The set up:
Ford wanted Ferrari taken down a couple pegs
Shelby was a known contender for the title
The problem: 100 cars had to be built to get the FIA cert so it was legal for 1966 competition. They weren't.
Here comes the dirt!
In the present day, 50 years later, the Carroll Shelby Trust announced that they will finish what the old master started — building the remaining 1965 Cobra 427 S/Cs to be sold to the public as track-only race cars, three years after Shelby's death.
Back in 1965, Shelby completed 53 of the proposed 100 Cobra 427 S/Cs required to comply with FIA GT rules that stated all manufacturers must produce at least 100.
In 1988 Shelby decided to resurrect the remaining ‘65 427 S/Cs — primarily because he knew it would reap large profits, and restart his legacy that had faded through lousy GT500s rebadged as 1970s because they didn't sell in 1969, Turbo 4 cylinder Mopars, van kit conversions for GM, and the Dakota mid size truck.
Five ‘65 427 S/Cs were built and sold between 1990 and 1992, all with original 1965 titles.
Shelby had been quoted as saying the cars derived from old AC chassis he had kept in storage since 1965, but had lost the original titles. According to a
Los Angeles Times report from 1993, this claim helped him secure duplicate titles from the DMV — but it later emerged that the chassis were in fact built by McCluskey Ltd. in 1991 and ‘92, with only the motor and transmission being original from 1965.
Shelby later backtracked, admitting that McCluskey did in fact build the chassis — said to be an exact AC replica, even duplicating the coarse welds and saw cuts to perfection — but responded by saying, “If I said they were 1965 chassis or if I inferred it, it meant that they were built in the ‘60s and I was using '65 engines which means that they are '65 cars if I so choose to say so."
Shelby reportedly asked Angliss to build the chassis for the then-new 427 S/Cs in 1988 and ship them to the U.S. labelled as “washing machine parts.” Shelby planned to let the cars rust in the rain for a while and then claim he had stored them since 1965. “It is perfectly legal for me to build a new car today and register it and sell it as a '65,” he said.
The new Cobra 427 S/Cs being built in 2015 will have a CSX VIN and badge number originally assigned in 1965. The MSO and title documents were all signed by Carroll Shelby himself, and the cars will only be track legal.
Like the revived Cobras from the ‘80s and ‘90s, these Cobras will be sold as zero miles, newly-made 1965 models. Except, they aren't.
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/even-death-cant-stop-carroll-shelby-from-selling-118800132277.html
