Text and Photos by Steve Temple 

The automotive landscape is littered with broken dreams of car designers, short-lived vehicular visions from the likes of Malcolm Bricklin, John Z. DeLorean, Liz Carmichael—and Alvin A. Kelly. What often goes hand-in-hand with their entrepreneurial efforts is a colorful image and/ or backstory. Bricklin’s gullwing doors, DeLorean’s drug-trafficking charges, Carmichael’s sex-change operation, to name just few. As for Kelly, well, his Python ostensibly had a link to Carroll Shelby. (That’s a claim we’ve heard numerous times from a number of wannabe car builders.) As the story goes, Kelly attempted to capitalize on work done back in the mid Sixties by Eugene Bordinat, a Ford VP of Design who rendered a replacement for the Shelby Cobra when AC Cars could no longer provide aluminum bodies. Intended as a competitor to the Corvette, the prototypes were to use a new plastic material instead, called Royalex, from the United States Rubber Company (now known as Uniroyal). That project never came to fruition, but in 1981, Kelly came across one of these prototypes, and splashed a mold from it to develop the Python. Quite unlike the curvaceous Cobra, the fiberglass body featured hard-edged, modernized styling with sharp, angular bumpers. Ford factory components included enclosed Probe headlights and Thunderbird taillights. The chassis was completely different as well, using a Fox-body Mustang frame, reinforced with a subframe and modified to move the weight balance farther aft for better handling. Sold through Ford dealers as a turnkey car (not as a kit) with a full warranty, the cars came equipped with a standard Mustang drivetrain and equipment. Options offered by Ford for Mustangs were available, and buyers could also upgrade to to a wooden dash and console. While production plans were fairly ambitious, with a goal of 5,000 units, only a dozen were ever built at the factory in Fort Collins, Colorado, and just seven are known to still exist. The model shown here is number 003, owned by former Corvette dealer Wes Abendroth, who has an eclectic collection of specialty cars. It’s outfitted with a 5.0L Police Interceptor V8 backed by a five-speed transmission, plus factory headers and a performance handling suspension. The cockpit features a leather interior and an upgraded stereo system. While Kelly’s Python showed promise in putting the squeeze on Corvette, it was eventually strangled by under-funding. Even so, it offers a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been a popular ponycar conversion.