In the fall of 1963, Carroll Shelby's racing team already had the SCCA championship in the bag as well as that of the US Road Racing Championship. His front-engined, small-block Cobras were wiping the floor with the competition, but he knew they were about to be outclassed. The upcoming Fall Series races would eventually grow into the mad-hattery of the Can-Am series, producing some of the most powerful road racing cars ever seen. Shelby needed mid-engined power to compete, and he needed it fast. He turned to what he knew best.

The result was a 61M Monaco chassis CM/3/63. Dubbed "The King Cobra," it's the only surviving example of one of the rare race cars to receive the Shelby touch. It goes under the gavel at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the second week of January next year.

This '63 King Cobra was one of two such cars delivered into Shelby's V8-swappin' hands by John Cooper, the builder of Jack Brabham's championship F1 cars and the rally-dominating Mini variant. Shelby took the specially prepared racing chassis, further strengthened the frame, dropped in a full-race Ford 289 cubic-inch V8, and took his team racing on the West coast.

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Designed to handle engines like the 2- or 2.5-liter Coventry Climax with around 240 hp, the Monaco was light as a feather. With the all-American V8 crammed in there, the weight was still only around 1400 lbs. So that's 1400 lbs, 400+ hp, and 1960s tire technology: It went like a Saturn V strapped to a pair of roller skates.

Immediately setting lap records at Kent Raceways near Seattle, the early King Cobras revealed a few attributes of their Anglo-American construction: they kicked ass, and then they broke down. Racer Bob Holbert fielded this example three times without completing a race, always qualifying in the top three but battling overheating issues. On the fourth go, the 1963 USRRC champ blitzed the field, giving this car its first taste of victory. It would battle again through the next season in the hands of six other drivers, taking more victories.

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Racing moves fast, and the pressures of both replacing the soon outdated Monaco chassis and the upcoming GT40 project forced Shelby to step away from his King Cobras. There were eight cars in total by 1964, five of them actually Shelby American team cars, and this particular '63 model was stripped down and then sold to Alex A. Budurin of Arizona. Sadly, Budurin would pass away before rebuilding the car, but his widow had the bright idea of posting it in the Road & Track classifieds in 1967. A racer named Dwayne Zinola rebuilt the car and then wrestled it to an SCCA national championship. The next owner wasn't so lucky and blew it up on the track.

The car then passed to the hands of one Robert Green, who in 1970 had his King Cobra authenticated by Carroll Shelby himself. He then painstakingly set about restoring it in 1991, keeping it as original as possible. As it now appears, many body parts are original from chassis CM/3/63, and the '91 engine rebuild used spares from the King Cobra racing team. The ZF five-speed transaxle is the same one used in the '64 King Cobra driven so successfully by Parnelli Jones.

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This car is a truly irreplaceable artifact of American racing history and will surely have an eye-watering asking price. Watch it cross the block this coming January.

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