The owner of this '01 Cobra wishes to remain anonymous. Sure, it's kind of a weird request, but it's one we've experienced before. Some people would rather not let everyone else know what they have. Even though we can't say who the owner of this car is, we'll just say his family owns a large, lucrative business. He wanted a toy, and this '01 Cobra is it.
The gentleman purchased the car brand-new as a demo in California and had it shipped to LaMotta Performance in Longwood, Florida. He knew of LaMotta because he once lived in the area and had a '94 GT back in the day that the crew had treated to a high-horsepower program. He wanted to get into a modular Mustang, and he knew exactly whom to contact for the proper horsepower propulsion. Accordingly, Lamotta Performance knew the avenue to take with the car.
Jake LaMotta, Jay Meagher, and the crew at LaMotta went right to work disassembling the car and getting it ready for more power. One of LaMotta's favorite power adders is, of course, the turbocharger, and two are almost always better than one. To that end, LaMotta readied the car for a twin kit using Garrett GTB35 turbos with custom tubing. To make sure the engine was ready for boost, VT Competition Engine Development built a short-block using a Cobra crank, Manley rods, and JE pistons, with a 9.2:1 compression ratio. To make the heads more airflow friendly, they were treated to a Total Engine Airflow port job, while ModMax springs enable serious rpm without floating. Even the intake came under the grinder with a little work from Al Papitto, who knows a few things about making a modular Mustang fly. A Griggs Racing tubular K-member makes all this play nice down below, while a D&D Performance Viper-spec T56 transfers power back through a D&D Performance aluminum driveshaft to an 8.8 straight axle with 3.73 gears and Moser 31-spline axles.
Although we make it sound as if the transformation took a week, it actually took quite a long time. The owner never drove the car until LaMotta Per-formance was finished with it. When it was completed, we drove to the shop to take a closer look. At the time we photographed the car, it was making around 620 hp. "[It's] making around 700 right now," says Jake. The car's best time is an 11.60 at 130 mph on BFGoodrich Drag Radials. "The car's not set up for drag racing at all," he says. These days, the owner uses the car for daily transportation. Sometimes he takes it to the track, only to run his one 11-second pass and get thrown out for not having a rollbar in the car.
Jake says the owner doesn't want to add a bar because he doesn't want to climb over it to get in and out of the car. Maybe he should think of a rollcage as monkey bars. After all, the Cobra is a toy.