The origin of Ultimate Classic Cars, and its new Cobra replica, started out with a customer order from an another company, Lone Star Classics. Dennis Cahill, a geophysicist by profession who has located oil and gas deposits all over the world, was looking for a special kind of Cobra. Since he’s bigger guy (over six feet tall, and built like football player), he wanted a slightly larger cockpit than most. After ordering his components in the Spring of 2014, and then waiting for several months, he grew impatient and discovered that Lone Star was having some financial difficulties. So he ended up purchasing all the tooling from the bank, and starting fresh with Ultimate Classic Cars.

The prior manufacturer had already been developing a larger Cobra called the 427GT with a number of innovations. Cahill also hired most of the former Lone Star staff that had been working on the car, and wants to move the operation to a new 20,000-sq. foot facility early next year to Boerne, Texas, near San Antonio.

Besides refining the design with better brake cooling and using new manufacturing processes (laser cutting, welding jigs, and fiberglass molds), Cahill also plans to offer other models, such as a ’32 Ford. He recently sold a 427GT to a local high school as a project for a shop class, which will be raffled off once it’s completed. “It’s good for the school and good for the community,” he points out, and has plans to repeat this program with other high schools as well.