EVENT COVERAGE: 2003 Cobra Shootout
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EVENT COVERAGE: 2003 Cobra Shootout
Yes this is a long one but should quiet all of the Cobra haters !
2003 Cobra Shootout
A special class was created for Ford's amazing new hot rod. Paul Svinicki runs 10s with a 4-week wonder.
It all started as a whim. I was quickly falling in love with Ford SVT's
latest supercar, the timeless 2003 Cobra, as the rest of the country joined in. The car is so easy to appreciate: it runs high-12s the day you buy it, and all you have to do is add slicks and a smaller blower pulley, throw the airfilter in the trash, and you've got a deep-11 second car. The sick part is that they are running in the 11-second zone with the stock tires, a good chip, and an aftermarket exhaust. The 2003 Cobra will likely be the fastest Mustang ever produced until we start using hydrogen for fuel!
If you've already checked out the box score: first, you are amazed at
how fast these cars are, and second, you are probably wondering why only 13 cars showed up. Well, yes they are fast, but unfortunately we were all faced with the remnants of a hurricane as we traveled to Bowling Green. Would you drive your brand new $35,000 Cobra through that? We can't blame those who chose not to. However, there were dozens of 03 Cobras driven to the race and put in the car show area. And, our competitors reported being surrounded all day on Saturday by other 03 Cobra owners who were starved for information on these nasty little monsters.
Jeff Schmell came from Michigan with boost, chip, and exhaust. The car ran 12.00s like nothing. Lucas Marles is a wild man from Birdsboro, PA. He traded in his LS1 Camaro for this car, and man is he happy he did! With exhaust, pulley, and a chip, he was another street sleeper that went 12.0s at damn near 120 mph. Don Brittan was from the UK, and his stock 03 Cobra convertible ran 13.30s at way over 110 mph. And, that's stock! Pete Ricart and Shane and Lisa Reffett liked the sounds of an 03 Cobra Shootout so well, that they went out and bought cars just for this race. Pete (of the huge Ricart Ford in Columbus, Ohio) had 4.10 gears, a Paul's High Performance cold air kit, 2.93 blower pulley, cat-back exhaust, and lots of throttle. Pete went balls-out on every run, and he quickly learned that you can't stand on the gas with over 400 ft/lbs of torque from 2,400 rpm to redline like his lightly-modded Cobra has. Lisa's car was simple: Unlimited Performance Racing (UPR) 2.80 blower pulley, UPR cold air pipe, and a UPR chip. That's it. Shane had trouble driving the car, but once he got it figured out it went 12.56 at over 119 mph on the brakes during eliminations on Sunday. Folks, that's a 120mph street car on the stock rubber with less than $500 in parts! Now, you are seeing why everyone is so nuts over these cars.
Then there was John Galway from the Chicago area. Galway got about
95-percent done with his Real Street car, but after watching his buddy Mark Magnuson go so fast, he realized he didn't have the time to compete on that level. So, he bought an '03 Cobra convertible. Galway drove his car to Bowling Green, just breaking 2000 miles on the odometer on the trip there, and with nothing more than a Bassani X-pipe, Flowmaster cat-back, and a Pro 5.0 shifter, Galway ran 13.10 at 109mph. He hasn't driven a stickshift in anger for years, so he's just learning the car, meaning it has 12s written all over it.
The winner of this first-ever shootout for the 2003 SVT Cobra was
Michigan's Paul Svinicki and his crew from Paul's High Performance (Mike, Karl, Jeff, Scott, and Paulıs wife, Ronda). Let's just say that Paul took his 2003 Cobra to the limit with a construction time of only four weeks. Perhaps the most striking part of this car was its stance, provided by a serious lowering effort using AJE front components (K-member and A-arms) and the removal of the factory IRS in favor of a good old 9-inch Ford rear stuffed with 3.89 gears. A pro-shifted Tremec TKO 5-speed transmission also replaced the stock 6-speed T-56, a good box in its own right (the best a Mustang has ever seen). Paul and the gang also gutted the car, and I mean they got rid of everything. We looked inside and did an immediate double-take because in place of all that plush Cobra interior was a 10-point, NHRA-certified cage with only the driver's seat in its stock position. Credit goes to Attack Race Cars for the cage work. In fact, the guys had gotten the car down to 3,220 pounds from an original factory weight of 3,820 pounds!
Besides the basic drag racing strategy that has worked for decades, Paul has also used this car to further the development of his 2003 Cobra-specific line of high performance wares. On this car you could find a Paul's High Performance cold air kit, 2.93 blower pulley (making 14 pounds of boost), throttle body, intake pipe (trick!), line lock, huge intercooler (very trick!), PSP carbon fiber driveshaft, and a fuel system featuring big rails and 50 lb/hr injectors. In addition, a full Bassani Exhaust system was in place including the companyıs mid-length headers, X-pipe, and cat-back with Real Street race mufflers. Tying the deal together was a custom DiabloSport chip that Paul helped design for this application. Oh, did we forget to tell you about the nitrous? Oh yes, the Venom Performance kick-in-ass was in the trunk and squirting a modest 50 to 70-horse shot down the blown, 32-valve 4.6-liter Ford. On muscle, the car kicked out 539 rear-wheel horsepower and with the spray it was over 600rwhp! That's from bolt-on parts, folks.
On 28x10.5-inch M/T slicks, Paul got his beautiful Sonic Blue mind-scrambler to rumble to a 10.86 at over 134.8 mph (1.422 short-time) without the spray. He broke third on his last run with the sauce, but he did see 115mph in the eighth. Paul tells us that with more testing thereıs no reason this car canıt go 10.20s on motor. With the nitrous, look for 9.50s with the 150 nitrous jets!
Qualifying:
Race Tire
1. Paul Svinicki 10.975 132.75
2. Rob Raymer 11.784 121.96
3. Pete Misinsky 11.662 121.63
4. Francisco Reyes 11.819 116.59
Street Tire
1. Matthew Fahgee 11.784 121.96
2. John Triozzi 11.790 120.33
3. Pete Ricart 12.012 117.50
4. Jeff Schmell 12.018 113.93
5. Lucas Marles 12.064 118.43
6. Rich Juliano 12.279 118.43
7. John Galway 13.100 109.76
8. Shane Reffett 13.355 100.45
9. Don Brittan 13.358 111.39
2003 Cobra Shootout
A special class was created for Ford's amazing new hot rod. Paul Svinicki runs 10s with a 4-week wonder.
It all started as a whim. I was quickly falling in love with Ford SVT's
latest supercar, the timeless 2003 Cobra, as the rest of the country joined in. The car is so easy to appreciate: it runs high-12s the day you buy it, and all you have to do is add slicks and a smaller blower pulley, throw the airfilter in the trash, and you've got a deep-11 second car. The sick part is that they are running in the 11-second zone with the stock tires, a good chip, and an aftermarket exhaust. The 2003 Cobra will likely be the fastest Mustang ever produced until we start using hydrogen for fuel!
If you've already checked out the box score: first, you are amazed at
how fast these cars are, and second, you are probably wondering why only 13 cars showed up. Well, yes they are fast, but unfortunately we were all faced with the remnants of a hurricane as we traveled to Bowling Green. Would you drive your brand new $35,000 Cobra through that? We can't blame those who chose not to. However, there were dozens of 03 Cobras driven to the race and put in the car show area. And, our competitors reported being surrounded all day on Saturday by other 03 Cobra owners who were starved for information on these nasty little monsters.
Jeff Schmell came from Michigan with boost, chip, and exhaust. The car ran 12.00s like nothing. Lucas Marles is a wild man from Birdsboro, PA. He traded in his LS1 Camaro for this car, and man is he happy he did! With exhaust, pulley, and a chip, he was another street sleeper that went 12.0s at damn near 120 mph. Don Brittan was from the UK, and his stock 03 Cobra convertible ran 13.30s at way over 110 mph. And, that's stock! Pete Ricart and Shane and Lisa Reffett liked the sounds of an 03 Cobra Shootout so well, that they went out and bought cars just for this race. Pete (of the huge Ricart Ford in Columbus, Ohio) had 4.10 gears, a Paul's High Performance cold air kit, 2.93 blower pulley, cat-back exhaust, and lots of throttle. Pete went balls-out on every run, and he quickly learned that you can't stand on the gas with over 400 ft/lbs of torque from 2,400 rpm to redline like his lightly-modded Cobra has. Lisa's car was simple: Unlimited Performance Racing (UPR) 2.80 blower pulley, UPR cold air pipe, and a UPR chip. That's it. Shane had trouble driving the car, but once he got it figured out it went 12.56 at over 119 mph on the brakes during eliminations on Sunday. Folks, that's a 120mph street car on the stock rubber with less than $500 in parts! Now, you are seeing why everyone is so nuts over these cars.
Then there was John Galway from the Chicago area. Galway got about
95-percent done with his Real Street car, but after watching his buddy Mark Magnuson go so fast, he realized he didn't have the time to compete on that level. So, he bought an '03 Cobra convertible. Galway drove his car to Bowling Green, just breaking 2000 miles on the odometer on the trip there, and with nothing more than a Bassani X-pipe, Flowmaster cat-back, and a Pro 5.0 shifter, Galway ran 13.10 at 109mph. He hasn't driven a stickshift in anger for years, so he's just learning the car, meaning it has 12s written all over it.
The winner of this first-ever shootout for the 2003 SVT Cobra was
Michigan's Paul Svinicki and his crew from Paul's High Performance (Mike, Karl, Jeff, Scott, and Paulıs wife, Ronda). Let's just say that Paul took his 2003 Cobra to the limit with a construction time of only four weeks. Perhaps the most striking part of this car was its stance, provided by a serious lowering effort using AJE front components (K-member and A-arms) and the removal of the factory IRS in favor of a good old 9-inch Ford rear stuffed with 3.89 gears. A pro-shifted Tremec TKO 5-speed transmission also replaced the stock 6-speed T-56, a good box in its own right (the best a Mustang has ever seen). Paul and the gang also gutted the car, and I mean they got rid of everything. We looked inside and did an immediate double-take because in place of all that plush Cobra interior was a 10-point, NHRA-certified cage with only the driver's seat in its stock position. Credit goes to Attack Race Cars for the cage work. In fact, the guys had gotten the car down to 3,220 pounds from an original factory weight of 3,820 pounds!
Besides the basic drag racing strategy that has worked for decades, Paul has also used this car to further the development of his 2003 Cobra-specific line of high performance wares. On this car you could find a Paul's High Performance cold air kit, 2.93 blower pulley (making 14 pounds of boost), throttle body, intake pipe (trick!), line lock, huge intercooler (very trick!), PSP carbon fiber driveshaft, and a fuel system featuring big rails and 50 lb/hr injectors. In addition, a full Bassani Exhaust system was in place including the companyıs mid-length headers, X-pipe, and cat-back with Real Street race mufflers. Tying the deal together was a custom DiabloSport chip that Paul helped design for this application. Oh, did we forget to tell you about the nitrous? Oh yes, the Venom Performance kick-in-ass was in the trunk and squirting a modest 50 to 70-horse shot down the blown, 32-valve 4.6-liter Ford. On muscle, the car kicked out 539 rear-wheel horsepower and with the spray it was over 600rwhp! That's from bolt-on parts, folks.
On 28x10.5-inch M/T slicks, Paul got his beautiful Sonic Blue mind-scrambler to rumble to a 10.86 at over 134.8 mph (1.422 short-time) without the spray. He broke third on his last run with the sauce, but he did see 115mph in the eighth. Paul tells us that with more testing thereıs no reason this car canıt go 10.20s on motor. With the nitrous, look for 9.50s with the 150 nitrous jets!
Qualifying:
Race Tire
1. Paul Svinicki 10.975 132.75
2. Rob Raymer 11.784 121.96
3. Pete Misinsky 11.662 121.63
4. Francisco Reyes 11.819 116.59
Street Tire
1. Matthew Fahgee 11.784 121.96
2. John Triozzi 11.790 120.33
3. Pete Ricart 12.012 117.50
4. Jeff Schmell 12.018 113.93
5. Lucas Marles 12.064 118.43
6. Rich Juliano 12.279 118.43
7. John Galway 13.100 109.76
8. Shane Reffett 13.355 100.45
9. Don Brittan 13.358 111.39
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On one hand I'm glad to see a Cobra in the 10's, but on the other hand, that ain't no stinkin Cobra no more either. I can't believe what he did to that car. Not from a collectability standpoint, but from a "go low 11's in a fully loaded car" vs "goes 10's with a gutted fully modded tub".
