Kit Car

1964 FIA Cobra Hybrid - Hey Little Cobra

Dean Lampe's Kirkham 289 FIA Cobra

Performed by The Rip Chords and written by Cobra owner Carol Connors, a musclecar song called "Hey Little Cobra" raced up the charts in 1964. The album's cover art depicted one of the most famous racing 289 FIA Cobras ever campaigned by Shelby American. The black-hued and yellow driver-striped Cobra wore number 15 on its roundelles most of its career, and was piloted by Ken Miles, Dan Gurney, Lew Spencer, Dave McDonald, Bob Holbert, Allen Grant, and Graham Shaw. In March '63, Gurney, Spencer, and McDonald finished 28th overall at the Sebring FIA 12 Hour endurance race with the black roadster. At one of its last competitions in May '64, Miles piloted it to first place among manufacturers at the Kent, Washington, USRRC. The black beauty was designated CSX2128 289 Sebring Roadster for its serial number and rack-and-pinion steering as well as its 289ci Ford small-block mill. The '63 Sebring Cobras were the first to get rid of the smaller 260ci Ford engines and less precise worm-and-sector steering boxes. Unlike most racing Cobras of the '60s, the CSX2128 retired in June '64 after finishing second at Watkins Glen, and it wasn't thrashed in post-retirement racing. The roadster is also famous for being driven by future California governor and American president Ronald Reagan in his last film, The Killers, a Hemingway story that also starred Angie Dickinson.

Auctioneers Russo and Steele weaved all these elements together to recount the SX2128's history for hard-to-impress automotive aficionados interested in adding the car to their respective collections in January 2005 at R&S's Scottsdale auction. The result was history-making. Hey Little Cobra was auctioned off for the record-setting price of $2,133,000 to an anonymous bidder who vowed to display the roadster at the Shelby American Museum.

While the original car is preserved as a museum piece, the Kirkham 289 FIA Hybrid depicted here gets the snot driven out of it at race events across the country. Cobra enthusiast Dean Lampe has built and owned three Cobra kits over the years. He had always wanted a bare aluminum roadster, so he traded his finished Hurricane 98 car with a 427ci FE big-block to friend and Cobra fan Jay Nordstrom in exchange for the in-progress Kirkham 289 Hybrid, the first of its kind from Kirkham Motorsports in Provo, Utah.

Kirkham's 289 FIA Hybrid has a 289 aluminum racing body combined with Kirkham's 427 SC chassis. With seven gallons of fuel in the tank, Dean's car weighs just 2,094 pounds. The Weber 48 IDA-fed 408ci stroker engine produces 550 horsepower and 600 lb-ft of torque. To say his FIA is light and thunderously fast is a gross understatement. Dean built the car to run on the track, and run it does. He wanted to experience as best he could what the racing legends of Shelby American felt in the '60s. The cool thing about Dean's car is that it's exquisitely detailed to emulate the real CSX2128, but it isn't worth what the original one is, so Dean's not scared to race it and pound out the pebble dings in the aluminum panels afterward. Isn't that one of the reasons many of us build a kit car in the first place, instead of investing in an original piece of automotive history? We want to drive 'em and look at 'em, not simply shine 'em and worry about 'em.

Watching Dean pilot his brushed aluminum rendition of 289 FIA number 15 on the track, you can almost hear The Rip Chords: Around the turn into the straightaway, I was blowing off everything that got in my way.Stingrays and Jags were so far behind, I took my Cobra out of gear and let it coast to the line. Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike. Spring little Cobra with all your might. Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike. Spring little Cobra with all your might. Hey, little Cobra, don't you know, you are going to shut 'em down. Shut 'em down. Shut 'em down. Shut 'em down...