Last weekend some of the Cobra owners who came to participate in the 24th annual Nationals, about the 15th held at Wakefield Park, were not permitted to participate because their cars failed the noise restrictions. Ros Richards, who looks after merchandising for the Cobra Car Club, said this has forced organisers to think about moving away from Goulburn for next year’s event.
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“We have been coming here for about 15 years and we enjoy coming here, meeting up with interstate Cobra enthusiasts, and participating in a variety of motorsport activities,” she said. “This year, however, some owners found their cars were no longer compliant with noise pollution regulations.
“We were disappointed something could not have been done to exempt the cars for this weekend. Participants booked out about 70 motel rooms, ate at various venues and shared our money around the town, but now the rigorous noise pollution rules are driving us away.”
In past years, upward of 80 Cobras from all round Australia have participated in the Wakefield Park-based event, but this year they were down to 61 cars. Some owners, on finding their cars were non-compliant, packed up and headed home.
The average age of drivers at the Cobra Nationals is over 55, but there are a few younger members, largely driving their father’s cars. The Cobra Car Club of NSW organises the event and most of the cars are replicas based on the original Cobra concept.
The original Ford AC Cobra was a lightweight, fast, two-door open top roadster. It was light because it had an aluminium body, and speed came from a big block V8 engine.
The original Ford AC Cobras were built by Ford in the early 1960s and were the brainchild of Carroll Shelby, a retired race car driver and later a builder of performance sports cars.
The AC Cobra was based on a little known British open top roadster called the AC. Shelby's idea was to take a light weight European sports car and put a Ford V8 in it to race the touring car classes in North America and Europe. They were successful in beating the Ferraris and Corvettes. Only 600 or so genuine Cobra's were ever built. There are a handful of genuine Cobras in Australia, worth upwards of $500,000.