Teslas displaced my exotic cars many years ago, but with the Roadster still an indeterminate distance in the future, I had been feeling an urge for something a little more… analog.
I was initially thinking about a 60’s Camaro with modernized running gear, but a part of me was also nostalgic for my old MGB. I eventually remembered that there was a car right at the intersection of muscle car grunt and British roadster charm – the ‘65 Shelby Cobra.
It is kind of amazing that the federal Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015 authorizes small runs of replica vehicles to basically ignore all the safety and emissions regulations. All the paternalism and crusading was just pushed aside in the name of letting small companies make badass cars.
On my birthday, Trista nudged me into visiting
@EMotorcars where they had a dozen different replicas on hand. I was partial to the idea of a carbureted 427 with a magneto as a Mad Max post-EMP LARP, but practicality prevailed, and I wound up with a modern Coyote crate motor in a
@Backdraftracing chassis.