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Cobra Country special announcement: In an exclusive story in the June 1997 issue of McMullen & Argus' Kit Car Illustrated magazine--to be on sale starting April 4th--Californian André Capella reveals that he built and personally orchestrated the building of all 370 Shelby 427 Cobras while working for Shelby American between January 1965 and July 1966.
Beyond that, he track-tested each and every Cobra at Riverside International and Willow Springs (Southern California raceways), or, alternatively, after the company moved from Venice (California) to a commercial site on the premises of LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). In addition, Capella scribbled the CSX serial numbers into each Cobra with his own hand!
Was all of this a wild delusion? During a six-hour interview with KCI Editor Bill Moore, Capella presented documentation for his claims, including:
Item 1: An employee card, No. 201. On that card is the date 18 January 1965, the date he began working for Shelby American. It also includes the name André C. Gessner, which was the name Capella used at the time he worked for Shelby. Gessner's signature is on the card, below which is printed "Shelby American, Inc., 1042 Princeton Drive, Venice, California." In a blue oval is the word "Ford" in white script.
Item 2: Four brass circles, each about an inch and a half (about 4 cm.) in diameter, with the word "COBRA" stamped into the metal. These were probably used on a large pegboard to keep track of the various Cobras in Shelby's shop during production.
Item 3: A collection of small pieces of cardboard--patterns--that he employed to create not only the brackets he to fit various components into the aluminum 427 bodies, but also the forms that had actually shaped several tools he needed.
Item 4: A faded old photograph of a 427 Cobra sitting beside a brick building. André says it's the first of the three-hundred-and-seventy 427 Cobras he finished. It is unique in that it is a competition car with a rollover hoop, but instead of the backwards-facing support tube employed in most 427s, this one has a forward-facing support. André says he must have used one from a 289 Cobra. In his own handwriting are the words: "1st Cobra--I built myself."
Item 5: An original Cobra decal, and in André's scrawl, in ink on the backside, are the words: "Original Cobra decal, 1966." It was produced by TEC-COLOR-CRAFT, in Covina, California. You can't get one of these for love nor money.
Item 6: A 427 Cobra parts list, dated "5 March 1965." Scrawled in his own handwriting on a white pad with blue lines are the parts used in building the 427 Cobras. Since the first 10 were competition cars, they had two batteries--and both are listed. Because those first 10 cars also had two Stewart-Warner fuel pumps, they're listed also!
Item 7: A photo of a much younger André Capella wearing a Shelby American T-shirt, kneeling in front of one of his homebuilt race cars with a curious calico-patterned cloth as part of the fiberglass body. Just in back of André you can see part of the name on the car; it reads: "André Gess."
This last item is very important, because it provides unimpeachable evidence that Gessner/Capella was a racecar driver, that he had a car of his own, and that he had a direct relationship to Shelby. His skills as driver, machinist, electrician, pattern maker, fabricator and mechanic were all called into play during the months he built those three-hundred-and-seventy 427 Cobras.
For anyone who loves the powerful Cobra, this is a stunning story with numerous revelations about the things that happened at Shelby American in the glory days of the sixties, when Carroll Shelby and his crew won a World Championship and loosed upon the world a fabulous sports car called the 427 Cobra!