Another Newbie
 

Hello all,

Being new to this group I thought I'd take a minute to introduce myself and ask a question of the Cobra experts. My name is Bryan and my wife and I have a 1997 Cobra convertable. The car sits in the garage and rarely gets used, but we have decided to change that. Last year we ran adds several times to sell the car because we never seem to drive it, but nobody in our area wanted a Cobra even below the wholesale book. So now we find ourselves blessed for lack of a better word with a fun car that in the past we didn't have the sense to appreciate. Thankfully the only person that wanted our car had only $3,000 to spend and an attitude to boot.

My question is this...

We purchased from the original owner who was a collector of sorts, but a person who drove his cars. The reason he sold the Cobra is that his 6 car garage was full and he needed space for a Viper GTS that he had just purchased. When we bought the car about 3 years ago it had never seen rain and was in remarkably new condition. It sat under a cover in the garage and he treated it with love, almost as if it were a family member. (He is a long time family friend, and we have seen how he fusses over his cars.) He had traveled out of state to purchase the car because he claimed the colors that he wanted were hard to find. He purchased it from a dealer in Nevada due to its rarity and there being no dealers in CA at the time with this available. Okay, blah, blah, blah... Jumping to current day, we have this car that was talked up pretty well by the seller/friend at the time, but we were going to buy it anyway. So now I'm thinking about doing some work to it to make it more fun to drive. The idea of doing some handling mods, brakes, supercharger, and whatever else strikes my fancy looks like a fun thing to do. Getting ready to pull the trigger and start ordering parts I stumbled across a site that lists build numbers for the Cobras and it turns out there are only limited numbers of our car produced just as the seller originally told us. The car is white with a white top and black leather. It seems that Ford less than 100 of them in this configuration in 97. Not being a car buff I really don't know what this means if anything. Is this the kind of thing that would make my toes curl one day knowing that I modified and destroyed the originality of a collectable, or is this something that will never be desireable by collectors? My gut is telling me that this is car is special because it is a Cobra, but the low numbers built in this color combo means nothing. Truthfully, I'm hoping for the latter because having fun upgrading the car could be done guilt free.

Thanks for any input.

Bryan

welcome.

The SVT Cobras are special to all of us. That said, I don't think these cars will ever be worth a ton of money down the road. Thus, you see a lot of people adding performance modifications, and personal appearance modifications. One thing is, have fun with it. It is your car. Drive it, modify it to your liking. The white top option on any color Cobra is very low. I know the Pacific Green convertibles offered in 1997, they only made 8 with a white top.

That said, if you are looking for some fun upgrades, my first few choices would be a short throw shifter(most of us use MGW www.mgwltd.com) a cold air intake(lots of different brands, but stay away from the chrome ones), a catback exhaust system(again lots of different brands out there). Since your car is a convertible, I suggest getting a full subframe connector done. It will help stiffen up the car a lot(Maximum Motorsports). There are other things you can do to improve the suspension. A good thing to do would be to pick up a Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords Magazine. A lot of good articles, and ads for stuff in that magazine.

We would love to have you join our club, officially. www.scmcstore.com

Welcome to the club!! Like Nckissfan said, and I agree, these cars won't be worth much down the road...so have some fun!! Suspension, start with the subframe connectors, those make quite a difference. Then search for springs...there are a few combinations you might like.

The short throw shifter is a great idea as well...something I need to still get!

Then the engine...well there's a ton you can do with that...I happen to be partial to superchargers, but turbo's are also great...then again you have a limitation on horsepower before your engine blows, so do some research and figure out what kind of power you are looking for...

A lot of the guys on the board here also take their Cobras to track events...you should, also! It's not just fun, but you learn a lot...in your case, if you decide to participate, you'll also need a roll bar...I use a 4-point bolt-in.

Anyway, you'll have a lot of fun...even if you don't modify the car!!