2 February 2015

Barn Find Cobra - The Snake's Alive!


The barn find car. The term, once reserved for cars that were hidden away in storage, forgotten for a generation or three, now seemingly used as a catch-all term for a vehicle thats just been dumped in a garage for as long as it takes for the owner's Spotify Premium subscription to run out. To be honest, most of the cars you see now on eBay that are described as such are anything but; just another descriptive way of chiseling more cash out of a classic car-buying public.
But the car you see here is (in my opinion) a card-carrying, fully paid-up member of the time-warp club. A 1964 Shelby Cobra 289 that has been laid up since 1974 with all the original extras; it went under the hammer at Gooding & Co's Scottsdale auction on 16-17 January. It was expected to sell for $1-1.4m; it sold for $979,000. I just hope this the new owner doesn't restore it; earned patina like this is too good to waste.

- Amazosan


Heres Gooding & Co's description of the car:

"Numbered CSX 2436 and documented in the Shelby American World Registry, this highly authentic 289 Cobra marks an outstanding “barn find” example, factory equipped with all of the aforementioned upgrades and improvements applied to the Cobra during the model’s production run.
"Originally finished in Rouge Iris with beige upholstery, CSX 2436 was billed to Shelby American on May 14, 1964, shipped to Los Angeles on May 26th aboard the SS Diemerdyk, and invoiced on August 24, 1964, to Greenwich, Connecticut’s Town & Country Motors, Inc.
"The Cobra was equipped with the “Class A” accessory package, including WSW tires, luggage rack, antifreeze, a radio, and antenna, and shipping – all for a total cost of $5,812.31. Air freighted to Connecticut by TWA, CSX 2436 was purchased by Timothy Crowley, for whom the Town & Country dealership requested a dash plaque on December 9, 1964.
"The Cobra’s next known owner was James Wallerstein of White Plains, New York, from whom it eventually passed to Ed Jurist’s Vintage Car Store of Nyack, New York, on July 16, 1971. Peter DeSilva of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, purchased the Cobra for a reported $5,000 in September 1971, with the car listed in the SAAC Registry as having been finished in black with a beige interior, equipped with 6″ painted wire wheels and a Raydyot rearview mirror, and with approximately 30,000 miles registered on the odometer at the time.
"In 1974, Mr. DeSilva traded CSX 2436 to his friend Sy Allen, who then moved to Vermont, where he established a dirt, oval racing track. At this point, the Cobra was placed on jacks and stored with the top up inside of Allen’s heated barn/workshop where it remained secluded and out of sight for 40 years.
"A remarkable time capsule example, the Cobra’s prior Rouge Iris lacquer paint finish is revealed in the various areas around the car where the black paint has faked of. With the Cobra thankfully retaining almost all of the small and extremely hard-to-find detail items that are usually replaced during restoration, the interior remains unrestored along with the undisturbed engine bay. The 289 engine has been serviced and returned to running condition.
"Standing proudly as a late-production 289 Cobra with rack and pinion steering and desirable factory upgrades, CSX 2436 is simply irreplaceable as one of precious few Cobras remaining in such wonderfully preserved condition today."

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