Was The 1962 Shelby Cobra CSX 2000 Really Repainted To Fool The Press?

In February 1962, Carroll Shelby and Dean Moon picked up an engineless AC chassis at Los Angeles International Airport and drove it to Moon's shop in Southern California to drop in a Ford 260-cubic-inch V8 and four-speed manual gearbox. That car — chassis number CSX2000 — would be the only Shelby Cobra in existence for five months. The car was allegedly scoured to bare aluminum with Brillo Pads for its first press drive, then painted red, then blue, then bright yellow for its 1962 New York Auto Show appearance. The implication is that editors at Hot Rod, Cars, Road & Track, and Car Life were all photographing what they believed to be a production fleet. But Hemmings — a collector-car source that also covered the repainting tale in its own piece — has flagged this account as mythology.