In 1977 after I had just turned 16 years old, I saw an ad in the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette for a 1971 Cobra for $1,000.
I bugged and bugged my Dad to go look at it as I had saved up that much money from washing dishes at the local Holiday Inn and I was itching to buy my first car.
To be honest, I thought it was a Mustang Shelby Cobra. I didn't know at that time that they made a Torino Cobra. I had never seen one. So we traveled to Decatur Indiana and when the guy opened the garage...there it sat.
It was kind of a dark garage and this thing looked MEAN. It was pewter in color with the Cobrajet Ram Air sticking through the flat black hood. It also had flat black rear window louvers.
It was a 351 Cobrajet Cleveland car with nothing but Thrush mufflers and no exhaust pipes.
When we started it up it sounded amazing! (I think the Cleveland for some reason is still one of the best sounding engines) To make things better it had a factory Hurst 4 speed shifter.
As was the trend back then, it was jacked up in back to the hilt. In fact the only thing you could see out the back fastback window was the sky.
My Dad let me buy it and we drove it home.
I had a blast with it for 3 years before selling it to one of my best friends. He ran it through a fence and then sold it to the nearby junk yard for $25. I didn't know that until months later or I would have rescued it.
That was long before all of the all wheel drive vehicles and even front wheel drive. I drove it with its HUGE rear tires and 4:30 rear end gears all year around. Even in heavy snow and ice.
It was a very fun car. I thought it was the fastest car in the world. About the only thing i did to it was put in a Craig 8 track and some Pioneer TS6 speakers.
30 years later I was able to buy its big brother, a 429 Super Cobrajet Dragpack 1970 Torino Cobra with the same Hurst 4 speed. (I only had it for a week before a drunk 76 year old lady hit me head on)
That was the tale of my first car. I would love to have another like it. (I saw one on Ebay that was the same color scheme for $165,000 yikes!)
