Shelby Cobra vs Dodge Viper: two American icons battle it out… in Britain

Who else would you call? Although the Cobra was always more in line with Ford (it started a sort of Ford/Shelby relationship that culminated in the GT40 Le Mans project), Dodge knew exactly what lightning it was trying to pack into the Viper and who to call on to help. creation happens. The man making the call, the man who told his design team to create a latter-day Cobra, was auto industry legend and then Chrysler ‘Maximum’ president Bob Lutz. Together with chairman Lee Iacocca, he took the project from clay model to production reality in late 1991.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

But it was Carroll Shelby who stepped out in front of the crowds to demonstrate the prototype as a pace car for that year’s Indy 500, and Shelby whose fingerprints are all over the Viper. If not to the same extent as the Cobra. You see, while the Viper was Lutz’s brainchild brought to life by a small team within a large corporation, the Cobra was Shelby’s brainchild from start to finish.

It started life as a British sports car, the AC Ace, which arrived in 1953, but was packed with pre-war straight-six engines that weren’t fit for purpose. In 1961, a tie-up with Ford in America was arranged by Carroll Shelby and gave AC access to the Windsor V8. The AC Cobra was born as a British sports car. But Shelby immediately saw her racing potential. In the US, the name AC was not used – there is the Shelby Cobra.

His first attempt, using a 6.4-litre Ford FE V8, was nicknamed the ‘Turd’ by driver Ken Miles. It was fast in the right, but practically unguided. The chassis was modified, the Mark III arrived in 1965, but too late to qualify for homologation that year. 56 racing cars were produced, but most were dismantled for road use. They remained remarkably powerful, the 427cu engine tuned to 485 horsepower and good for 185 mph. She weighed only 1068 kg. But with the GT40 project looming large, the Cobra era was over by 1967.

The originals became instant collectors’ items, but the shape was so iconic that production was licensed and continued. Boy it’s hard to understand what happened, with whom and where. Everyone wanted a piece of the action, no one wanted to pay, appearances appeared, chaos reigned. Today, Superformance builds official Shelby Cobras under license, and they carry the same CSX chassis numbers as the originals. Think of it as the tenth generation and you’re not far off.

Officially imported into the UK (right hand drive no less, for £195,000) by Clive Sutton, it’s new build but period correct and the vibe is spot on. I’ve driven a 427 and this has the same powerful charisma and V8 thunder. The same shaky, flawed dynamic, too. Instead of the old big-block FE V8, it’s Ford’s Coyote 5.0-liter. Don’t worry, with 460bhp and 420lb ft, it makes almost the same power as a semi-competition 427, and – most importantly – has the grunt and attitude to go with it.

What is it about these American V8s and their ability to tap directly into your primal cortex? The noise is Neolithic, a Jurassic roar as felt as heard. I’m a grumpy neanderthal once the blub-blub-blub starts, I find it irresistible. So does everyone around – its effect on people is like the opening bars of “I Wanna Be Like You” in Baloo in of The Jungle Book. It’s smooth at low revs, will pull in fifth, but changes character to a abrasive racing engine at the top end.

Next to it Mark Riccioni’s Viper is calm, almost cultured. The exhaust pulses from that V10 are softer, it bursts into life rather than snarling, but if there’s any doubt about its potential, consider the way the exhaust blows the stones in the car park when you twist the throttle. That’s an 8.0-liter V10 pulsating up front. Commonly thought to be derived from a RAM 2500 truck, it was more developed than that. Lamborghini (then owned by Chrysler) gave the engine a hand, which saw power increase from 300 to 400 horsepower. Torque stood at 465 lb ft. However, the damn engine weighed over 320kg. The whole car, 1490 kg. Apparently it was good for 0-60 mph in 4.2 seconds and 165 mph, all told. A test for the tassel tape.

Engines dominate the experience in both cars. Each will happily leave the tickover, and the Viper in particular is well-suited for interplanetary exploration. The sixth pulls about 1,400 rpm at 70 mph. But while the Cobra has that high-revving racing demeanor, the Viper’s engine is lazier. She struggles to overcome her inertia. It goes hard, but it’s never urgent, it never picks up speed, it never begs to be crushed. You could tell it wasn’t meant to be a sports car engine.

It’s the Cobra that has the most addicting engine… and the cleanest, most precise and most satisfying gearbox too. It shifts cleanly and quickly with no threat of missed shifts, while the Viper makes it very easy to shift from fourth to reverse instead of fifth. It just makes you a little nervous from rushing the lever around. And it’s not as satisfying when you do.

And that sums up the Viper’s driving experience. It’s a bit woolly around the edges, lacking the sharpness, response and responsiveness you’d expect. It’s more of a GT in execution, the input responses are quite soft, almost laggy, but although there isn’t much feel, you can tell an edge to the tires and that’s when your Spidey senses start to vibrate. “Get out now,” they say, “before anything goes wrong.” I once drove a Viper GTS (at an airfield, thank goodness) and I remember to this day how clumsy it felt, how uncomfortable and unsophisticated it felt. And how quickly he had left me.

Both are pretty messy and rudimentary to run. The Cobra didn’t live a long enough motorsport life to develop further, the Viper is the concept car that made it far enough and no further. The Cobra is small and sharp enough to encourage exploitation, but there’s something about the Viper that sends chills down your spine good and early. Neither rides well, the Cobra shakes and shakes worse than a period Morgan, the Viper rounds off the edges better but feels heavy and dull.

The Cobra is easily the better of the two, the more fun and addicting

It is the Cobra that is most convincing as a static object. It doesn’t try to pretend it’s something it’s not. No roof, just a ton, no equipment, but the dials and keys are great; the trunk is large and those side skirts that flank the windshield are much more effective than you’d expect at expelling air. From afar Viper flatters to deceive. It looks like a proper car. Then the laughter descends. The roof and side screens are sub-Caterham, sub-Umbrella. There are no exterior door handles. The seat belts are mounted on the door for some strange reason, the plastic is beyond comedy: badly molded and bad to the touch, the worst the 80s had to offer.

You can spot the commonalities between the two: the same massively wide transmission tunnel that puts the driver and passenger in different zip codes, as if Dodge were to put the driveshaft in the Channel Tunnel. Massively offset pedals. Curious seats and driving position. Rear axle boom.

The Cobra is easily the better of the two, the more fun and addicting. Primitive it may be, but courage and fury make it a force of nature. But just look at the Viper. The experience of being around him is enough to rock you back on your heels. It has such an impact, it’s so funny, amazingly weird. The perfection of those three-spoke alloys, the side pipes, the pusher covers, the sheer width. It’s a fantasy. A roaring reimagining of Cobra. They were $50k new and survived until 2017. There were coupes and even a second generation from 2003. But if you’re going to have one, it should be this one, the original, the most annoying and therefore the most expensive. the good Consider yourself warned.