HEY....wanna buy a Cobra? Should have when you had the chance.

good old days....

found this while garage cleaning......1965

I once read that Jim Morrison owned a Cobra. I wonder what happened to that one.

Definitely a good return on your investment, but 6 grand was a lot of dough for the average guy in 65. For comparison sake, I wonder what your return would have been on an investment had you purchased, say, shares of 6 grand worth of McDonalds Corporation or WalMart in 1965.

I remember my Dad's 67 BJ8 being $3700 new. My Mom was always mad about that because her 65 Impala was $3500. She couldn't understand how that stupid, hard riding, uncomfortable, little car could cost more than her Chevy. If you only knew what to keep.....or what stocks to buy. ;)

You want fries with that?

I have a friend that bought a 427 narrow hip model in 1972 and he paid $7,000 for it. It was the first time I knew of anyone paying more for a car than it cost new. I thought he was crazy at the time especially when he found out the engine was shot.

Who knew back then?

Always buy stocks that pay dividends?
My parents wanted a '65 Healey but it coast 1000 bucks more than the MGB so they bought that. The whole deal hinged on it carrying all of the kids and the battery shelf constituted a passenger seat to them. It had a seat belt installed across the area attached to the shoulder harness nutplates in the wheel well arches! All three of us rode back there...
Chris...

I flew out to California from Minnesota to buy a car in the summer of 1969. I had $2300 cash and bought a 1966 Series 1 E-type. I looked at 2 289 Cobras for $3000 each.....that additional $700 was just not doable at the time.

Around '71 I was working at a Texaco gas station in Fresno. There was a car down the street for sale for $1,500. A '56 Thunderbird. At that time, where was a 20-year-old pump-jockey going to get $1,500?

Wayne

As I have mentioned before; in 1968 while stationed in Germany, I could have bought a Gullwing Mercades for about $5000, but what GI had $5000 to spend on a car?! That car could have paid for my retirement.8-)

We had a Cobra when I was four years old ('73). My dad bought it for next to nothing then it sat for a long time in the corner of the garage. When they started really taking off in the '80s he sold it for a tidy sum. Another friend of mine's dad had a Ferrari 330GT. It was a '67 model that he bought for $12,000 in the early '70s.

In 1967 I was in the Navy aboard a ship in Norfolk, VA. We had a guy on board who did exactly what Wayne suggested. He re-upped for 4 years and used the money to buy a brand new Cobra. 4 weeks later he totaled it. It affected him mentally. Last I saw him he had a huge callus on the middle knuckle of his middle finger from gnawing on it.

in late 1964 I was offered a Olds-Allard, J-2, that ran real well. $500. For $250 I could have gotten (but didn't) a 1952 356 Porsche that had a twin-carb VW 1200 engine. 3 years later a brand new 1966 (left over) Alfa Sprint Speciale 1600 for $2500.

To look at the classifieds in old editions of Auto Week or Road & Track is to invite tossing lunch.:(

Jack

In 2001 I purchased a Nissan 240sx.... Blah blah blah.
Lol, just playin'. :)o

OK, I've got one.
In about '75 I was offered $2500 for the 50,000 mile '65 MGB in trade for a '62 Ferrari 250 GTE with about 18,000 miles for $6000. It was silver/blue with a red interior and wire wheels. Dad just asked where I was going to come up with the 3500 bucks!
Chris...

Wow, that ad is neat! I'll send a copy of it to a work buddy. He just built a replica with 5.0L motor. He's ill at the moment, this will cheer him up, thanks for sharing! A '66 E-type for $2300....amazing.

We all Should have bought 100 Berkshire Hathaway shares in 1965 at $7.50 (even me 22 years before I was born :P)

That'd be a cool $11,950,000 today. :)

Pretty sure Jim Morrison had a Mustang, maybe Cobra-Jet version?

I remember going with my buddy (in 73) to pick up his new 73 B at Phalen Motors, it was sitting next to a new E-type that was, like, a grand more, his daddy said no way..

In 1970 I bought a 1964 MGB. Black, red interior, wires, and a fold away top. I recall it had about 30k miles on it. I paid the princely sum of $900 for it and drove the heck out of it for many years. Wish I had it back.

I also recall a Series I E-type on the lot for $1500 and a 66 Shelby Mustang for $1800. Way too much money. Especially considering that the price of a brand spanking new 1970 Ford Maverick was $1995!

Morrison's car was a loaded '67 GT500. Last seen wrecked (by Morrison) and abandoned outside of LAX. He was late for a flight and wiped out the car. It supposedly was towed away by the county, put in a storage lot, then auctioned off to someone, somewhere. Probably lost to history now.

There is a guy I was reading about (forgot who) that was putting some serious effort into tracking the car. Supposedly he tracked it down to a woman that denied owning it, he later called her and asked her some more questions, she said she might have it and hung up on him. She won't answer the phone anymore.

Here's a clip of Morrison flogging his GT500. If you have Netflix instant, the documentary they mention is available and definitely worth a watch if you like The Doors. I watched it several times with different family memebers and friends. We all got a kick out of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdjg3QtLd6Q

Continuing on with "cheap" high dollar cars... my dad graduated in '76... his beater goin' to school car was a ragged out, but numbers matching '66 GT350 he bought for the princely sum of 1500 bucks, because the young plumber that owned it just found out he was going to be a dad and needed to marry his girlfriend quick. lol...

-Chris

The GT500 is probably parked in warehouse right next to the missing 'Bullit' Mustang. It is a bit hard to spot because the Lost Treasures of Jerusalem are stacked on top of it.

Well, at least the Janis Joplin 356 Porsche is still around:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/glynthomas/54633796/

Actually, the Bullit Mustang resides in Oklahoma... it won't be shown to the public until the current owner passes.

Don't ask my why they don't want anyone to know they have it. Paranoid much?

When I was 15 in 1980 my dad bought a '65 Impala 396 Convertible from the guy who lived behind us. I had lusted over this car for years as it sat unmoving in his driveway. It was on my paper route and I stopped every day to look at it and dream. About a month after he brought it home he chipped a tooth on the flywheel and decided he didn't want to drop the transmission and sold it to the mechanic down the street. He probably gave and received a few hundred dollars for it. A big block car like that is probably worth $20-$25k now.

In about '82 we were offered a basket case Norton 750 Commando for FREE and turned it down.

Finally, in 83 or 84 we briefly had a '69 BMW R69S. It was beautiful. Leather touring seat, Earls fork. Dad paid $500 for it and I rode it home. We gave it a fresh maroon paint job with gold stripes, it was immaculate. He then proceeded to damage the crank trying to get rid of a 'vibration' he said he felt. Rather than pull the engine to fix it he just sold it. Now, like the Impala, it's an easy $20k+ vehicle.

It's a close call, but that Impala is the one that hurts the most.

I had the chance to buy a nice yellow early Cobra in 1971 for $6,000. As I was just out of high scholl, working my way through university, making about $2 an hour, and as insurance for an 18 year old kid was around $900 a year, there was no way I could swing it.

The same car, now white and now a race car, was offered to me in the late 1970s on a marriage break up for 'only' $30,000. You guessed it - still couldn't afford it even though I was now making several times what I had been the last time the car came up for sale.

Last saw it being offered over $100K (and yes, still out of my budget range). Wonder what a good early 289 car with racing history goes for these days. Doesn't matter.....I still can't afford it!!

True story this: this car was brought into pals shop by transplanted eastcoaster. Wanted the car detuned for street use. Had lived in one of those communities in which the residents had their own race track ala airport out their back door and most had little race cars to play with. No place for that kinda action in Napa so this fella wants to sell the car to any of us who might be hanging around my pals shop. Naturally we all took a look at a beautiful high end well prepared replica Cobra and choked out a big negative thinking the worth of such a rig was well beyond our meager resources. A few days later, along comes a high roller who has a collection I've posted pics of and offers a ridiculous price. (well under 30K) Shoot!! That would almost have been doable, especially if you flipped that 427 and dropped a nice 289 into it. Heres a pic of it on one of the deliveries in which I got to drive it upvalley. Next pic is sitting with stablemates.

Seeing that ad reminds me that at that time, the only thing I could afford to buy was two cans of Shelby's "Pit Stop" aerosol deodorant and a key chain. And, of course, I wish I still had those two cans.

You got three cars worth over $300,000 and you chock the wheel with a log........

I've kept old Hemmings magazines from 30 years ago......Always fun to dig them up now and then and look at what a custom body Packard, Jag 120, shelby/cobra, 53 Buick Skylark.............etc....sold for.

Question: what car today is 10 years old, can be bought for under 30 grand, will someday be considered a very valuable car, and we just don't see it. The kind of deal our grandkids will someday ridicule us for not having the vision to have bought one when they were "reasonably affordable".....Thoughts? In my mind it will obviously have to be something with low production numbers, that is is truly a "special car"......maybe a viper (for american cars)? Look into your crystal ball and tell me what will be that "AC Cobra" for the kids who graduated highschool in 2002???

I bought my first MG in the summer of 1972 ... a '49 TC from a dealer in London for $2000. A rather raggedy heap that I had to leave at the dealer for repairs. I flew back later on a 3 day pass and drove it back to Germany, crossing the channel by ferry from Dover to Calais, France. Kept it throughout my tour in Germany, shipped it home to northern Illinois, stripped about 6 layers of paint off of it and put it in primer. Went back to college, got married, had kids and the TC languished in the corner of the garage til the summer of 1990 when I traded it even-up to a guy for a gorgeous crimson red '80 MGB that only had 4000 miles on it, which I promptly sold for $10,000 to a doctor in Des Moines.(That was a hell of a lot of money for an MGB in 1990, even though it was super low miles!) The dealer I originally bought the TC from also had a couple other vintage MGs in daily driver condition plus one oddball car that he would have sold me, for the same $2000 that I paid for the TC ... an AC Aceca coupe!!

If we all knew then what we know now...

If you had $6000.00 in 1965 and spent it all in gold at that time when the price per Troy ounce was $35, in todays market that would be worth $299,616.50. Now, how many Cobras could you buy with that?

One, maybe 2.