If you said to me (and I fucking wish you WOULD!!!), ‘Andy, you can have any car you like; I’ll pay for it’, what would I choose? Well, if I wanted a truck I’d get a Bentley. They have convertibles and it simply MUST be convertible. Range Rover? I’d literally rather take the fucking bus. They look similar. Tesla? Shoot me now. A Ferrari? Lamborghini?? Naaaahhhh, too poncey. I’d rather have a McLaren than either anyway. But that’s not what I’d choose. Because I love old cars. From the days when style was everything (except for brutal levels of power, but we’ll get to that in a minute) and no-one gave a shit if having a gorgeous chrome bumper might cost 1 mile-per-gallon in lack of aerodynamics. You make it chrome. Also, no-one ever bought a car like I would want for its fuel economy.

Jeremy Clarkson summed up the issue in this week’s Sunday Times, when he said cars are either made ‘practical’ and hence dull as dishwater, or ‘for fun’ and they’e impractical, barely functional and NEVER have iPads on the dashboard.

And this was exemplified in the 50s and 60s when fuel was cheap and style was paramount. Green Party members probably shouldn’t read on. In fact, they should just fuck off, in any circumstance.

So if you bought me a 1960 Porsche Speedster convertible, I would probably love you forever. But if you bought me a 1958 Chevrolet Corvette (in red; it must be in red even though I generally hate red cars. Never said I was logical or consistent), then I would happily bear you children.

But what I really want, what I really, really want is this. Above.

The AC Cobra. Year irrelevant because they still make them. And have done, in tiny editions, with many ‘replica’ versions using original parts, since 1953. And Carroll Shelby’s original idea was to find a tiny, British car manufacturer and get them to design a beautiful body (we were good at pretty bodywork back then), with a very large space under the bonnet. For which he shipped over the biggest, most powerful, brutal, excessive, engines America could make. And America specialised in such things. Because the original, straight-6 Ford Zephyr engine was never going to win races for team Shelby. That was a 2 litre engine. Shelby tried the ‘small block’ Ford V8, which was 4.2 litres and that went faster. Oooooh. So he increased it to the 6.2 litre version and what d’ya know? That was faster still. The addition of a supercharger didn’t exactly slow it down either.

Because that’s what Americans did, ‘back then’. Just keep adding power til it bursts.

The one pictured here has a 6.3 litre Chevy engine. That should be big enough. And odd because Shelby was employed by Ford and virtually all Cobras have Ford engines. But WTF?, if the Chevy goes a bit faster, drop it in!!! Carroll Shelby would approve. Because he was building cars with absolutely no restrictions. They were built as racers but what the hell, get a tax disc and put it on the road. I’d buy it for the engine noise alone. But that styling, that beauty…
Beauty on the outside, brutal within. Bit like my wife.

So that’s what you’re gonna buy me. The car, not the wife.

Thank you very much.

Happy Monday

A xxxx