Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 1214 | Page 24

FINAL STAND

ATTAINING COLLECTIBLE STATUS

Once the 1964 USRRC season was over, it was time again for the Fall Pro Series
with its high-paying events at Riverside and Laguna Seca. The Shelby team arrived
ready to do battle, with Indy ace Parnelli Jones, Bob Bondurant, Ronnie Bucknum
and Ritchie Ginther in the blue works cars and Ed Leslie in a new Lang Cooper (an
un-numbered chassis) with a special body by Pete Brock. Jones picked up the win
at Riverside in a 1964-model King Cobra, ahead of Roger Penske in a Chaparral
and Jim Clark in a Lotus 30, with Leslie, Bondurant and Ginther in fourth, fifth
and sixth place, respectively.
Laguna Seca was the last race for the Shelby King Cobra team. Jones ran hard
but crashed and his car was burned out. Roger Penske won in a Chaparral and the
top King Cobra was Bondurant in third. Although the Lang Cooper was raced
briefly in 1965 and privateer King Cobras continued to run in amateur events,
the day of the competitive King Cobra was over. More modern machinery from
Chaparral, McLaren and Lola had outclassed the valiant Anglo-American warriors.

While AC Cobras have been considered classics almost from
the day they went out of production, the Cooper King Cobras
were largely forgotten until recently. Two of the Shelby factory
team cars survive in original form: chassis CM/3/63 and the
final Lang Cooper. Other cars have been restored around bits
and pieces, while some remain missing in action. Both Comstock cars were completely destroyed in the 1960s. Cooper
also sold four other 1963 T61Ms for V8 installations. Some
of these were built with Chevy engines, plus private owners
upgraded some earlier Monacos to V8 engines. Skip Hudson
won the 1964 Riverside USRRC race with a Cooper MonacoChevy, Roger Penske ran one for John Mecom (CM/2/64)
and Indy star Roger Ward raced an early Monaco repowered
with a Buick engine. Collectors should approach any V8 Mo-

22 CarGuyMagazine.com