Words: Trent Hetherington | Photos: Brenten Ewing
What do you get when you take a DRB Cobra kit car, widen the track, extensively modify the body to make it closer to the original then strap a built Tickford 302 in it?
You get a violent beast that wants to bite you every time you antagonise it, much like the name suggests. You get 440 rwhp in a lightweight roadster with enough torque that it pulls like a freight train to digits that will have you locked up for longer than if you were caught with a suspicious boogyboard bag in a Balinese airport.
You get George Nagy’s custom made Cobra project that he meticulously built by hand over an 8 year period to suit not only his desire to drive a car that attempts kill him at every given opportunity, but to also reflect the level of detail that George approaches all his projects with.
Co-founder of Ultimate Big Boyz Toys, George is no stranger to project cars and while his own personal beast was in the build, he and his business partner and best mate Rob built quite a few one of a kind cars.
Using his wealth of experience in the industry of car customisation, George left no stone unturned with the Cobra build. He started with the DRB Kit which he cut and welded himself whilst performing extensive modifications to set it apart from the “off the shelf” kit. The rear guards were raised to keep the appearance closer to genuine and the front guards were split in order to widen the front track.
Once the rolling chassis was together, George spent a substantial amount of cash building up a 289 Windsor out of a ’69 Mustang that unfortunately never made it into the car because ADR laws at the time changed.
Not a man to throw in the towel, George sourced a 302 Tickford motor and went to work. It was fully rebuilt and the ECU was sent to perth for a custom tune. The big girl now sings at 7,400 RPM which is pretty impressive and has to really be heard to appreciate. George tells me that unlike typical V8’s, the windsor keeps pulling right the way to redline, in fact once he’s at the end of third he’s nudging 200km/h with two more gears to go. The car currently makes 440 RWHP reliably.
“I’ve now chewed four banjo diffs so I don’t drop the clutch anymore”, George proudly told me when I asked him how brutal the car is on a launch!
The car was setup to handle well, too. Koni shocks with lowered HQ springs keep the Cobra nice and flat through the bends. George tells me it’s like a little go-kart, only with a whole lot of ponies!
The car is finished in a custom shade of Naruba Blue (painted by Rob) that George changed a dozen times until he was happy with final shade, the poor guy at the paint shop almost retired, haha. This is one of the reasons that this car is so nice, the attention to detail is spot on and George never once said that something on the car was “good enough”, through trial and error he made the car perfect in his eyes and you’d have to be some kind of OCD fruit loop to disagree with him.
The interior was finished by another mate of George’s on the Gold Coast. Simple, but very period in terms of the time, it suits the car perfectly and is enough to make you drool.
It’s builds like this that I love, the passion that went into the build erupts from it like a volcano when you cast your eye over the car. One of the main things that I love about this build is that it gets driven. Too often I see cars that are capable of so much more than just sitting in the shed, but who wants to own a cobra and keep it in a terrarium all the time? You’ve got to poke it every now and again to get it angry, it’s part of the fun!
