Wednesday, March 31, 2004


Cobra Update: The Mrs. opines that she'd like to have the Cobra too!

Family entertainment....

You never know what you'll come across on a daily basis. We are recompleting an oilwell in Andrews County, Texas and I have spent the last two days at the well site monitoring the activity. It's looking pretty good thanks. Today we decided to go into the town of Andrews for lunch and to bring some hot chow back to our hard working crew.

It was a moment of serendipity. A friend on my recent fishing trip had been telling me that he recently bought a Shelby Cobra, and I was quite jealous. On the drive to the well, I mentioned the car to my partner Del, who is also a road racing fan, and we spent some time talking about the history, setup and specs of the original Cobra's as built by Carroll Shelby. Then.....not more than two hours later as we were driving through Andrews we saw it. A Cobra sitting in the Ford dealers parking lot. We stopped. We summoned a salesman.

After the sales guy told us about the car and determined that we were not crazy people he offered to take us for a spin. Well, no said we, we rather had in mind driving it ourselves. This rather flumoxed the sales guy. He wasn't supposed to allow that. But Del and I are rather smooth talkers and after Del explained that he used to have Porsche's which he has driven on the German autobahn, and I casually let it drop that I had attended the Bob Bondurant Racing School, we were in. I was up first. Strapped into the racing style harness, double check the position of the clutch and brake pedal [both far to the left] and I was off. If you've never driven a small light car with 500 horsepower in a 427 cubic inch engine, it's an experience you should try to have someday. Driving mainly in town, I didn't set any speed records but I did have the opportunity to be knocked back into the seat when I punched it in second gear. This is the original and most genuine Muscle Car of the genre. It was hard to get out of the seat.

So now I'm back in Midland trying to convince the Lovely Bride that really and truly the main reason that I might consider buying the car is that it would be a great family togetherness experience. After I get an enclosed trailer for the Cobra we could spent countless hours of quality family time traveling the country racing at vintage car events. I think that family time is most important and this car is only a goal towards that end. Wish me luck, I'll need it.