The Ford faithful had high hopes in 1996 when it was announced that the Mustang GT’s good old pushrod 5.0 was being replaced by a 4.6-liter single-overhead-cam “Modular” V8, but those hopes were soon dashed when it was found that the new car was no faster (and even slower in some tests) than the old one. Then, the new dual-overhead-cam 305-horsepower Cobra was announced, and finally Ford fans had something with enough firepower to go head-to-head with the LT1-powered F-bodies that were introduced in 1993. Hyperpack posted some pictures of one of those special Mustangs, this down-on-its-luck 1996/7 Cobra, on the CC Cohort, and it reminded me of the Cobra I got a chance to test drive when these cars were new.
Aside from a few visual tweaks such as unique front and rear fascias, a scooped hood, and special wheels, the Cobra didn’t look that much different from a Mustang GT, but it had a tweaked dual-overhead-cam 4.6 that originated in the Lincoln Mark VIII, and it added up to 305 horsepower at 5800 rpm and a not-too-impressive 300 lb-ft of torque at a peaky 4800 rpm. The DOHC 4.6 was physically massive, about as big as a Boss 429, but it looked cool and finally gave the Mustang acceleration to almost match the Camaro and Firebird. I read all the road tests back in the day, and 0-60 times in the mid-five second range, along with quarter-mile passes of around 14 seconds at 100+ miles per hour, were the norm.
Car and Driver compared a Cobra to the Camaro SS (an SLP-tweaked Z28) and a Firebird Formula with the WS6 package (which was also modified by SLP). The Mustang came in second to the Camaro, which was noticeably faster but not the kind of car that the editors would have enjoyed living with; the Mustang was a balanced package with power and road manners.
When the Cobra came out, I was a college kid driving around in my own family-heirloom 1965 Mustang that I still own today, although back then it was somewhat shabbier (not that it’s perfect now). Like any card-carrying car guy, I cruised the dealerships regularly, waiting for the good stuff to hit the lots. At some point in probably the late-summer, early-fall of 1997, I was dating a girl who was somewhat older than I was and had already gone corporate, so I dressed in a “business casual” outfit to take her to lunch; after all, I didn’t want to look like a college bum on a date with a professionally dressed lady. Of course, I swung through the car lots afterward and found a new red Cobra at the Ford dealer.
Picture this guy wearing business casual rather than his friend’s dad’s clothes from the 1970s and that’s the general picture of what I looked like in 1997. A salesman came out to talk to me about the car, so I figured that I’d be an idiot if I didn’t ask for a test drive, and he surprisingly obliged. We took the car around town, I got on it a little bit (but not much), and he finally asked what I did for a living. I replied that I worked at Bob Evans, which, for those who aren’t from the United States, is a family-style restaurant chain.
The salesman melted into a disappointed puddle in his bucket seat. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the drive, and when we returned to the lot, he literally jumped out of the car while it was still in motion and ran inside, his voice, doppler-effecting itself into the distance, shouting that he had customers. I sat there with a running Cobra, alone, replying, “I guess I’ll just stay here then” as if I were in a Monty Python flick. What else could I do? I parked the car, walked into the showroom, set the keys on his desk, and thanked him for the test drive, undoubtedly with a smile that was a couple notes smarmier than necessary.
Of course, I feel worse about the whole escapade now than I did then, but not too much. At the time, I tried to play the wronged party by saying that the salesman didn’t know that I wasn’t some spoiled college kid, nearing graduation, whose parents were ready to drop twenty-five grand on a new Mustang as a gift. “It’s bad business,” I thought! But in reality, the guy called it as it was: I was a car-crazy kid taking a joyride, wasting time that could have been better spent on paying clients.
If my parents were going to spoil me with a new pony car in 1997, I still think I would have taken a Camaro Z28 (not that my dad would have allowed it as a Ford guy). The Cobra had some disadvantages; at $24,810 for a coupe (in 1996 when they came out), it was about five grand more than a Z28, which was usually timed as being just a tick faster than the Ford. For those who didn’t want to shift for themselves, the Camaro was available with a four-speed automatic that was every bit as fearsome as the stick, while the Cobra was only available with the manual. Finally, Cobras were only sold at select SVT dealers, which is why I never saw one for sale in my hometown; sales were thus a bit limited, but still not bad at around 10,000 cars a year in 1996 and 1997. Clearly, there was some pent-up demand for a truly fast Ford.
But as a Mustang owner and son of a Ford man, I thought the Cobra was really cool, and I loved driving it around, even if the circumstances were awkward. Cobras are reasonably priced collector cars these days, and one of my wife’s old high school classmates brought his black ’97 convertible over to show me last year. It’s still a fun car, even if I can’t quite get used to the fact that it’s almost 30 years old. So Ford took a swing at the F-bodies and just about got there, but as we all know, the Mustang has generally come out ahead in the end. I hope that this neglected Cobra can do the same.
Related Reading
My Hobby Car of a Lifetime #11: ’96 Mustang GT – In Praise Of The Throwaway Car (by Jose Delgadillo)
1994 Chevrolet Camaro Z28: How To Convert A 17-Year-Old Mustang Kid (by me)
I remember how the new modular V8 was supposed to be the gateway into the future. But it turned out that the future wasn’t everything we had initially hoped. Frankly, I had forgotten all about these.
Oh, the poor salesman. A rich college kid whose father is about to buy him a car? I don’t think any of those has ever worked at a Bob Evans. 🙂 I might have been tempted to go with the “I’ll be graduating soon from college” thing. Of course that might have had the guy calling you, and you would have had to resort to the “I bought a Camaro” escape hatch.
Ha ha, yeah, at the point where he realized I wasn’t a paying customer, I decided not to push the issue. Afterward, I was a little bit fake insulted, but it was mostly in jest (and part of my inner monologue).
One look at that engine compartment and I definitely know I would rather work on a 1969 Boss 302 engine than this modular engine.
It’s big an intimidating but there isn’t much to work on to begin with, plugs and wires are about as easy as it gets on a V8 engine.
I find the contrast of the engines of Mustang and Camaro interesting. Ford has a huge, four cam V-8 which was only produced in limited numbers. The Camaro had a SBC with all of one camshaft, and it smoked the Mustang anyway. That SBC was produced in massive numbers, while the Ford Cobra V-8 was always rare. I have never seen one in person, but I left the garage business in 1994.
I often wonder how the Mustang/Camaro rivalry would have been different if Ford would have pooled their resources into updating the Windsor engine (like GM did with the LS). A lot of people speculate that the LS took a lesson or two from the Windsor anyway, and Ford had the 351 all along, which fit into the Mustang without too much trouble.