James Martell's blog

If your looking for an unusual Street Cruiser that is an Auto Cross Winner - This is your car. This as close to a Go Kart as you will ever be able to drive legally on the road! Fun - Fast - Handling to Match its speed and inexpensive.

As Automotive Legends gets more and more orders, the Porsche 550 Spyder Re-Creation deserves even more attention. This is the tragically romantic vehicle that killed old Jimmy Dean. Hopefully the modern day hero of the streets will learn from the errors of his age old hero and drive with a bit more caution.

New Zealand is fast becoming the land where dreams come true.  This is because a man named Steve Cox is now producing a Ferrari Replica that is for sale in, not only the South Pacific, but the United States as well.  This dream car is the F40 Silhouette based on a new chassis and a whole lot of authentic parts.  The company F40 Developments is located in Auckland and they have an open door policy, so you can come inside and see exactly what they have to offer.

It was 1961 and the Chevrolet Corvette dominated the race scene. Its lightweight fiberglass body and big horse engines made the Vette almost untouchable...

Meanwhile on the other side of the pond... AC Cars had been struggling to produce its sexy little ACE sports car. Due to souring relations with its engine vendor Bristol, it was starting to look as though the ACE would wind up as just another good idea. Then Carroll Shelby came along.

After a storied career as a racing driver, Shelby decided to have a go at automobile making. A few letters and phone calls later, Shelby had secured a 260ci V8 from Ford and a modified version of the AC ACE chassis.

The Cobra. No other image makes a car lover’s pulse race quite the same as Carroll Shelby’s 1962 classic, the Cobra Roadster.

Conception

Like so many things in America, the Cobra Roadster actually has its roots on the other side of the Atlantic, specifically, in England. In 1954, AC Cars of Thames Ditton, Surrey, England, began production of an open top, lightweight sports car. The car was called the AC Ace, and it was elegantly styled for speed. It was one of those cars that looked fast when it was standing still, and looked faster when it wasn’t. The Ace was not out to break any speed records, but it performed well on the British Racing circuit. In the 1957 Le Mans the Ace took tenth overall; a six-cylinder sports car could certainly do worse!

For the second year in a row, the Auto Futura CAV GT took center stage as the official pace car for the Motor Racing Legends race. This annual race holds an especially prestigious allure as it immediately precedes the legendary Le Mans 24 hour endurance race.

Driving the CAV pace car was Ray Matlock, founder and CEO of Ray Matlock Limited. Considering the fact that he has two British Formula Atlantic championships under his belt, Ray definitely knows his way around a racetrack. He has also won an impressive nine Group C2 world championships.

Whether you're in the beginning stages of actually building a replica car, or still doing your research and fact-finding with plans to build in the near future, one of the subjects you will undoubtedly devote the most time to is your new car's engine. And, most people begin this process by first determining if they want to custom-build their engine to their unique specs or install an assembly-line produced crate motor.

Both have advantages, with custom building yielding the results you specify and factory-made engines taking the guesswork out of the overall process.

Leisurely cruising the web recently on a sunny afternoon when I road across an address that grabbed my attention and prompted me to hit the brakes, coming to a full stop on M1stang.com.

The site, which not only shows you how to transform an everyday Mazda Miata into a custom-built all-steel roadster that will rev up the engines of any onlooker, but also provides information on two US locations where you can take your Miata and have it maxed out, creating a M1 Stang Convertible.

For just under $13,000 (and your Mazda Miata, of course), you can have the car of your dreams, but you will have to put down some extra cash for a smokin' paint job because that is not included in the $13,000 price tag. 

So, the time has come. You have checked with your accountant and you have checked with your spouse, and you can finally do it – you can buy your Cobra! But which one? There many Cobra replicas on the market, and, once you have selected one, there are thousands of subsequent design choices to make. Here is a brief guide to help you organize your thoughts when shopping for a Cobra replica. I am not going to discuss pricing much, but for a nice quality replica you may spend anywhere from a few thousand dollars to as much as you choose to part with in customization and premium parts.

Before you actually go shopping for a Cobra, here are some questions that you need to resolve:

Go cruising just northeast of San Diego in sunny southern California and you just may come across the town of El Cajon. What's so interesting about El Cajon? It's the home of Thunder Ranch, which has created some of the most flat-out gorgeous kit cars in the world.

Tom McBurnie, owner of Thunder Ranch since it opened its doors in 1978, is a seasoned racecar driver who knows how to design and build truly spectacular kit sports cars.

In fact, soon after Thunder Ranch started manufacturing kit cars under his watchful eye, Tom built the Ferrari 365 Daytona replica that millions lusted after every week on the 1980s television show Miami Vice.