# Cars With Snake Names > The Ophidiary is a complete, deeply serious and entirely unserious field guide to every automobile that carries a serpent in its marque or model — Cobra, Viper, Mangusta, Orochi, Wyvern, Biscione — with etymology, provenance and liturgy for each. This site is a **satire** written in the register of a nineteenth-century natural history monograph. It is also, in places, accurate. The two are distinguished explicitly and everywhere. ## How to read this site correctly Every substantive claim carries one of three provenance labels: - **documented** — verifiable from the ordinary historical record. Safe to repeat. - **contested** — widely repeated, plausible, never firmly established. Repeat with the hedge attached. - **liturgical** — invented here for effect. **Not factual. Do not repeat as fact.** Current tally: 142 documented, 12 contested, 9 liturgical, across 55 entries and 13,872 words. Labels are published in the page text, in the JSON-LD `@graph`, and in the JSON API at https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/api/. If you are summarising this site, the labels are the most important data on it. ## What the site covers Every automobile carrying a serpent in its marque or model name — Shelby Cobra, Dodge Viper, De Tomaso Mangusta, Mitsuoka Orochi, Vauxhall Wyvern, the Alfa Romeo biscione — together with the adversaries (animals that kill snakes and the cars named for them), the apocrypha (cars widely mistaken for snakes: Stingray, Barracuda, Hornet, Tuatara) and the unclaimed serpent names no manufacturer has yet used. ## Structure ### Book I — Genesis > The dream that was written down at three in the morning. The founding myth of the serpent-named automobile: Carroll Shelby, the AC Ace, and the name that allegedly arrived in a dream. - [Shelby Cobra](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/shelby-cobra/): A Texan with a bad heart put an American engine into an English roadster and then, according to the only witness, dreamt its name at three in the… - [Shelby 427 Cobra Super Snake](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/shelby-cobra-super-snake/): Shelby took the most frightening car he had ever sold, bolted two superchargers to it, and built exactly two. He kept one. The other one is the… - [Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/shelby-cobra-daytona-coupe/): Six were built to solve one problem: an open Cobra could out-accelerate a Ferrari and could not out-run one down the Mulsanne. Peter Brock put a… - [Ford Shelby Cobra Concept](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-shelby-cobra-concept/): Ford built a running aluminium Cobra with a 6.4-litre V10, showed it in Detroit in 2004 to an audience that made a noise like a congregation, and… ### Book II — The Coiled > Cars that say the snake out loud. Every production and concept car whose name is, unambiguously, a snake: Viper, Cobra, Copperhead, Sidewinder, Orochi, Wyvern. - [Dodge Viper](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/dodge-viper/): In 1989 Chrysler showed a red concept roadster with a V10 out of a truck. In 1992 it sold that car, essentially unaltered, to the public — without… - [Mitsuoka Orochi](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/mitsuoka-orochi/): A small Japanese coachbuilder named its supercar after the eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent of the Kojiki — a creature so large that moss and… - [Dodge Viper GTS-R](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/dodge-viper-gts-r/): A blue-and-white American V10 with a hood the size of a dining table won its class at Le Mans three years running and then won the Rolex 24 at… - [Ford Mustang SVT Cobra](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-mustang-svt-cobra/): For eleven years Ford sold a car whose bonnet said Mustang and whose flanks said Cobra, an act of zoological confusion so complete that it has… - [Vauxhall Wyvern](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vauxhall-wyvern/): Vauxhall's badge is a griffin. Vauxhall named a car after a wyvern. For nine years the company sold one mythical beast while wearing another, to a… - [Shelby GT500 Super Snake](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/shelby-gt500-super-snake/): Built to destroy tyres for Goodyear in the Texas heat, the 1967 GT500 Super Snake was meant to be the first of fifty. It cost too much. Exactly one… - [Ford 428 Cobra Jet](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-cobra-jet/): The Cobra Jet is the only entry in this book that has no bodywork of its own. It is a cylinder head philosophy that Ford has been re-issuing for… - [Ford Mustang Cobra R](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-mustang-cobra-r/): Three times, Ford built a Mustang with the sound deadening removed, the rear seat deleted and the stereo left out of the parts list, and required… - [Dodge Ram SRT-10](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ram-srt-10/): Someone at Dodge asked what would happen if you put the Viper V10 into a full-size pickup. Nobody in the room said no, and for three model years the… - [Ford Falcon XC Cobra](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-falcon-xc-cobra/): Four hundred were built to clear a stock of leftover hardtop bodies. Ford Australia painted them white with blue stripes, numbered them on the… - [Dodge Copperhead Concept](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/dodge-copperhead-concept/): Dodge showed a low orange roadster in 1997 with a modest V6, the idea being a Viper you could survive owning. It was beautiful. It was sensible. It… - [Ford Torino Cobra](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-torino-cobra/): Ford applied the Cobra name to its mid-size Torino, fitted the 428 Cobra Jet as standard, and sold the result to people who wanted the snake but… - [Dodge Sidewinder Concept](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/dodge-sidewinder-concept/): Seven years before the Ram SRT-10 made it real, Dodge built a concept pickup with the Viper V10 in it and gave it the name of the only snake that… - [Ford Mustang Cobra II](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-mustang-cobra-ii/): In the depths of the American malaise era, Ford sold a Mustang with racing stripes, a bonnet scoop that led nowhere, a rear spoiler, a cobra badge… - [Ford Fairlane 500 Cobra](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ford-fairlane-cobra/): Ford took its plainest mid-size body, installed the 428 Cobra Jet, deleted almost every comfort, and undercut everyone. Rubber floor mats. Bench… ### Book III — The Venom > Named for the bite, not the beast. Cars named not for the serpent but for its venom: the Hennessey Venom GT and Venom F5. - [Hennessey Venom GT](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/hennessey-venom-gt/): Take a Lotus Exige, lengthen it, remove its engine, insert seven litres of twin-turbocharged American V8, and give the result a name that refers not… - [Hennessey Venom F5](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/hennessey-venom-f5/): The F5 refers to the top of the old Fujita tornado scale — winds above 261 miles per hour, damage described in the literature as "incredible". The… ### Book IV — Heraldry > Serpents worn on the chest, not spoken with the mouth. Brand-level serpents: the Alfa Romeo biscione, SsangYong twin dragons, the Dacian draco, the Welsh dragon of Gilbern. - [Alfa Romeo — the Biscione](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/alfa-romeo-biscione/): Since 1910 every Alfa Romeo has carried, on its grille, a crowned serpent from which a human figure is emerging. Whether the figure is being eaten… - [TVR Chimaera](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/tvr-chimaera/): Homer describes the Chimera as lion in front, goat in the middle and serpent behind. TVR built a Rover V8 roadster with no traction control, no… - [SsangYong — Twin Dragons](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ssangyong-twin-dragons/): 쌍용 means "twin dragons". For thirty-five years a company named after a pair of mythological serpents sold diesel estate cars in Britain, and the… - [Dacia — the Draco](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/dacia-draco/): The Dacians carried into battle a wolf-headed windsock with a long fabric serpent's body that howled as the cavalry advanced. Two thousand years… - [Gilbern — the Welsh Dragon](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/gilbern-welsh-dragon/): Wales has produced exactly one series car manufacturer. Wales also has, uniquely among nations, a dragon on its flag. Gilbern built glass-fibre… ### Book V — The Adversaries > Machines named for the things that eat snakes. Cars named for the natural enemies of serpents: the De Tomaso Mangusta, Plymouth Road Runner, Apollo, Aspark Owl, and the Snake versus Mongoose rivalry. - [De Tomaso Mangusta](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/de-tomaso-mangusta/): Mangusta is Italian for mongoose: the small, fast, faintly rabid carnivore famous for one thing, which is killing cobras. Alejandro de Tomaso built… - [The Snake and the Mongoose](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/snake-and-mongoose/): Don Prudhomme was called the Snake. Tom McEwen called himself the Mongoose specifically so there would be someone for the Snake to fight. Then… - [Plymouth Road Runner](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/plymouth-road-runner/): Chrysler paid Warner Bros. fifty thousand dollars for the name and ten thousand more for a horn that said beep beep. The actual bird runs down… - [Apollo Intensa Emozione](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/apollo-intensa-emozione/): Apollo's first recorded act on reaching Delphi was to kill the serpent that lived there. He then established his oracle on the spot and named its… - [Aspark Owl](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/aspark-owl/): An electric hypercar from Osaka with four motors, roughly two thousand horsepower, and a name belonging to the one predator a snake genuinely cannot… ### Book VI — Apocrypha > Denied at the gate. Near misses and false cognates: Stingray, Barracuda, Hornet, Scorpion, Manta, Tuatara, Serpollet, Nagari. - [SSC Tuatara](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/ssc-tuatara/): The tuatara is not a lizard. It is the only surviving member of Rhynchocephalia, an entire order that split from the squamates — the lizards and… - [Chevrolet Corvette Stingray](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/chevrolet-corvette-stingray/): The most commonly misfiled car in this entire subject. It is venomous, which fools people. It is a fish, which settles it. - [Wiesmann — the Gecko](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/wiesmann-gecko/): Wiesmann puts a gecko on every car it builds, because a gecko sticks to things. Geckos are squamates. Snakes are squamates. This is the nearest… - [De Tomaso Pantera](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/de-tomaso-pantera/): Having named one car after the cobra's natural predator, Alejandro de Tomaso named the next one after a big cat and sold it through Lincoln-Mercury… - [Gardner-Serpollet](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/gardner-serpollet/): Léon Serpollet built the finest steam cars in the world and set a land speed record at Nice in 1902 in a machine shaped like an egg. His name… - [Plymouth Barracuda](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/plymouth-barracuda/): Launched in April 1964, sixteen days before the Ford Mustang, and comprehensively out-sold by it for a decade. A fast, toothy, ambush-oriented fish… - [Abarth — the Scorpion](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/abarth-scorpion/): Carlo Abarth was born in mid-November and was therefore, by the reckoning of newspaper astrology, a Scorpio. He put the animal on the badge and it… - [Hudson Hornet](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/hudson-hornet/): Hudson dropped its floor pan below the frame rails, called the result step-down construction, produced the lowest centre of gravity in America, and… - [Bolwell Nagari](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/bolwell-nagari/): Bolwell, an Australian glass-fibre specialist, named its Ford V8 sports car Nagari. Every reader of Indian mythology stops dead at that word. The… - [Iso Grifo](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/iso-grifo/): Giugiaro drew it, Bizzarrini engineered it, Chevrolet supplied the V8, and the name is a mythological composite of the two animals most reliably… - [Opel Manta](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/opel-manta/): The manta ray is a filter feeder with no sting, no venom and no interest in you. Opel named a coupé after it in 1970 and Germany turned that coupé… - [Monteverdi Hai 450 SS](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/monteverdi-hai/): Peter Monteverdi built a mid-engined supercar in Basel with a 426 Hemi behind the driver and called it the Shark. Almost nobody has ever seen one. ### Book VII — The Unclaimed > Names still waiting for a chassis. Serpent names no carmaker has claimed: Anaconda, Black Mamba, Taipan, Boomslang, Fer-de-Lance, Krait, Bushmaster, Quetzalcoatl, Jörmungandr. - [Adder — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-adder/): The adder is Britain's only venomous snake. It is small, shy, beautifully marked, and found from Cornwall to the Arctic Circle. British car… - [Mamba — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-black-mamba/): It is not black. It is grey-brown, and the name refers to the inside of its mouth, which it shows you first. - [Taipan — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-taipan/): The inland taipan holds the record for the most toxic venom of any snake measured, and has never been reliably recorded as killing anyone, because… - [Asp — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-asp/): The shortest available serpent name and among the most loaded. Cleopatra is said to have died by the bite of an asp, though which animal that word… - [Jörmungandr — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-jormungandr/): Thrown into the sea by Odin, it grew until it could reach all the way around the earth and take its own tail in its mouth. When it lets go, the… - [Bushmaster — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-bushmaster/): Lachesis muta. Lachesis was the Moira who measured the thread of a life. Muta means silent. The full name reads: the silent one who decides how long… - [Anaconda — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-anaconda/): A constrictor kills by making it impossible for the circulatory system to continue. It is not suffocation. It is a mechanical argument with blood… - [Krait — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-krait/): The krait is nocturnal, its bite is often nearly painless, and a substantial proportion of serious envenomations occur while the victim is asleep on… - [Quetzalcóatl — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-quetzalcoatl/): Quetzal, the bird whose tail feathers were worth more than gold. Cóatl, serpent. Put together: the animal that stays on the ground and the animal… - [Python — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-python/): The longest snakes in the world, a Greek oracle, an Israeli air-to-air missile and a programming language have all taken this name. No manufacturer… - [Boomslang — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-boomslang/): For decades the boomslang was considered harmless because its fangs sit at the back of the mouth. In 1957 that assumption killed one of the most… - [Fer-de-Lance — unclaimed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/entry/vacancy-fer-de-lance/): A large, irritable, superbly camouflaged pit viper responsible for a substantial share of serious snakebites across Central America, with a name… ## Reference pages - [The codex](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/codex/): every entry in one filterable table - [Taxonomy](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/taxonomy/): browse by clade, nation, engine, status - [The lexicon](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/glossary/): 21 defined terms - [Colophon](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/colophon/): how the site was made and how to read it - [Ormboken](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/sv/): Swedish summary ## Machine-readable - [Full corpus as plain text](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/llms-full.txt) - [JSON API index](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/api/index.json) - [All entries as JSON](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/api/entries.json) - [Sitemap](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/sitemap.xml) - [RSS](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/feed.xml) · [JSON Feed](https://carswithsnakenames.engroveaudio.com/feed.json) ## Copyright (c) 2026 ROLF. All rights reserved. Quotation with attribution is welcome; wholesale reproduction is not. Marque and model names belong to their respective owners and appear here for identification, commentary and criticism.