One of the most significant Cobras ever offered at an auction failed to sell at the RM Auction at the Amelia Island Concours D'Elegance March 14th, 2009. Chassis CSX2142 was one of two special hardtop equipped machines that were raced in the 1963 24 Hours Le Mans. These were not Shelby-American entries, however, but purportedly sponsored by a London newspaper, even though at least one of the cars was prepared by Shelby's east coast distributor, LeMans racing veteran Ed Hugus of Pittsburgh, who piloted one of the two cars with England's Peter Jopp and is listed as the entrant. Actually three Cobras were prepared and only two ran the race. Stirling Moss, who had been injured in a serious crash sometime earlier and was not driving that season, managed the two car entry in the pits.

According to reporter Wouter Melissen of the Ultimate Car Page, the car only ran 25 laps at LeMans before it was disqualified because it ran over something and pierced the oil reservoir and the team had stopped for replenishing of oil. The other Cobra, painted green, finished 7th overall with Ninian Sanderson and Peter Bolton sharing the driving. Their car was officially entered by A.C. Cars Ltd., Shelby's supplier of chassis and bodywork.

While 7th may not seem very high for our vaunted Cobras, you have to consider that occupying spaces 1-6 in the finishing order were Ferraris, from a firm with vastly more experience at LeMans. In fact it was two years later that one of the Shelby-American factory Cobras took a class victory at the Sarthe.

What makes CSX2142 interesting to early Cobra buffs is the fact that it was left hand drive. This may have been because, though racers at Lemans preferred RHD, Hugus was planning on reselling it if he took it to the U.S. and in the U.S. drivers preferred RHD.

The LeMans Cobras of 1963 are interesting also because they are the first Cobras to have the side vents (sometimes called "wastegates" which later became standard on 289 cars. The side vents on the two cars entered though, are slightly larger than those used on production cars.

The hardtop was aluminum and called low drag because of its somewhat fastback shape (though not as fastback as the Daytona coupe run a year later by the Shelby-American team). Originally the hardtops had a gas filler tube that had its opening in a Monza quik-fill cap on the roof. Not only was this handy to reach but it allowed a few gallons more to be carried not counted in the gas tank total!

The hardtop-equipped csx2142 was bought by John Willment of England who as a successful Ford dealer and also bought the car that finished. He race prepped them for Good wood, with new engines but the cars were not allowed in the race because of the modified suspensions. It was raced at Snetterton by South African Bob Olthoff and then went off to Africa where Olthoff raced it some more. The car then was bought by Ford of France, and Jo Schlesser raced it in several rallies. At one point it caught fire and was sold to Jean Marie Vincent. It had yet another fire while in the possession of Michel Gaudart and then went through the hands of several more Frenchmen before it reached England where it was restored by Simon Hadfield, a well known restorer in England who also races.

Interesting is the fact that it has set of Dunlop mag wheels (some say from a D-type Jag).Many people don't know that Dunlop, the tire company, made mag wheels. The car appeared recently at the Tour Auto in 2005 and at the Goodwood Revival in 2008. It was estimated early on by RM that the car would reach $1-1.4 million dollars but, as it turned out, the high bid was only $790,000 perhaps indicating that the recession may be cutting into the "play money" budget of those thought to be insulated from the economic downturn.