Building a dream machine
Published Tuesday August 26th, 2008
It was love at first sight for Pearson
SUSSEX - "Is that an original?"
The question has been frequently asked of Mark Pearson since he finished building his 1965 Shelby AC Cobra replica in June.
Although Pearson's answer to the question is "No", his is a component car, or a kit car as some call it, built from the frame up using select parts and an auto company manual, Pearson doesn't mind. If one were lucky enough to find an original for sale, it could cost up to $250,000.
"I knew this was the only way I would ever own one," said the Sussex resident.
He doesn't drive it every day, but when he does have it on road, heads turn. "It gets quite a few stares around town," he said of his white-striped, navy blue dream machine.
The original Shelby AC Cobra, not to be mistaken for its later Ford version, the Shelby Cobra Mustang, debuted as a racing car in 1961 and was designed by racing legend Carroll Shelby, who built the car to compete with the Corvette. The car first became commercialized in 1965 and only 1,030 originals were ever built.
Pearson bought the body and frame, along with 15 boxes from Factory Five Racing of Wareham, Mass., in September 2005, with a goal of finishing the car by his son's graduation in 2009.
Finishing a year ahead of schedule, Pearson estimates he put 400 to 500 hours of labor into the car, not counting time spent referencing parts and shopping on the Internet.
"It was a quite a project," he said. "I did take some time off [from the project], months at a time.
You start spending so much time on something, it turns into a job, and I didn't want that."
Pearson, with some help from his wife Kim, tackled every aspect of the car, save the paint job and shortening the drive shaft. The project required that he strip a "donor car" Ford Mustang and use its parts for his Cobra replica.
"From an '87 to a '93 Mustang, you have all the parts you need to build the car," said Pearson. "The whole idea from the company was to take their replica and parts from a five litre Mustang to build the car."
He said the car is good on gas considering it's an eight-cylinder, and only weighs 2,200 pounds, half a ton lighter than the donor car from which he stripped the engine.
He had some experience building cars prior to his AC Cobra replica. He rebuilt a 1968 Ford Mustang and said that experience contributed to the success of the later project.
An electrician by trade, Pearson wired the car himself, something he said took up to 50 hours to complete a small price to pay for something he's wanted nearly his entire life.
"I wanted one since the first time I saw it on a calendar, " he said of the Shelby Cobra, which has been glorified in Hollywood movies such as Gumball Rally, Bad Boys and Iron Man.
Aside from the manual provided by Factory Five, he used the Internet as a learning resource and troubleshooter whenever he encountered a snag.
"There's an online forum where you can ask people who are doing or have done the same thing as you, what to do with this or that particular problem," he said, explaining someone often has an answer and promptly posts it on the forum.
He's put roughly 800 kilometres on the car since it first hit the road in June and has only driven it as far as Moncton, where he made a stop at the Atlantic Nationals, Canada's biggest car show event.
He saw two other AC Cobra replicas at the show and plans to bring his car to more shows in the future.
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