Shelby Cobra vs Dodge Viper: Two American icons battle it out… in Britain

Who else would you call? While the Cobra had always been more of a Ford thing (it sort of kickstarted the Ford/Shelby relationship that culminated in the GT40 Le Mans project), Dodge knew exactly what kind of lightning they were trying to bottle with the Viper, and who to call to make it happen. The man who made the call, the man who told his design team to create a later-model Cobra, was auto industry legend and then-Chrysler “Maximum” president Bob Lutz. He, along with chairman Lee Iacocca, saw the project from clay model to production reality in late 1991.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

But it was Carroll Shelby who introduced the public to the prototype as a pace car for that year’s Indy 500, and Shelby’s fingerprints are all over the Viper. Although not to the same extent as the Cobra. You see, while the Viper was Lutz’s brainchild brought to life by a small team within a large company, the Cobra was Shelby’s idea from start to finish.

It started out as a British sports car, the AC Ace, which arrived in 1953, but was fitted with pre-war six-cylinder engines that were not suitable for the intended purpose. In 1961, Carroll Shelby arranged a partnership with Ford in America, giving AC access to the Windsor V8. The AC Cobra was born as a British sports car. But Shelby immediately saw its racing potential. In the US, the AC name was not used – there it was the Shelby Cobra.

His first attempt, with a 6.4-liter Ford FE V8, was nicknamed “The Turd” by driver Ken Miles. It was fast on the straights, but almost undriveable. The chassis was modified, and the Mark III arrived in 1965, but too late to qualify for homologation that year. Fifty-six race cars were produced, but most were tuned for road use. They remained fearsomely powerful, the 427 cu in engine tuned to 485 hp and good for 185 mph. It weighed just 2,300 pounds. But with the GT40 project looming large, the Cobra era was over by 1967.

True originals became instant collectors’ items, but the shape was so iconic that production was licensed and continued. Boy, it’s hard to figure out what happened, who with, or where. Everybody wanted a piece of the pie, nobody wanted to pay, lookalikes emerged, chaos reigned. Today, Superformance builds official Shelby Cobras under license, and they carry the same CSX chassis numbers as the originals. Think of this as the 10th generation and you wouldn’t be far off.

Officially imported to the UK (right-hand drive, for £195,000) by Clive Sutton, it’s newly built but period correct and the ambience is spot on. I’ve driven a 427 and it has the same all-powerful charisma and V8 thunder. The same wobbly, lacklustre dynamics, too. In place of the old big block FE V8, there’s Ford’s Coyote 5.0-litre. Don’t worry, with 460bhp and 420lb ft it produces pretty much the same power as a semi-competition 427 and – more importantly – has the noise and attitude to match.

What is it about those American V8s and their ability to speak directly to your primal cortex? The sound is Neolithic, a Jurassic rumble that you feel as much as you hear. I’m a lumbering Neanderthal, once the blub-blub-blub starts, I find it irresistible. And so does everyone around me – the effect on people is like the opening bars of ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ on Baloo in The Jungle BookIt’s smooth at low revs, pulls away in fifth gear, but turns into a growling race engine at high revs.

Next to it, Mark Riccioni’s Viper is smooth, almost cultured. The exhaust pulses of that V10 are softer, it splutters into life rather than growls, but if there’s any doubt about its potential, consider the way those exhausts blow rocks across a parking lot when you twist the throttle. That’s an 8.0-liter V10 thumping up front. It’s widely thought to have been derived from a RAM 2500 truck, but it was more advanced than that. Lamborghini (then owned by Chrysler) helped out with the engine, which saw power climb from 300 to 400bhp. Torque was listed at 465lb ft. The damn engine weighed in at over 320kg, though. The whole car, 1,490kg. Apparently it was good for 0-60mph in 4.2sec and 165mph overall. A test for toupee tape.

The engines dominate the experience in both cars. Both will thump happily away from idle, and the Viper in particular is tuned for interplanetary exploration. Sixth pulls about 1,400 rpm at 70 mph. But while the Cobra has this racer-like demeanor at high revs, the Viper’s engine is lazier. It struggles to overcome its own inertia. It’s hard-driving but never urgent, never overrevving, never begging to be thrashed. You can tell it wasn’t meant to be a sports car engine.

It’s the Cobra that has the more addictive engine… and also the cleaner, more precise, more satisfying gearbox. It shifts cleanly and quickly with no risk of missed shifts, while the Viper makes it far too easy to go from fourth to reverse instead of fifth. It just makes you a little nervous to rush the lever. And it’s not all that satisfying when you do.

And that sums up the Viper driving experience. It’s a little woolly around the edges, lacking the sharpness, responsiveness and reaction you’d expect. It’s more of a GT in execution, the input responses are quite soft, almost laggy, but while there’s not much feel, you can feel an edge to the tyres and that’s when your Spidey senses start to tingle. “Get out of here now,” they say, “before it all goes wrong.” I once ran over a Viper GTS (in an airport, thank goodness) and to this day I remember how clumsy it felt, how awkward and unsophisticated. And how quickly it let me go.

Both are pretty rickety and rudimentary to drive. The Cobra didn’t survive long enough in motorsport to be developed further, the Viper is the concept car that went far enough and no further. The Cobra is small and eager enough to encourage exploitation, but there’s something about the Viper that gives you the shivers early on. Neither drive well, the Cobra shuddering and shaking worse than a Morgan of the era, the Viper rounds off the edges better but feels heavy and dull.

The Cobra is easily the better of the two, the happiest and most addictive

It is the Cobra that is more convincing as a static object. It does not pretend to be something it is not. There is no roof, just a tonneau, there is no equipment, but the dials and switches are beautiful; the boot is large and those side flaps flanking the windscreen are far more effective than you might expect at deflecting air. From a distance the Viper flatters to deceive. It looks like a real car. Then the hilarity ensues. The roof and side screens are sub-Caterham, sub-umbrella. There are no exterior door handles. The seatbelts are, for some bizarre reason, mounted on the doors, the plastics are more than comical: badly shaped and dirty to the touch, the worst the 80s had to offer.

You can see the similarities between the two: the same enormously wide transmission tunnel that places driver and passenger in different postcodes, as if Dodge had put the driveshaft in the Channel Tunnel. Pedals that are vastly spaced. Odd seats and driving position. Buttocks on the rear axle.

The Cobra is easily the better of the two, the more fun and addictive. It may be crude, but its guts and fury make it a force of nature. But look at the Viper. The experience of being around it is enough to make you bounce on your heels. It has such impact, it is so ridiculously, bizarrely silly. The perfection of those three-spoke alloy wheels, the side pipes, the jutting hood, the sheer width. It is a fantasy. A roaring reinterpretation of the Cobra. They cost $50,000 new and survived until 2017. There were coupes and even a second generation from 2003. But if you’re going to own one, it has to be this one, the original, the craziest and therefore the best. Consider yourself warned.