From 1962-67, Shelby American screwed together fewer than 1000 Cobras. They’re all desirable, but a few have a particularly special history. One of them—CSX 2003—is among the very earliest Cobras ever built, and we now know that it will be up for grabs in a few weeks at Broad Arrow’s Monterey auction. And although this a real-deal Cobra, it wasn’t screwed together at Shelby American. A Pennsylvania car dealer built it.
For the first batch of Cobras built during 1962 and 1963, the general flow of things went like this: AC in England would ship a painted and trimmed car—sans engine and gearbox—to Shelby in Los Angeles, where the Ford bits went in (specifically a 260-cubic-inch V-8 and BorgWarner four-speed). Final assembly was completed there, in California. But for the earliest run of cars, built just following the excitement brought on by the Cobra prototype (CSX 2000), Carroll Shelby hadn’t yet set up his full operation.
Fortunately, racer and early Shelby backer Ed Hugus stepped up to assemble the first handful of production Cobras, including CSX 2001 and CSX 2003 (2002 was a race car), at his Pittsburgh dealership called “European Cars.” In doing so, he became the first Cobra dealer, as well as the car’s official distributor for the East Coast.
But CSX 2003 isn’t more than one of the very first Cobras. Broad Arrow’s research has found that, before Ford had reached a formal manufacturing or racing agreement with Shelby, the car went to Dearborn for evaluation and road tests by company engineers. Even Henry Ford II sampled it. The car then sold to George Reed of the RRR (Reed’s Racing Rats) race team in Illinois. During his ownership, Reed displayed it at the 1963 12 Hours of Sebring while his other Cobra was taking part in the race. It then reportedly sat in storage from 1969-79, received some work to get it back on the road in 1980, and passed through a handful of owners before passing to the current owner, who has owned the car since way back in 1989.
The consignor had already bought a 289 Cobra the year before, in 1988, but that car’s previous owner had a case of seller’s remorse and wanted the car back. He agreed, but “only if you find me another Cobra, and if I approve we can swap.” He accepted CSX 2003 in trade and has kept it ever since, maintaining its impressive level of preservation (and picking up one of the ubiquitous Carroll Shelby signatures on the glovebox along the way). The consignor, Broad Arrow says, even daily drove the car for a while.
Regardless of condition or configuration, any genuine Cobra is a seriously valuable car. Generally, the 260-powered ones are the least valuable in the quiver, but in our price guide, the #2 (“excellent”) value is still $926,000, and the #1 (“concours”) value $1.1M. Given CSX 2003’s early build date, test history with Ford, and impressive level of originality, though, it could sell for even more when it crosses the block in Monterey this August. Broad Arrow’s presale estimate for it is $1.5M-$2M, which would make it among the most expensive small-block Cobras ever sold.
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