Taxonomy
United States
24 entries
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Book I
Shelby Cobra
The word that arrived before the car did
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…
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Book I
Shelby 427 Cobra Super Snake
Two built. One of them ate its owner.
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…
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Book I
Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe
The snake that grew a shell to go faster in a straight line
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…
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Book I
Ford Shelby Cobra Concept
A resurrection performed at a motor show, then quietly abandoned
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…
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Book II
Dodge Viper
Ten cylinders, no apology, side pipes that burned the calf of every passenger
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…
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Book II
Dodge Viper GTS-R
The snake that went to France and made a noise nobody had permission for
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…
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Book II
Ford Mustang SVT Cobra
A horse wearing a snake, which nobody has ever satisfactorily explained
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…
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Book II
Shelby GT500 Super Snake
One was built. Shelby wanted fifty. The price made it a species of one.
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…
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Book II
Ford 428 Cobra Jet
Not a car. An engine that became a promise.
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…
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Book II
Ford Mustang Cobra R
Sold without a radio, without air conditioning, and without a back seat, to people who had to prove they could use it
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…
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Book II
Dodge Ram SRT-10
A snake that can tow
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…
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Book II
Dodge Copperhead Concept
The Viper’s smaller, cheaper, more survivable cousin, killed in committee
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…
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Book II
Ford Torino Cobra
A large flat car with a snake on it and no intention of turning
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…
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Book II
Dodge Sidewinder Concept
A pickup with a Viper engine, named for a snake that moves diagonally on purpose
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…
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Book II
Ford Mustang Cobra II
A snake made almost entirely of stickers
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…
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Book II
Ford Fairlane 500 Cobra
The cheapest way to buy a snake in 1969
Ford took its plainest mid-size body, installed the 428 Cobra Jet, deleted almost every comfort, and undercut everyone. Rubber floor mats. Bench…
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Book III
Hennessey Venom GT
A Texan twin-turbo V8 wearing a Lotus like a stolen skin
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…
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Book III
Hennessey Venom F5
Named twice for things that cannot be survived
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…
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Book V
The Snake and the Mongoose
Two drag racers invented a rivalry, sold it to a toy company, and changed how sport is funded
Don Prudhomme was called the Snake. Tom McEwen called himself the Mongoose specifically so there would be someone for the Snake to fight. Then…
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Book V
Plymouth Road Runner
Named after a cartoon, which was named after a bird, which genuinely does kill rattlesnakes
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…
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Book VI
SSC Tuatara
The last survivor of a lineage that split from the snakes a quarter of a billion years ago
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…
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Book VI
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray
A cartilaginous fish with a venomous barb. Venomous — but not a snake, and not even close.
The most commonly misfiled car in this entire subject. It is venomous, which fools people. It is a fish, which settles it.
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Book VI
Plymouth Barracuda
Beat the Mustang to market by two weeks and has been losing the argument ever since
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…
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Book VI
Hudson Hornet
Venomous, arthropod, and the best-handling American car of its decade
Hudson dropped its floor pan below the frame rails, called the result step-down construction, produced the lowest centre of gravity in America, and…