When Stan Cox recently let go of his 289 Cobra, parked for 39 years, his mind drifted backed to a “clear day, not a cloud in the sky.” He recalls the exact date—October 17, 1979—when a driver ran a stop sign and “bent up” the car Cox says was “like a mistress.” He says, I dragged it back home on a hook.”
His story took on a James Dean-ish sound when he talked wistfully about “heading toward Dahlonega,” but he was not going fast, and neither was the other car.
“I saw her sitting there. There were only two cars on the road, and she saw me.”
Cox added another level of fate to this story when he said, “I hate to say this. The only time I ever drove the speed limit was the day it got hit.”
That same day Stan Cox opened his mailbox and found out he had passed the bar.
“Every day I was reminded I wasn’t working on it. I was working on cases, and finally I thought I would share it with the world and give it to somebody else.”
The car was “broken down,” Cox says. His intention was to restore it piece by piece, but he had gone to the hospital, and was “feeling bad, realizing I probably never would have the energy to put it back together.”
Word leaked out to a neighbor about the Cobra. The neighbor told a Ford collector, who called this author about this significant find.
“I don’t want any names mentioned, if we can. People get all riled up.”
With such a small production run of 998, divided between 655 leaf-spring 289 Cobras and 343 coil-spring 427 Cobras, and because there’s a detailed registry of every car produced, one would expect that every car has been accounted for.
This anonymous Ford collector did not think the Cobra would be real. Enthused, but keeping his head, the buyer called Cox, who was just getting out of the hospital that day, and set up an appointment to see the Cobra. The Cobra was in a residential neighborhood in a building behind the house.
“A garage door [rolled] up, and there it set,” said the collector. “It was completely apart,” a 1965 289 Cobra roadster, silver with black bucket seats.
“Yeah, got the top, all five wire wheels. The front bumper was missing. I never did find the little tool kit that I think comes with them. I never did see that. They changed the shifter to a Hurst. The aluminum transmission was there.”
The car is being fully restored.
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