You may remember in a past issue of Aussie Muscle Car Mag Rare Spares ran a full page add looking for Muscle Car owners to submit details and photo’s of their cars. The wining car was to be presented to V8 Supercar ace driver John Bowe (JB) for a morning of testing. Well as soon as l saw the add l was onto the PC downloading photo’s and putting together a short history of our Cobra , and then sent it off via the internet to the Rare Spares web address.

It was around two months later that l got a phone call from them to say that our Cobra had been chosen to be the first car to be tested by J.B. The only problem was they wanted me to drive the Cobra to Eastern Creek Raceway for the test day!!. Well sorry l said, but that’s just not going to happen as l live in Melbourne. Oh that’s fine, we will be able to give you money for fuel !!! After a while it was decided to see if we could hold the test day somewhere in Vic. So a few days passed and the date was set. Monday 30th May 9am at the Rare Spares Head Office in Campbellfield. Stu came along with his XB GT and once we got there we were introduced to JB, Mark Ostler (from Muscle Car), Leith Robertson (RSP Marketing Services Manager), Lee Ryan (RSP Marketing Coordinator & photographer) and the main photographer for the day a Mr Helmut Muler.

JB Drove the Cobra, Mark was in the GT with Stu and the rest in a little Gemini !!.

Up the Hume and past Craigieburn where we turned left and off to where FPV do most of their on road testing.This was no new ground for JB as he was telling me he does a lot of testing for Ford and FPV on these roads, and he knew what he was doing. It was not long before he had the Cobra wound up to over 160kph with me in the passenger seat it seemed a lot faster, then we stopped so Helmut could get some action shots, this meant he was hanging out of the back window of the Gemini just in front of the Cobra while we were doing around 80 kph all the time looking back and taking photos.

Then we parked the Cobra in the centre of the road while both of the photographers clicked away for over an hour!!. Then we came across a very hilly and winding stretch of road through a cutting with very steep walls , here the guy’s positioned themselves like mountain goats while JB Gave the Cobra a few very quick passes through , ( I have given the Cobra a lot of hard times over the years both on & off race tracks but l have never had the rear tyres scraping on the guards like JB had them scaping that day) I was glad to see this part of the testing over with, no harm done and l can’t wait to see the next issue of Aussie Muscle Car. I must thank all who were involved in making this very unique experience happen and l am very glad Stu was there to see that a Dirty old Cobra still HAS IT.

Cheers.
Tiny.