Ferrari 250 GTO vs. Shelby Cobra 289

We're in the pit lane next to the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, and a young man among the small crowd that always gathers is right on cue: "Are they, you know, as good as everyone says?"

His face is a mask of genuine innocence, which says he's not waiting to have an existing prejudice challenged or confirmed. He really wants to know, and implicit in the question is whether someone who has driven one might know why a Ferrari GTO is worth 5 million pounds. Or is it dollars? As if it matters.

Our answer is disappointingly formulaic. "Yes, absolutely," we say. "There's a balance to it like nothing else. And 12 cylinders, of course. Just love driving it."

But although we don't have a sensible answer, this question always sets us to thinking. Are they as good as — what?

So that's what we are doing here today at the Goodwood Motor Circuit with both a 1962 Ferrari GTO and a 1963 Shelby Cobra 289. To pin down what it is that makes these two cars a part of a historic rivalry that will be remembered as long as motor racing is talked about — cars that are so special, so valuable and so worth the money.

The Players
This is a Cobra 289 of consequence, the very car that AC Cars sent to the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans because Henry Ford and Carroll Shelby wanted a car on the grid to help justify Ford's recently announced Ford GT program until the sports prototype would be ready in 1964. Sponsored by The Sunday Times, it was driven by Ninian Sanderson and Peter Bolton to 7th place, which is probably better than Shelby expected. Now Nigel Hulme has custody of this piece of history.

It had been Shelby's inspiration to marry the 4.7-liter Ford V8 with the flimsy ladder chassis of the AC Ace, but he already knew the combination would be blown off about halfway down Les Hunaudieres. Short nose, flat windscreen, big bum. Not great for flat-out speed down one of the longest straights in motor racing, as Shelby knew.

Old canny Enzo Ferrari knew a little something about aerodynamics, too, because by 1962 he had bullied the international motorsport sanctioning body into accepting a modified, homologated version of the standard Ferrari 250GT SWB — the 250 GTO. It was just a catalog option, if your idea of a few slight aftermarket modifications was along the lines of, "Let me see, I'll take the long nose plus the long tail with its aerodynamic spoiler, and then the extra carburetors on the 3.0-liter V12 engine. Oh, all right, I'll have the five-speed gearbox, too. Any chance of a speedometer to keep it all street legal? Tell you what, put it in a cardboard box and leave it on the transmission tunnel and I'll find somewhere to put it, that's a good chap."

Ferrari made 32 GTOs with this early body and a handful more with either big engines or revised bodywork. Now in the hands of former Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, this is the car that finished an astounding 2nd overall in 1963 in the hands of well-known Belgian privateer Jean Beurlys (actually the pseudonym of businessman Jean Blaton) and one Gerhard Langlois van Ophem — five places ahead of the Cobra.

Bits and Pieces
The AC Cobra is worth a bit more than the usual early Shelby Cobra 289 because it hasn't been modified and tarted up. This all-iron Ford V8 was originally designed for a Canadian pickup truck, and it displaces 4,727cc and operates two valves per cylinder via pushrods from a single camshaft buried in the vee between the cylinder banks. The road car had a big single carburetor, but the racers boasted a set of four two-barrel Weber downdraft carbs, which helped produce 380 horsepower at 6,000 rpm. This V8 is simple and strong, and makes up what it lacks in technical sophistication with the torque from cubic inches and the fortitude of iron construction.

The Ferrari's 2,953cc V12 features all-aluminum construction (very high-tech then) with iron cylinder liners, and each head has a single chain-driven overhead camshaft. Six two-barrel Webers feed the fuel to help make 290 hp at about 8,000 rpm. This engine thrashes and clatters mightily, but there is no evidence to prove it was any less tough over a race distance than the Ford, although there's no doubt it is more highly strung, fluffs the odd spark plug and goes out of tune more easily.

But apart from the difference in the overall shape and under the hood, the Cobra and the GTO aren't that much different. These are front-engine cars with rear-wheel drive, built on simple ladder-type frames with double-wishbone independent suspension in front and heavy live axles in the back, plus disc brakes all around.

Behind the Wheel From Maranello
The Ferrari GTO's seat still has its original leather covering, cracked with age and the slither of distinguished buttockry, and it's still a nonadjustable bucket that does little to hold you no matter how tight the safety harness (which wouldn't even have been there in '62). Legs splayed to clear the splintery wooden rim of the steering wheel, we always wonder how the hell we're going to last even an hour at the controls.

Then the hand falls straight from the rim of the steering wheel to the shift knob, the flick of the ignition sends a whole set of needles flickering, and we push the key to start. Twelve small cylinders seem to whirr at double speed, and then eventually the V12 catches, revving lazily at first as it clears out the fuel, then swelling to a multilayered tenor like a windy church organ.

Hook the big aluminum shift knob, pull down against the sticky 1st-gear synchro until you feel the clack in the metal gate, then ride the sharp, juddery clutch against a good stack of revs.

The Critical Moment
At first, the Ferrari will feel awkward and uncooperative. As the shift lever slowly goes through the slotted gate and against those rubbery synchronizers, the revs die and there's a jerk as the road speed hooks them up again. Go easy on the steering wheel, which points the nose but does it with no real enthusiasm.

Start to get a bit more confident and push on a bit and the nose stops its pointing and washes away from the apex, and then the tail starts to slither on the exit. The V12 soundtrack is wonderful, and once on song it revs up so quickly that you can have the tachometer needle at nine without even trying. Your previous experience says the car will just understeer, but use the last touch of imbalance from the brakes and the tiniest easing of the wheel to start the turn, and then the instant you feel a lean toward that outside front tire, you squeeze on the power.

This is the critical period. You want to cancel the push from the front but you don't want to sling the tail. Whoa...just a touch of opposite lock, but keep your commitment and don't lift off and with a bit of luck you'll find the car is neutral — or almost. You have to fidget the steering a touch from now on — maybe 10 degrees to the left, 5 to the right and back. The engine is on the cam and pulling as the car yaws, but it's not an opposite-lock slide. It's a drift, and you balance it with the power liberated by extra revs against steering which has become pin-sharp as if it has magically acquired power assistance.

This technique simply doesn't work in a modern car, mainly because of the tires. The modern variety is designed to grip rather than slide and will overheat very quickly if you do start drifting.

The American Problem
How could the Cobra follow a performance like this?

It starts by offering better accommodation. The seat is similarly minimal, equally cracked and leathery, but it slides fore and aft and the wheel is clear of our thighs. Of course, the shift lever poking vertically from the tunnel needs thought to operate rather than instinct. The engine spins slowly on the starter, then bellows and rumbles, sending a thrum through the frame. The throttle picks up mighty smartly, and the slightest touch of the pedal flicks the tach needle round the dial and rocks the whole car.

The V8 feels half as muscular again than the V12, pulls like a glider winch from nothing and pins you to your seat whatever the gear. There's that massive response only found in genuinely powerful cars, where you add a bit more boot and the car always leaps forward as if there's a giant outside force sweeping it along.

The Cobra feels heavier at the front than the GTO and the steering is weightier, with lots of kickback. You have to wind up what feels like 10 degrees of spring-loaded slack to overcome the initial push from the front tires and make the nose point at the apex, only once you've succeeded it will promptly push again. We can't seem to get a drift going, and there's never the sharpness that eventually comes to the GTO's helm and never the calm that descends once you've got the yaw started.

But there are other options. You don't need to take so much speed into the corner and keep the Cobra's engine on the cam, because it's always on the cam and you don't need to grapple a slower gearshift anything like as often. You can leave it in the higher ratio and use the vast well of torque to accelerate through the corner in the traditional slow-in, fast-out sense. It's more physical than the Ferrari but generally easier to access.

That said, you do have to be careful. Backing off the power suddenly in a corner must be avoided at all times because it gives you the kind of oversteer you get from yanking on the handbrake. And then there are times when the rear end of the car will do a mighty jig, almost as if something had broken. It's like one end or the other of the rear transverse spring has led the rear suspension to run out of travel.

Track Mates
But the AC Cobra was by no means the Ferrari 250 GTO's poor relation on the track. It doesn't have the Ferrari's romantic side, but in many ways it is a more effective racer for short, dirty dogfights.

Sure, when you have a clear track with long fast corners, you can use the Ferrari's balance to keep up the momentum. And where you have several miles flat out, like at Le Mans, the GTO's more beautiful body shape would count. But on a crowded track where you trip over slower cars and lose that entry speed into corners, or somewhere with lots of slow corners, the Cobra's power will always come to the rescue. Former Ferrari F1 world champion John Surtees (crotchety old cove that he is) recently admitted that he sometimes refused to drive a GTO because he knew he would trip over people while trying to use the car's strengths and he didn't need a shunt in a sports car while he was trying to win F1 races.

The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO and 1963 AC Cobra are both GT cars from a golden era where all the things you do for fun on a greasy roundabout on the open road today were then an essential part of every lap on a racetrack. Then it was less a question of tire compound, wing angle and ride height, and more a question of putting the available ingredients together better than the next man. And it's physical. You work all the time and step out sweaty, with sore feet and bruises you only find the following morning.

A favorite, then? Well, that all depends whether you're asking as a romantic, a racer or a businessman. We just love driving them. These are the kind of cars where inspiration in the cockpit can always make you faster.

Portions of this content have appeared in foreign print media and are reproduced with permission.