Twin Turbo LS-Powered G-Comp Cobra

This is a twin-turbo, stroker LS-powered Cobra replica with 355-wide tires on all four corners and a prototype Speedway Motors G-Comp suspension front and rear. Let that sink in for a minute. Now, some of you are going to be mad about the LS engine. A GM engine in a Cobra may seem like sacrilege to some, but there’s a lot going on here that we think even Mr. Shelby himself would surely have gotten behind. Just hear us out.

Carrol Shelby saw the performance potential of stuffing a big American V8 into a tiny British AC Ace. The rest, as they say, is history, with Cobras becoming among the most legendary race cars in history. The car you’re looking at here is the result of similar logic. The Speedway Motors R&D team saw that a small, lightweight car equipped with the race-winning G-Comp suspension architecture could be dominant on the racetrack.

And so the team got to work. R&D Engineers Tom Brown and Bill Schneider hit the drawing board to coax the G-Comp suspension architecture into the most compact package possible. Their sights were set on autocross dominance, so they knew they would need to squeeze the biggest rubber possible under the fiberglass fender bulges. They also knew that they would need ultra-tight turning angles and a rear suspension that would hook up the power from whatever went under the hood. The resulting suspension is a work of art, and a great exercise as the team continually pushes the G-Comp platform toward better performance and durability.

Up front, G-Comp Unser Edition suspension was modified to fit the extremely narrow confines of the Cobra. Special control arms mount the fabricated uprights for maximum clearance to allow those huge tires to turn. Out back, a G-Comp Torque Arm rear suspension was modified with an extremely narrow 9-inch floater housing and a torque arm that resembles a yoke. These suspensions are designed to work with a wide variety of coilover shocks, and QA1 Mod Series shocks were chosen here to provide a near-infinite range of valving adjustment sure to help stick the car to any track. Wilwood brakes bring it all to a halt in a hurry.

And what about that engine? Cobra purists have likely stopped reading by now, so we can safely talk about the Chevy engine under the hood. Zach Woods and the crew at Speedway Motors Racing Engines dipped into Speedway’s impressive selection of LS hop up parts to build an aluminum 6.0 with a Scat forged crank to bump the displacement to 409 cubes. Knowing that this car would pull some insane g-forces, a dry-sump system was plumbed up to keep the oil where it belongs. To add some extra insanity to an already crazy car, a pair of Speedway Motors 66mm turbos were squeezed in and plumbed through Vibrant tubing and Granatelli elbows. A Holley Terminator X makes sense of all the chaos and a Speedway Motors Universal Radiator keeps it cool. On the dyno, this engine made over 800 horsepower, with plenty more on tap if the boost gets turned up. Backing up the turbo mill is a Tremec TKX transmission and a comically short Speedway Motors Custom Length Driveshaft spins the Speedway Motors Assembled 3rd Member and Grand National housing.

To some it may seem like this engine doesn’t belong here, for lots of reasons. But it bears some remarkable similarities to another beast of a Cobra straight out of Shelby’s stable. In the late 60’s, Carroll Shelby and crew set out to build the ultimate Cobra by fitting a pair of Paxton superchargers right out in front of a 427. The resulting setup was claimed to make around 800 horsepower in the pair of Cobra Super Snakes that were created. If you can get over your brand loyalty, the Cobra pictured here is very much a Super Snake for the new millennium.

We haven’t even talked about the body. The old fiberglass shell was a swap meet find that Bill and the R&D crew had to significantly brace and modify to prepare it for autocross battle. And that miniscule windshield, white paint, and #98 aren't there by accident. That's a nod to Shelby's own Cobra as it was immortalized in Ford v Ferrari. Since race cars are constantly being worked on, the body was designed to be lifted off completely, with custom stanchions made to support the body off the car. This sounds simple enough, but anyone who’s ever built something like this knows how hard it is to make it all work. There’s a ton of planning and effort here that’s hidden under that white primer. In general, the entire car is full of clever packaging to neatly fit everything into the tight confines.

The real question here is how does this mad science experiment actually perform on the track? The answer, we’re pleased to report, is quite well, thank you. In its first weekend out at the Goodguys Speedway Motors Heartland Nationals, the Cobra and driver Brian Martin picked their way through qualifying to make the Shootout. Not an easy feat, especially for a completely fresh and untested car. With one weekend’s worth of new car bugs sorted out, Team Speedway’s next outing will be LS Fest, where the car will hit the autocross and the drag strip. We can’t wait to see this thing flying through the traps at the big end of the strip.

So, there you have it. A Cobra like no other, designed and built in the spirit of the original to do one thing really well: win races. We think that’s a mission statement that everyone can get behind, even if it does have a Chevy engine!