They say if you lived in the Sixties and remember it, you weren't there. Well, maybe that was about the 70s and I only remember in broad strokes what happened each year . I know it was during that era that I met a promising young lawyer (promising in that he had already clerked for the Supreme Court) named Richard Pierce who lived in Encino,CA and he was proud to show me two 427 Cobras that he said were part of a group of five which he and a partner in Chicago were dolling up to be passed off as real Cobras. Mr.Pierce was the victim of homicide only days after our meeting and I was wondering 30 plus years later if anybody knows: --Did the scheme work, i.e. are the 427 Cobras he and his partner built now considered genuine AC Cobras? I presume the other three I didn't see were big block chassis & engines but now found reference to a small block Cobra they built --does anyone know if Mr. Pierce's sudden and violent homicide was solved and what motive was attributed to the killer ? I'm not worried about a libel suit; dead people can't sue you. I am just curious to know what happened because, as I do research, things that don't jive tend to stick up like sore thumbs. Maybe I read too many Patterson and Sanford books....
Perhaps so. Wallace, Since you still have not purchased a Cobra Registry maybe someone will lend one to you so you can read about Mr. Pierce, his "partner" in Chicago and the AC MK IV's. There is information under CSX3231 and the chapter on the AC MK IV's
Thanks, I will consult one when one of my rich friends buys a new Registry. I will find the reference to the small block car and reprint it here. Maybe they experimented with a small block car first before they went to big block conversions. More small block Cobras were destroyed in racing than big blocks so they would have had a wider variety of serial numbers to glom onto, but on the other hand that would have meant they would have been able to order small block chassis with leaf springs and I believe Brian Angliss was only making big block coil spring chassis and bodywork back then.
bitzman, Perhaps you should review the Registry before making assumptive statements that there was any reference to leaf spring cars, or that they tried to fake CSX numbers.
Registry aside, I resent any implication that I assumed what I experienced in person. In point of fact, I actually went to Richard Pierce's house in Encino at his invitation. We did business together (not related to Cobras). He showed me his two 427 Cobras. He bragged in great detail how the scheme was going to work; specifically how he was going to use CSX3000 series numbers on these faked-up cars. As regarding the leaf spriing cars, I will look that up on the foreign website by this weekend and post it. Perhaps that car's story is well known; but it wasn't to me. I consider myself more familiar with genuine CSX3000 Cobras than the average bear, having gone to the Shelby American factory in 1965 as a guest of Shelby American. I was also familiar with Mr. Pierce's body and chassis supplier , having visited his shop in GB while he was making Cobra replicas, where I talked to his workmen personally. Also I subsequently talked to a tradesman in the U.S. who was involved in converting the tubs of the cars Pierce and his partner had bought to be more like 427 Cobras. The only assumption I am making is that two to five 427 Cobras (I waffle on the number because I only saw two, but was told there were five in process) were conceivably sent out there into the Cobra community as 427 Cobras that in point of factual fact started out life in the UK as replicas. Whether they were all successfully passed off as real Cobras at a later point in time is what I am curious about. If they were that shows that the documentation is not as complete as it should be (not that this is uncommon, Mercedes clubs say 1400 gullwings were built; I say 1485 because the factory told me so...almost any collector car has these unexplained variances) I realize that reviving talk of these cars makes some owners of 427 Cobras who don't have the complete ownership history of their cars nervous but wouldn't you agree that the very incentive for documenting cars (or any valued antique) , to establish their provenance? Why would there be any objection to anyone doing research if such research further establishes the bona fides of the real Cobras? If you think only one group should have ironcald and exclusbie right to do research on a marque that sounds like censorship; if tany of these cars are offered to the general public for sale at one point or another , then it would behoove investors to do continuous research to establish their provenance. By the time you get to the auction block at Scottsdale or whatever, it's a little late to do the footwork. Since I have been involved with many marques besides Cobras, I found that there are many reasons serial numbers are cars are changed; I even met a man who was infamous for going into a tunnel between Switzerland and Italy in a Ferrari or Maserati, and faking a breakdown somewhere along the way so he could switch the serial numbers on his car so he wouldn't have to pay duties. Race teams sometimes go to races with a second car hidden away with the same serial number and livery as the first so they can fake that they have repaired the first one. I met a man in Switzerland who made GT40 replacement chassis for owners of genuine GT40s so that they could transfer the number from their original, when the original has been smashed or because they would rather race the fake than harm the original. In this case though, the goal was strictly to improve the value of the cars by selling them as "real" rather than as "replicas." One of the first rules of establishing provenance is to establish a continuous chain of ownership from when they were new--a claim that few 427 Cobra owners can claim. Until the five 427 Cobras that Richard Pierce talked about having can be accounted for, I remain skeptical. One of the reasons I am following this trail (which came up purely by accident when the name "Richard Pierce" popped up on a foreign website) is that there is a diminishing window of opportunity to find out the truth because the people involved in the charade originally are aging and may not be alive decades from now to tell the tale, hence my simple inquiry to see if anyone else who was around Cobras in the '70s was privy to the plot and what they were told and/or observed at the time. Please don't try to sell me a Registry again, I am tired of hearing that, I was hoping somebody out there had personal experience with Mr. Pierce and these cars and wants to talk about it so I can hear the "end of the story" almost 40 years later.
Bitzman, Perhaps I failed to express myself well enough. My point was that much of the information you are seeking is in the Registry, without the ‘confusion’ you are trying to add to the story. There is reference to Brian Angliss and a couple of his first cars being modified to look exactly like original 427 Cobras. There is mention of whispers of information that reached SAAC that some had assumed original Cobra serial numbers. There is information on the association of Angliss with Richard Buxbaum, the owner of Classic Motors in Hinsdale, IL, to remanufacture Cobras and import them into the US. The issue they ran into was meeting current safety and emission requirements. Without repeating the entire article, suffice to say that once the EPA learned these were new cars and not cars that pretended to be 1965 cars registered using the serial number from the engine Angliss & Buxbaum tried to convert the cars to meet the standards. The 427 engine would not work so the 351 V8 with a 5 speed was used and purchased directly from Ford. That is the reference you made to small blocks. Richard Pierce owned CSX3231. He apparently discussed a joint venture with Richard Buxbaum to produce Brian Angliss-built 427 Cobra replicars. Pierce eventually declined to participate due to the high costs. Perhaps you would receive additional information from questions if you first read the Registry, rather than trying to begin a suspense novel with, “--Did the scheme work, i.e. are the 427 Cobras he and his partner built now considered genuine AC Cobras? I presume the other three I didn't see were big block chassis & engines but now found reference to a small block Cobra they built --does anyone know if Mr. Pierce's sudden and violent homicide was solved and what motive was attributed to the killer? I'm not worried about a libel suit; dead people can't sue you. I am just curious to know what happened because, as I do research, things that don't jive tend to stick up like sore thumbs.” It may be a lot easier to read the wealth of information in the Registry first, then do the additional research.
Hey folks! Just my 2 cents.If you are at all serious about these cars,you need to buy the book.The registry is the first step of many to begin to uncover history,and is a must have for a thousand reasons.You should not really see it as that expensive..realize it is an investment.As car people go...this is a great group,and willing to help,but there is so much you can gain here by helping yourself.Please consider this soon.
Did the Pierce cars connect to Autokraft Mk. IV? Since I never saw all five lined up, so I am willing to scale down the estimate of faked 427 Cobras produced by Pierce to the two I saw, plus I always had the nagging thought that there was a problem with his scheme to use the serial numbers of smashed Cobras because naturally the owners of those cars might be planning to rebuild them. That scheme of borrowing numbers of smashed caars wouldn't work unless you bought both the wreckage and the titles and sometimes the wreckage would to to one person and the title to another (who then would build a new car with that number). A guy in the old Ferrari restoration business told me "all you need is the title and the number plate and we can build a Ferrari to go with them." I can't remember when I met him but it seems that sometime after--maybe the mid-'70s-- the Autokraft Mk. IV Cobras came into being with Brian Angliss supplying the cars. I wonder who the American owners of that concern were? They apparently got a good start by impressing Bob Lutz, who was then with Ford, who OK'd Ford working with them and got a package that could meet the letter of the law so that Ford dealers could sell them. Lutz credits a drive in his Mk. IV, which he still owns, to giving him the idea for the Viper. It would be ironic if the legitimate-and-aboveboard Autokraft Mk.IV was born out of a failed scheme to fake 427 Cobras. I like the Autokraft Mk. IV except for the modern rocker-switch dash. I also saw and photographed two new Autokraft Mk.IV racing cars which were more or less like 427 S/C Cobras at a Long Beach concours. They had hotted up 351 Cleveland engines and were reportedly only for track use so that might explain how they could have a lot of illegal-for-the-road features (not illegal if they were on a 427 Cobra but illegal for the time period they were being imported). They were dark blue with red and white nose to tail stripes. Ironically though the Mk. IVs weren't ever touted as being 427 Cobras, I heard that you could order them in countries like Germany without an engine and with the mounts for a 427, so evidentally they were strong enough to take the 427.
