Dishing the dirt

Ever wondered how special a totally original, unrestored Shelby Cobra would feel? This guy should know: as well as the 'Dirtbag', he's owned 50 of them. Preston Lerner finds out more

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They don't call Lynn Park 'Mr Cobra' for nothing. About 50 of them have passed through his hands over the past five decades. At the moment, he houses nine within his sprawling nine within his sprawling garage in suburban Los Angeles, along with several reproductions and enough memorabilia to consecrate a shrine to Carroll Shelby. His collection includes one of the five so-called FIA roadsters that raced internationally in 1964 and one of the four bad-ass drag-racing Dragonsnakes. But the car that aficionados queue up to see is an easily overlooked, bone-stock 289 with badly pitted and chipped paint that Park cheerfully calls 'Dirtbag.

This particular Cobra wasn't running when Park bought it, and the nose got lightly pranged while the ratty-looking car was being pulled by a tow rope because the brakes didn't work into the Cobra Day exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum shortly after he bought it in 1994. 'Shelby was there, of course,' Park recalls. 'He told me, "Lynn, nobody's looking at the shiny cars. They're all looking at yours.

You've got to leave this car alone." Although this advice sounded strange at the time, it now seems prescient. These days, thanks to the obsession with barn finds and the popularity of preservation classes, the collector car world is full of machines backdated to make them more 'original. But Dirtbag - a 1964 roadster owned for many years by the Offenhauser family of Indy car fame - is a time capsule that authentically showcases what a well-used, plain-Jane Cobra looked, felt, drove and sounded like back in the day.