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Well, I'll fill you all in on the specs of my '79 Cobra. The car was put together by my twin brother and I and we copied the basic design of his '85 GT, which I absolutely fell in love with before I got my car.

Back in February of 2000, I bought this car from an older woman in Natick, who had it advertised in the WANT AD. I paid $1,500 and it only had 27,667 miles on it. The drivetrain consisted of a Turbo four cylinder (2.3 liter), 4-speed and 3.45 gears. The interior was Black and the exterior was Red/Black with Yellow decals. It's not hard to say that this car was in excellent shape. It was 99% rust free (rust was found around the sunroof on the driver's side) and the interior was mint except for the sagging headliner. I consider myself lucky that I found such a good starting point to take home. Speaking of the ride home, we stopped at a place on the way home for lunch and when we came out, we found that someone had attached a note to the windshield, asking me to call their phone number because they wanted to buy the car. I knew I had a keeper at that point!

The first order of business was to strip it down to the unibody. The only pieces that I left, included the wiring, steering rack and four wheels. Once stripped, it went off to the body shop to be stripped to bare metal and then refinished using PPG basecoat/clearcoat paint products. I chose 2001 Nissan X-Terra Yellow and Satin Black. For the Cobra door decals and the hood decal, I used www.phoenixgraphix.com. For the dual pinstripes in the bodyside molding, I used 3M pinstripe decals.

From there, my twin brother took over and orchestrated the drivetrain buildup. Things that he did include picking out the parts, building the engine and rearend, wiring, fabricating fuel lines and brake lines, and helping to install all of these parts. I really wouldn't have this car without his help.

It's now got a 306 with a Tremec 3550 and 4.30 gears. One thing that separates the look on my car is that I have two four barrel carburetors on the intake manifold. Back in the day, this is a look that used to be seen quite a bit on the older hot rods and some muscle cars. I went with this setup because my brother had it on his old 306 engine and the comments were unreal. It's quite unusual to see this setup on a Fox Body and while it may look cool, it isn't anything unless it's tuned correctly for driveability and making the power that it should. We've been able to achieve both. On the dyno, the 306 made 307 rear wheel horsepower and 278 rear wheel torque (hence the steep rear gear ratio). At the track, it runs between 12.40's and 12.80's @ 107-110 (depending on my launch).

I not only race this car at New England Dragway, but I'll drive it everywhere! I'm in this thing on a daily basis, whether it's going to work or just cruising around. Of course, I won't take it out in the crappy weather. For that, I have another Mustang, an '81 hatchback that runs mint but doesn't look the greatest.

Besides racing and cruising, I also take it to Mustang shows throughout the New England area and have many first place trophies. I've also been lucky enough to have it featured in the August 2005 issue of MM&FF and the April 2007 issue of Modified Mustangs, as well as the 2006 www.foureyedpride.com calendar.

This car is a BLAST to own and I hope to never have to get rid of it.

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