Back during an era where power steering was regarded as a triviality, Carroll Shelby had an idea. And that idea was to shoehorn an American V8 in a British open-top sports car.
And so, the Shelby Cobra was born. This fellow here is the first-ever example of the breed, known as chassis number CSX 2000. Care to guess why this bad boy from times bygone holds the record for the most expensive American car ever sold at auction? Well, it just fetched $13.75 million.
To put that huge amount of green dollar bills into perspective, 13.75 big ones will buy you Prince’s Yellow Cloud guitar not once, not twice, but a hundred times over. RM Sotheby’s are the peeps who made it all happen at the Monterey, California sale. The question is, why did someone pay so much for a very old car that used to belong to Carroll Shelby?
For starters, CSX 2000 never left Carroll’s ownership. Secondly, the status of first-ever Shelby Cobra ever made weighs greatly in the eyes of well-heeled car collectors. And finally, just look at it. See those ripped seats? That’s called patina. And car collectors sure do love their cars with patina.
“Offered by the Carroll Hall Shelby Trust, CSX 2000’s strong sales price represents a new record for an American car sold at auction, besting the previous record,” notes RM Sotheby’s. The previous record-holder is a 1968 Ford GT40 Gulf / Mirage that went for $11 million back in 2012. So yeah, whatever’s next after CSX 2000 has big shoes to fill.
Compared to the badass 427 Super Snake, the Shelby Cobra before your eyes is propelled by a 260 cu.in. (4.3-liter) V8 engine with a more-than-adequate amount of grunt for a car as light as the CSX 2000. Road & Track had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to test drive this thing back in the ‘60s and, according to them, Shelby Cobra CSX 2000 is capable of hitting 60 mph (96 km/h) in an hair-triggering 4.2 seconds.
What’s even more impressive, CSX 2000 can finish the quarter mile in 13.8 seconds, on to a top end of 153 miles per hour (246 km/h). By comparison, we are living in an era where German manufacturers have agreed to electronically limit their cars to 155 mph (250 km/h).
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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