While many of us spend years bumbling our way through the build of our dream car, making mistake after costly mistake along the way, there are others out there who take the smart approach from the get-go. Stu Trinnaman is one of those ‘other’ guys. He’s the first to admit that he’s got very specific tastes, but has neither the mechanical aptitude nor the time to spend toiling away on building a car himself.

So when he sold the family boat a few years back and decided that finally the time had come to own the car he’d been dreaming about since his teenage years, he set about formulating an impressive plan.

Spending hour after hour researching on the internet, discussing with local car owners and workshops, his plan developed into one in which he had a very good overview of everything that would be involved.

The dream was to own a (more…)

This bizarre video is for all the people out there who get precious about their hardwood floors. We all know the type, they tell the boys off for wearing black soled shoes and the ladies get in trouble for wearing heels. Come on, it’s just a floor isn’t it?

The mystery man in this clip clearly has a disregard for one particular hardwood floor and has just the tool to show how he feels – a Cobra roadster. But there are many unknown factors in this video. How exactly he gets the car into this small area? Why he is hating on this floor so much? Why doesn’t he use a baseball cap to cover his bald spot? (more…)

Most people pop down the road to buy a new car. Kelvin Perfect flew to the other side of the world to get his.

True story: when Kelvin ‘KP’ Perfect decided to purchase build number 82 of 355 Sonic Blue Ford Mustang Cobra SVT (Special Vehicle Team) convertibles produced in 2003, he knew he couldn’t look locally. Not because he didn’t want to buy a New Zealand one, but rather because there were no examples of a 2003 SVT Cobra Mustang convertible in the country. As far as KP knows, his car is still the only one of its kind in New Zealand, and one of very few Mustangs of that era in the country. And that makes it a little bit special. That and the fact that KP’s Cobra SVT has its own personally signed certificate from Edsel Ford (Henry Ford’s grandson) to verify its limited edition status.

This ’03 Mustang isn’t KP’s first purchase from the States. Prior to picking up this pristine Cobra SVT, he’d flown there, bought a mint ’65 Mustang convertible, driven it from New York to San Francisco and then shipped it Down Under — he probably hadn’t banked on doing that twice in his lifetime.

However, although KP has a passion for convertibles, things weren’t destined to work out for him and the ’65. A couple saw it at a show, fell in love with it and decided they had to have it. A deal was struck, and the appropriate amount of money was sent in the right direction to force KP’s hand. (more…)

Grudge matches are settled on the drag strip between car-proud gents all the time and usually it wouldn’t make for great news, but this one is a little different.

A no-nonsense, classic American muscle car finished in full chrome up against the latest thoroughbred Italian supercar in a straight up quarter mile race. That doesn’t exactly happen every day, but what could make this furious fixture even more tense? A $400,000 personal wager, that’s what.

The story is that a pair of cashed-up mates over in the States got into a good ole ‘my car’s quicker than yours’ debate which ultimately led to the dragstrip. Dan Bilzerian, owner of the fully pimped and highly modified 1965 427 Shelby Cobra, placed a bet that his American muscle car can beat his friend Tom Goldstein’s brand spankers 2011 Ferrari 458 Italia in a quarter mile race. It was a big call, Ferrari don’t exactly make slow cars and the 458 came with some handy tech like a launch control system and lightning fast transmission.

Earlier this month, these two big kids took their respective rides down to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway racetrack and put their money where their mouth is.

Check out the video below to see how it went down. It’s intense. (more…)

It was almost 50 years ago when the sports car world was changed forever by the Ford-powered Cobra being introduced at the 1962 New York Auto Show. Now Shelby American is marking the occasion with a limited edition offering of 50 continuation “street car” Cobras to celebrate that milestone. Each will be painted “Shelby black” with red leather interior, special badges, wire wheels and other items.

“Fifty years after its introduction, the Shelby Cobra is still an international symbol of high performance,” said John Luft, president of Shelby American. “Combining a robust, powerful American engine with a lightweight European chassis was brilliant. Half a century later, the Cobra remains one of the most coveted cars in the world. Shelby’s formula still resonates today and is followed by automakers worldwide.”

Built from 1962-1965, the CSX2000 series small block Cobra was born in Southern California when Shelby’s crew re-engineered the AC Ace to accept Ford’s new small block. Weighing only 916kg, the Cobra proved nimble, quick and reliable. The racing version dominated, culminating in the 1965 FIA World Championship.

In 1996, Carroll Shelby began manufacturing the small block “street version” Cobra once again. Today, the cars are component vehicles that can be fitted with a proper drive train by customers. Each car is built to order and delivered as a rolling chassis, less drive train, with a 1965 MSO. The 50th Anniversary Edition cars have some unique differences. (more…)

When a normal Cobra just doesn’t do it for you any more, what do you do? Build yourself a Daytona with a twist of boost, of course.

Im the ultimate Cobra fan,” says Keith Lane, the creator of this beautiful supercharged Daytona. He’s not kidding ”  the swoopy hard top coupe is his third Cobra.

“Number one is still in the shed but soon to be sold to pay for the Daytona, number two was a race car that met its demise at Pukekohe Park Raceway and this is number three,” he reveals.

So what drives a guy like Keith to the cars? “I used to have British sports cars ” Triumph TRs, Austin Healys and the like, but the Cobras are just something different.” If a common-or-garden variety Cobra is different, then Daytonas are really something else.

The story of how this car came to be is a lot longer than it should have been. In theory it would have been on the road about six years ago, all going to plan. But when the body first arrived from America in 2002, Keith was bitterly disappointed. “The doors and bonnet didn’t fit and the rear wheel arches were a different shape to each other,” he says. And that was merely the tip of the iceberg. The fact the car wasn’t a kit as such, in which all parts were provided, also adds a great deal of complexity.

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A car that’s been raced by the same driver for 23 years? That’d be Vern Muller’s Falcon.

It’s rare to find a race car that has been competing consistently for the best part of a quarter of a century. It’s rarer still to find one that’s been competing for quarter of a century and had the same owner throughout its entire racing career.

Vern Muller is one of the most genuine racers you will ever meet. He competes on a shoestring and lets enthusiasm take care of the rest. He’s seen several muscle car classes come and go, and has competed in just about all of them. And he owns one of the coolest Falcon hardtops you’ll ever see.

Vern started racing in the early ’80s, in a genuine XA GT Falcon sedan. The XA was really just a warmed-up road car that Vern regularly melted the tyres off in production muscle car races. Back in the 1970s there was a production car championship called the Castrol GTX series. It was a big-time series, in which some major names competed. It went through several different face-lifts, and each time it did, one brand would slowly emerge and eventually dominate.

In the early years it was the Chrysler Charger E49. Then the XA Falcon GT. And, finally, the series saw total domination by a hoard of second-generation Z28 Camaros. Eventually, Motorsport NZ knocked it on the head and the last Castrol GTX championship was held in 1978, won by a guy called Barry Lloyd in a lime green XA Falcon GT hardtop, after all the Camaros had been banned.

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