Customer Reviews

The Cobra-Ferrari Wars 1963-1965

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I have been looking for "The Cobra Ferrari Wars" for many years. I am thankful for libraries and interlibrary loans. Only about 4 libraries in the country have this book. The story of Carroll Shelby's quest for the World Championship is one of the best in U.S. racing history. The information about the GT cars of that era, such as the Ferrari 250, Aston Martin, and Cobra is outstanding. The stories of the development of the Cobra and Daytona Cobra, gave me a new insight into the creation of these great racing machines. These stories are told from the point of view of the people who where there. This is one of the many strengths of this book. Another great feature is the race-by-race summary of every race the cobras competed in from 1963 until the final race of the championship season of 1965. Each race is told in the words of the mechanics, drivers and team members who were there and played a vital role in the winning of the championship.
The Cobra Ferrari Wars took place during a time when the U.S. had some of the best racing cars and drivers in the world. These cars and drivers won the biggest and best races in all of the major racing series. They won in F1, Sports Cars, and Indianapolis. We don't seem to produce drivers that can win F1, Le Mans or even the Indianapolis 500 any more. What happened!

I hope that the producers of this great book will come out with a second edition. I don't need to have a signed first edition. If this book was put back in print, more people could have the opportunity to read about Carroll Shelby's 1965 GT Championship. I can afford to pay $...for this book but not $...or more. This new printing would give more racing fans a chance to own this book.

This is one of the best historical works about motor sports published during the last twenty years. With over fifteen years of research put into this work Michael Shoen has created something we will long refer to as a classic. In an era where automotive racing was almost completely dominated by European sports cars Carroll Shelby managed to not only build a competitive sports car but also upset the seemingly invincible position held by Ferrari. The Cobra-Ferrari Wars 1963-1965 accounts, on a race by race basis, the amazing story of the Cobra's climb to the top during those glorious three years.

Not only is this book extremely well written and thorough but the accompanying photographs and diagrams bring this infamous battle to life. Few other motor sports books have been able to accomplish this. I wouldn't recommend this book to the average Cobra or Ferrari enthusiast, however for the serious die-hard this is definitely a must have!

I have about every book extant on vintage motor racing--COBRA-FERRARI WARS is the best by far. The quality of the research is staggering, the photos superb--it puts you into the pits as American motorsports came of age.

AUTHOR MICHAEL SCHOEN was there when the Cobras were rewriting the record books, a fact clearly reflected in his landmark work, "The Cobra-Ferrari Wars" (CFW). Escorting the reader into the thick of the story from the very first page, Schoen eloquently describes the rare brew of ambition, focus and raw talent that propelled Carroll Shelby's youthful and capable team to the 1965 FIA World Manufacturer's Championship. At the same time, the author recounts the fortunes of other opposing teams, details the politics rendered behind the scenes by both Shelby and Ferrari and, perhaps most importantly, provides ample first-person narratives by almost everyone who was involved in the Cobra effort, including an impressive line-up of the great drivers of the day. Complemented by a wealth of evocative period photographs, "The Cobra-Ferrari Wars" stands head and shoulders above anything else in the motorsports history genre, and belongs in every enthusiast's library.

GREAT READ! Unbelievable amount of history on the subject here.

Lots of wonderful pics.

I can't say enough about how good this book is.

A MUST HAVE/MUST READ for any auto enthusiast, but especially for Cobra owners.

I am sad that I waited so long to buy this book. It is among the best written books on sports car racing I have ever read. By luck, I was able to get a resonably priced first edition in very nice shape.

Compiled from primary sources, the story weaves together the diverse threads of drivers, car development, and race performance into a cohesive narrative. Great photos, appropriate to each chapter enhance the quality of this wonderful book.

If you love endurance racing or cobra cars, you need to read this book.

The Cobra-Ferrari Wars, 1963-1965, Second Edition
by Michael L Shoen

First published twenty-five years after the "war", Michael Shoen's account, is still considered the definitive work on what is one of America's greatest motorsports accomplishments of the sixties.

It was a good time for Ford in Europe. Ford GT40 prototypes won the International Championship of Makes and Le Mans in 1966, and Le Mans again in 1967. That same year, Dan Gurney won the Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa in his Ford-Weslake-powered AAR Eagle. It is no surprise then that the accomplishments of the Shelby Cobra team in securing the GT Class Championship may have gone unheralded. While all were focused on the battle for the overall win by the exciting Ford and Ferrari prototypes, at the time it was viewed as merely a class win for road-going GT cars.

Shoen and most outside Italy were looking with great excitement at Ford to end Ferrari's long dominance of the Prototype class. In America, such was the antipathy toward the "arrogant" Ferrari team that the inevitability of Ford's win, given the resources the company threw into the effort, was happily overlooked. Shoen's book, in its original first edition reflected the thoughts of the times and treated Ferrari, the man and the company, rather shabbily. In this second revised edition the view has softened and, again in keeping with today's feeling, Ferrari's place in the history of motorsports is more accurately reflected.

The true battle for the GT Championship crown, as this book delineates, was fought on seldom heard of tracks and obscure hillclimbs across Europe. We are introduced to famous drivers, European and American, who race the open Cobras and developed the Cobra Daytona Coupes. This list is enlightening for most of us who were only exposed to the SCCA races where the Coupes were seldom seen.

The author wills us to cheer for the determined and talented Bob Bondurant who moves to Europe, lives and travels simply, and diligently does his homework learning every never-before-seen track. He personifies the car he drives and grittily battles the best, including teammates and management, to win for an all US team in a foreign land.

This book takes us to all events, large and small, and tells us what we missed. Happily, in both words and pictures, it also tells us about Ferrari's most successful racing GT, the glorious GTO and the men who drove it, factory racers and privateers who raced well and yet still lost to the Cobras.

The Cobra-Ferrari Wars is reflective, in many ways, of the cars it celebrates. It is Ferrari, elegant and thoroughly European, in its pictures and the settings they depict. It is more Cobra, rough hewn and determined, in its story and candid shots. The pictures are wonderful; several are gorgeous. Justifiably so, as many were taken by the famed photographer, Bernard Cahier.

The first edition was offered in your choice of red (Ferrari) or blue (Cobra) cloth covers. Those are now collector items with asking prices that are multiples of the original. Thankfully for us this revised second edition is available and affordable. The second edition was actually produced from high-tech scans of a pristine first edition. Then revisions were made to the text, correcting some errors and adding a bit--making it is a true second edition, not merely a reprint of the first, and thus worthy of consideration for your collection.

It is often said that there are three sides to every story. In all wars there are at least two. This book does not purport to be a balanced view of the conflict. But it is a great story told unabashedly from the winning side.

Copyright 2010 Peter Bourassa (speedreaders.info)

After the first, hard-to-find edition of 1988 was printed, the printing house lost the original films of the book, making a traditional second printing impossible. What the author chose to do was take a mint-condition first edition and scan the photos as well as re-typeset the text to create a second edition. The second edition is much more affordable than the original, collector's item first edition.

About the Second Edition, by the author:

"Acknowledgements"

"This second edition has been delayed a decade because the original printer lost the production films circa 1995. By that time, I had returned the original prints, slides, transparencies, drawings, and artifacts to their owners, as well as given away the few that were mine. I had even given away my address book and correspondence. I knew it would take months to reassemble this material -- time and energy I did not have -- and that some material was not retrievable. Now, 10 years later, it is even less possible.

I have agreed to do a second edition only because advances in digital scan technology now make a high-quality copy possible, based upon a mint-original first edition. For this technology and for re-typesetting the entire text, I thank Walter Kellner, who did the color separations in the first edition. Because of the inevitable degradation of second-generation visuals, I have priced this second edition at one-half the inflation adjusted price of the original. This second edition incorporates minor text corrections on 40 pages. For many of these, I credit Willem Oosthoek, a careful and knowledgeable reader.

Since the first edition, I have spoken with former team members Gary Koike, Jim Culleton (both now deceased), and John Collins about the '64 Daytona fire. John Collins recalls Culleton filling the differential with motor oil, but believes he had been instructed to do so. Koike places the blame on the then-team manager Ken Miles, while Peter Brock lays the blame on Shelby himself. No matter, as per Gary Koike, "Jim...was a fine mechanic and a fine man."

Since the first edition I have also softened my view of Enzo Ferrari. One must remember that Ferrari was a totally self-made man, supported by no one but his customers and what he could turn out the door. He used the tools he had at hand. In contrast, the team Cobras was 100% reimbursed by Ford. As an entrepreneur and industrialist, Ferrari merits respect. Also since the first edition, automobiles have changed. Ferrari now builds several models whose performance surpasses that of the original GTO, as do other manufacturers in this modern world.

What has not changed, but rather intensified, is the legend of Shelby American because, as Shelby states in the Introduction: "[W]e all pretty well worked together. We could fight together, but we were all fighting for the same end result. And, as he told me later: "The most fun in the world is helping someone who really needs it. It is the greatest feeling in the world." This is a Cinderella story of good old American teamwork, an adventure of brave men and not scoundrels. The Cobra story stands out even more today, in an increasingly contrived and propagandized America. Mainstream media could never create such a story and, I am sure, they never will."