrected i'm sure being a race car got beat up pretty badly but it's a real sc that's the thing that makes it it's a real competition car it's not all original original i think the engine is a later replacement block but the correct replacement block it's just a matter of the number isn't necessarily the same one it left with originally but that's okay i mean this you know all this numbers matching stuff really came later after this in the 60s and 70s i don't remember people being overly concerned about that in fact truth be told most 427 cobras sold had the 428 motor because they ran out of these 427 motors they're extremely expensive this is a hard car to sell much like a viper you know you couldn't really lock this car you couldn't i mean it didn't come with a top but that wasn't anything it was easy to break into you couldn't park it on the street so you had to be a real real enthusiast it really made more sense to buy a corvette because that had locking doors and air conditioning and everything else so you had to be real purist to buy this thing back in the day and it's just a fantastic car let's take a look at the trunk well there is really not much of a trunk but i'll show you what it looks like anyway okay here's my impression of a real cobra owner talking to a kid i miss is that real yes it's a real one no it's not a kit i mean they must drive the nuts the guys that have these because some of these kits are so incredible so beautifully done it's hard to tell the difference but this one as i said as i will continue to say is a real one let's see what the trunk looks like as you can see this has all been redone as well this is all new aluminum here look at the massive fuel pumps i mean you could use those as fire hoses good heavens you've got a fire extinguisher system in there as well and of course you got these push bumpers for race cars well come on let's take him for a ride and we'll show you what she can do sounds pretty good [Music] there's nothing like the rawness of this automobile you know gotta remember this thing is what is it 50 almost 55 years old but still impressive everything about it is just so visceral it's like a boxer or a bad knuckle fighter you know the boxer's probably the better fighter but the bare knuckle guy is the one that scares the hell out of here and that's what this is it's like a bare knuckle fighter this thing it's just unbelievable that being said this one seems very well restored the uh steering box is fabulous it steals very nice it feels very light and of course it is very light compared to monaco you know nowadays 3 300 pounds is considered light this is a thousand pounds less than that so pretty amazing you know this car is valued about almost two and a half million dollars so i gotta take it easy it's not my car i think we got this insurance for one day just take this kind of around the block a little bit [Music] i've driven many many cobala replicas and they all feel different this feels original it feels exactly what carol shelby intended it to be you might have a hard time to convince the cops these are street mufflers but apparently they are engine idle's nice runs nice everything works these always tend to be a little cold-blooded it still hasn't reached operating temperature yet and it's 100 degrees here in los angeles well not 100 probably low 90s anyway i just realized this car has no fuel gauge we've got oil pressure oil temperature you got water temperature amperage and fuel pressure i guess being a race car they don't need a [Music] fuel a fuel gauge i don't know how smart it is driving somebody else's two and a half million dollar car on the street but it sure is fun i always love this 427 motor i had one in a cobra replica that we built years ago and i swapped it out for a camera motor which i like better the camera motor is just an overhead cam version of this engine and whereas the regular 427 was went to 5500 or so the camera went to 7 000. yeah yeah you know modern hyper cars just insulate you from a lot of the smells and the wind and the noise this ah six o'clock we're in the middle of russia and traffic here in l.a and as i said before i'm in somebody else's two and a half million dollar race car i have no idea how much gas is in the tank might as well use up what i have like i said nothing about this car it feels very good feels very tight everything seems to work i don't know the last time i have no idea how much fuel is in this tank i don't really get stuck in rush hour traffic so and i went i i went past two speed traps to me that's a sign the sad truth is that a lot of the coma replicas are very good in some cases even better but it's fun to drive one that's all original you know this has the coil springs and the more modern suspension they learned a lot in those early years in the 60s and when they redesigned the suspension and all of this really made it a more able race car but this car is like driving a hand grenade it's a lot of fun it runs very cool i'm 80 degrees centigrade on a day like today i'm sure that modern fan helps i'm not sure if i mentioned the horse bar on this particular car it's rated at 6 20 which is impressive and once again the cool part is it's an honest to god race car exactly as carol shelby built it car number 10 out of 23. these are the most expensive cobras you get back in the day they're probably close to eight or nine thousand dollars which seems almost ridiculous nowadays but this was the most fearsome streetcar you could buy the hemis were fast but they're in big heavy sedans you know this thing oh my god anyway this was probably a little bit shorter because as i said we quickly borrowed this car we had a chance to shoot something with it i don't want to abuse it it's not mine it's a perfect restoration in fact i may be the only person who've driven this since it was restored i don't know but i'm just so glad it wasn't lost in the fire so listen we'll see you guys next week and we'll have something else [Music] new [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,574,327

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Shelby, Cobra, 427, Putnam Leasing, Competition, Carroll Shelby, CSX, SCCA, race car, super car, car porn, car nerd, gearhead, racing, Ford v. Ferrari, V8, American, CNBC Prime, CNBC, Jay Leno's Garage, Jay Leno, Cars, Jay Leno Cars, Car Reviews, Vintage Cars, Classic Cars, Super Cars, Sports Cars, Race Cars, Restored Cars, Jay Lenos Garage, jay leno garage, leno garage, lenos garage, jay leno garage tour, 1965 Shelby 427 Cobra, 1965 Shelby 427 Cobra Competition

Id: eVxSqnNQR9s

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020