Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1969 Ford Cobra 428 CJ – Ford’s Road Runner Fighter “Eats Birds For Breakfast,” But Doesn’t Sell

 

Ford’s first stab at a mass-market intermediate muscle car, the 1966 Fairlane GT/GTA, hadn’t been any too convincing, but things had perked up with the arrival of the hot 428 Cobra Jet engine in 1968. For 1969, Ford installed the 428 CJ in a stripped-down Fairlane/Torino called the Cobra, intended to take the fight to the budget-priced Plymouth Road Runner. Car Life drove the Fairlane Cobra in January 1969 and called it “one of Ford’s best Supercar tries—budget or not.”

In this same issue of Car Life, the editors had (as a deviation from their usual policy) also tested a 1969 Road Runner that had received about $500 worth of aftermarket powertrain upgrades, including a bigger carburetor on an Edelbrock high-rise manifold, a hotter cam, and a set of Hooker headers. Since Ford had sent a PR man to hang around while they were testing the Cobra, the CL editors thought they’d use the souped-up Road Runner to have a little fun with him:

As a rule, we don’t welcome factory representatives when we’re testing their cars. They make us nervous. When Ford’s man asked if he could come, we said he’d be welcome. Then, we made some plans. The test Road Runner (see page 54) was going to be there at the same time. We wouldn’t tell the PR man that the Plymouth wasn’t fresh from the showroom floor. He would have to watch the original budget performance car blow the doors off Ford’s version, run after run. and wouldn’t learn about the joke until he’d spent a month waiting for the tests to be printed, and hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as it looked.

The joke was on us. No, the Ford wasn’t faster, but the Cobra pulled a hole shot on the Road Runner most runs, and never lost by more than two lengths. We expected to show how much the enthusiast can get with extra money and parts, but we learned that the big, plush Cobra can hold its own, even in a rigged match race.

(By way of explanation, the modified Road Runner had a big edge over the Cobra in quarter-mile trap speed, reflecting its greater power, but its best elapsed time was only 0.2 seconds quicker, leaving it vulnerable to an opponent with better launch technique.)

In any case, this was not a bad start for the new Ford budget Supercar, since the Road Runner and similar Dodge Super Bee were the Cobra’s natural prey.

 

While CL didn’t address this point, you might be asking, “What in the world did this huge intermediate fastback have to do with the REAL Cobra, the Ford-powered, Shelby-modified, AC Ace-based roadster that was the terror of SCCA events throughout the ’60s?” The answer, which may depress you, was “intellectual property laws” — Ford needed to periodically put the Cobra name on SOMETHING in order to hang onto the trademark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office generally frowns on trademark “squatting”: A mark’s registration may eventually be canceled and control of it lost if the owner isn’t actually using the mark on products or services of the requisite class(es). If you find this cynical, you can take some consolation in the fact that the 1969 Cobra was at least a genuine high-performance car, which couldn’t be said of some of the cars Ford used to hold onto the name in later years.

 

Incidentally, while Car Life described the Cobra as a “Fairlane Cobra,” some people describe it as a “Torino Cobra” instead. The 1969 brochure implies that the Cobra was a distinct series, not identified as either a Fairlane or a Torino, and the AMA specs indicate that the Cobra had its own body codes, 63H for SportsRoof hardtops like this one, 65H for the formal roofline. On the other hand, Ford production figures lumped the Cobra in with the Torino series, so take your pick.

 

Ordering the Cobra gave you basic Fairlane trim, distinguished by a blacked-out Fairlane grille, some bright moldings, hood pins, and a hood scoop (which was nonfunctional unless you paid an extra $133.44 for the R-code ram-air engine). However, the $3,189 base price did include a four-speed manual transmission, heavy-duty suspension, whitewall F70-14 tires on 6-inch wide wheels, and the 428 Cobra Jet engine. This was a bargain price for a very formidable engine. Car Life said:

Best part of the Cobra is the Cobra-Jet engine. Ford thinks so. too. Every time the company has a car that needs a performance image, it gets the 428. We’ve tested the engine in three cars now. While it isn’t always suited to the car, the 428 is always strong, and never temperamental. Rated power this year is the same as last year: 335. We’ve made some guesses about the actual power and been sorry later. CAR LIFE’s horsepower guesswork chart … showed that the Cobra-Jet in the two-ton-plus Cobra produced close to the 335 claimed for it, maybe a few horses more. It doesn’t have too much torque at low engine speeds, but it feels very strong at the top end.

Their estimate was about right: Bill Barr, Ford’s principal engineer on the Cobra Jet project has since confirmed that the net output of the 428 CJ engine (with all accessories, temperature-corrected to sea level pressure and 100 degrees Fahrenheit) was 335 to 345 hp and 418 lb-ft of torque.

The photo captions read, “LEAN PRODUCED by hard cornering was more pronounced than we expected. Standard stiff suspension isn’t very stiff. VALVE CONTROLLING cool air scoop is closed by engine vacuum, opens when accelerator is floored. Cool air produces more power, but warm air controls emissions.”

 

The Cobra included a “competition” suspension, but Car Life felt the competition for which it was best suited was strictly in a straight line, although it did make the Cobra relatively easy to launch:

Stiff springs, bigger shock absorbers, wide-rim wheels and belted, cross-ply tires are standard for the Cobra, again in the budget Supercar tradition. The rear shock absorbers are staggered, with one mounted in front on the axle, the other behind, to prevent spring wind-up under acceleration. This, they do. Aided by the tires, the Cobra made clean, fast starts. Full power couldn’t be used from rest, but once the car had moved one or two feet, the tires coped with all the horses.

The staggered rear shocks were only fitted to 4-speed cars; a Cobra with automatic had both rear shocks ahead of the axle.

 

As on the R-code Mustang Mach 1, the scoop on the ram-air 428 CJ engine had a vacuum-controlled flap that only opened to admit cooler outside air when the throttle was floored. At idle or part-throttle, the flap was closed, forcing the engine to breathe under-hood air through the blue inlet.

 

Other contemporary tests (not this one) demonstrated that the scoop did provide a small but useful bump in quarter-mile trap speed, and was worth about 0.2 seconds in elapsed time.

The photo caption reads, “INTERIOR IS comfortable and elegant, with carpeting and semi-bucket seats. Only three of the four spaces in the instrument panel were occupied by instruments.”

 

On paper, the Cobra suspension looked fairly stiff, but Car Life found that the test car flopped all over the place when pressed, and its cornering limits were low:

The Cobra wasn’t as impressive on the handling course. The heavy engine caused understeer, and the powerful engine would put the tail out on command, but the Cobra had more body lean than the other cars in the group. It leaned farther than the Mercury Cyclone tested last year. Why this was so, we don’t know. The two cars are nearly identical, although the Cyclone was lighter by about 100 lb. The Cyclone had the optional handling package. Possibly the standard stiff springs aren’t as stiff as the optional stiff springs, on the theory that most buyers prefer comfort, even in a Supercar.

The Cobra was comfortable—in town, on freeways and on winding country roads. It felt stable at high speeds, and could be maneuvered easily. The steering doesn’t turn as far as it might, though. In several places where a smaller car could make a U-turn. the Cobra could only shuttle back and forth through 180°. The Cobra and the Road Runner were being driven by the same people at the same time. The Cobra wasn’t as agile as the ‘Runner, but then few intermediates are. The Cobra was quieter and smoother.

And solid. After spending the ’68 model year carping about Ford’s rattlers, justice requires that Ford be given credit for this test Cobra. No rattles, no hood shake, no thumps from underneath, no dangling wires or flapping upholstery.

Their test car had front disc brakes, which were an extra-cost option, priced at $64.77. They worked fairly well, but I think it was honestly shameful that Ford didn’t include them, or at least make them mandatory, with the big engine.

 

The test car also had the standard four-speed gearbox, which was not a great performance boon. CL found the linkage sloppy, the clutch pedal travel was excessively long, and third gear was too far away. Their car also lacked a tachometer (and any secondary gauges other than fuel), so determining correct shift points took some planning. With the Cobra Jet engine, the car would have been at least as fast with the optional C6 automatic, which would have been more convenient.

 

Car Life editors were not fans of high numerical axle ratios, and they thought the test car’s 3.50 axle was a good compromise:

The Cobra is slower (by a fraction of a second) than last year’s Cyclone, but it’s much better suited to ordinary driving than was the 3.91:1 in the Cyclone. That car drove us bananas on the freeway, and even the guys at Holman & Moody, who made sure the Cyclone was running right, thought the car was in second all the time.

Both 3.91 and 4.30 gears were available on the Cobra for those less particular about freeway cruising.

The photo caption reads, “TRUNK SPACE is adequate, but limited. The sill is high, the trunk lid is small and most of the room is far forward. The spare tire rides in back, within easy reach.”

 

In addition to its “groping through molasses” vagueness, the four-speed transmission’s shift pattern posed an additional hazard:

Shifting down, from third to second, was risky. Reverse is next to second. The spring detent wasn’t strong, and on one occasion the driver overrode it, and bounced off reverse while the car was going forward. No damage, but terrible noises, and the transmission refused to go into any gear at all. Luckily, two of the CAR LIFE staffers own racing cars with English Ford transmissions—with the same shift patterns and the same flaw. Selection can only be restored by coming to a stop, and putting the transmission into reverse. That clears the board, and forward motion can be resumed. The Road Runner shift pattern, with reverse next to first, doesn’t have this problem, so the ‘Runner had a reverse lock out.

The testers were also troubled by the poor rear visibility of the SportsRoof body, which “gave a distorted view of traffic behind, and made it hard to judge how far back the cars were.”

 

The data panel’s listed curb weight is a good-news/bad-news situation: The good news is that the weight CL quoted seems to be correct for a Cobra SportsRoof equipped like this one, rather than a manufacturer base curb weight (which for this model was 3,689 lb) or shipping weight. The bad news is that a curb weight of 3,845 lb was over 300 lb heavier than the 1966 Fairlane GTA Car Life had tested three years earlier, and the test weight was a hefty 4,105 lb.

Car Life‘s copy editors may have gotten the weights right, but the $3,139 base price listed in the data panel appears to be a typographical error, as the price shown in contemporary price lists was $3,189. (I think this would also bring the as-equipped price to $3,995.)

The photo caption reads, “ACCELERATION WAS surprisingly good: Highway gearing and interior insulation made the Cobra so quiet that it was faster than it felt. The big [Goodyear F70-14] Polyglas tires are standard.”

 

According to the AMA specs, the SportsRoof body sacrificed only a half-inch of rear headroom to the notchback formal hardtop (although this did the fastback’s proportions no great favors). However, you did sacrifice 1.8 inches of legroom, which was costly if the front seats were pushed back very far — Ford listed the minimum knee room in back as a mere 0.8 inches! However, Car Life didn’t consider this shortfall worth much notice:

The front seats were habitable to all the test drivers. The heaviest is almost twice as heavy as the lightest, so the range is wide indeed. The rear seat was cramped for all adults, but so are the rear seats in every domestic hardtop we’ve tested. Complaining about that is like assuring the reader the Cobra had a wheel at each corner.

This was perhaps true, but I find the idea of getting an essentially pony-car-sized interior in a car this size somewhat disconcerting. It would be easier to take with if the SportsRoof were as attractive as its Mustang SportsRoof cousin, but the Fairlane/Torino version has the usual big fastback proportional awkwardness. The Cobra was also available as a notchback hardtop, which I think it’d prefer.

 

Here are the highlights from the Car Life performance figures:

• 0 to 30 mph: 3.2 sec.
• 0 to 60 mph: 7.3 sec.
• 0 to 100 mph: 15.5 sec.
• Standing ¼-mile: 14.9 sec. at 95.2 mph
• Top speed: 125 mph at 6,000 rpm
• Test average fuel consumption: 8.8 mpg

Quarter-mile performance, which was this car’s whole reason for being, wasn’t all it could be. A run with just the driver, minus the test equipment, would surely have been faster. (Both Car and Driver and Super Stock managed trap speeds of over 100 mph, although the Super Stock car was only fractionally quicker quicker through the lights than the Car Life Cobra, and they were unable to make it any quicker with drag racing “trick stuff” like loosening the accessory drive belts.) However, the most obvious improvement would have been one Car Life would have disdained: ordering a 3.91 or 4.30 axle, which also included the 428 Super Cobra Jet engine, with a raft of internal changes to withstand hard high-rpm use.

 

Car Life came away with a favorable impression of the Cobra, concluding:

The Cobra’s performance was surprisingly good, the price is within reason, the fastback roof (we think) is the best looking around. The car wasn’t nimble, but it was pleasant (and rather elegant). The Cobra may not eat all birds for breakfast; but when it does, it doesn’t chew with its mouth open.

In fact, the Cobra didn’t eat very many Plymouth-badged birds at all, at least when it came to the sales race. Although Ford didn’t officially separate Cobra and Torino production figures, subsequent analyses have put total Cobra production at 14,885 cars (about three-fourths of those the SportsRoof), which was about half the volume of the Dodge Super Bee, much less the hot-selling Road Runner, which moved 84,420 units for 1969.

Thus, while the Road Runner lingered through the ’70s, the Cobra was dropped after 1971. The Ford didn’t lack for power, but when it came to commercial performance and image, the Road Runner had a head start that slapping Cobra badges on the Fairlane/Torino just couldn’t overcome.

Related Reading

Vintage Car Life Review: 1969 Ford Mustang 428 Mach 1 – Faster Than A Hemi (by me)
1969 Car Life Supercar Performance Figures — How Fast Were These Vintage Muscle Cars? (by me)
COAL #16: Dad’s 1969 Ford Torino GT – The (T)-Bird has Flown the Coop (by Stephen Hansen)
Curbside Outtake/QOTD: 1968 – 1976 Ford Torino – What’s Your Favorite Generation? (by Jim Brophy)
Vintage Car Life Review: 1966 Ford Fairlane GTA – “Genuine Imitation Supercar” (by me)
Vintage Car & Driver Comparison Test: 1969 Hemi Roadrunner, Chevelle 396, Ford Cobra, Cyclone CJ, Superbee and GTO The Judge – “Six Econo-Racers” (by Paul N)