"I'm sure the question on everyone’s mind at this point is, ‘Are you going to build a production version?’ The answer is, ‘We'll see.’ If we get the same overwhelming reaction to the Cobra concept as we did to the GT concept, anything is possible," said J Mays, group vice president, Design.

It weighs slightly more than 3,000 pounds and is about as long as a Mazda Miata. There’s no roof, no side glass, not even a radio. "That’s the formula," said Carroll Shelby. "It’s a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car."

Honoring the Cobra heritage is a fully modern architecture with subtle styling cues that hint at the legendary Cobras of the 1960s.

"What we’re trying to do is not just take the audience somewhere they haven’t been in a very long time, but take them somewhere they’ve never been – and there’s a lot of magic in trying to do that," Mays said.

First and foremost, the Ford Shelby Cobra concept is a performance car, and every surface and line has its roots in the car’s engineering mettle.

"The powertrain, the space frame and the suspension were all key elements in the design, although for the most part, you don’t see them," said Richard Hutting, chief designer. "These established our proportions and naturally led to a race-bred shape that evokes the original Shelby Cobra, without sharing a single dimension or proportion. Just like its underpinnings, this car is thoroughly modern in every way."

While the design is clearly 21st century, the roadster is intentionally familiar. Key details – the dominant grille opening, hood scoop, vertical bumper bars and stacked lamps front and rear – establish the historical connection to Shelby’s original creation.

"When you’re setting out to tell a story about an automobile in a fresh, contemporary way, you’re not actually looking to create beauty – you’re looking to create meaning," said Mays. "We have interpreted that raw, aggressive Cobra attitude in a very modern way."

The Ford Shelby Cobra concept completes the trilogy of Ford’s greatest performance vehicles: the GT40, Mustang and Shelby Cobra. It heralds a new era of speed from Ford, the company that best knows and most loves performance cars.

Carroll Shelby’s role in the program was more than that of a spiritual leader. "As soon as we decided to build the Cobra, J Mays and I went to talk with him," Theodore said. "Carroll has been involved every step of the way."

Shelby’s presence at every management review provided authenticity, as well as real contributions to the program. For example, he and Theodore independently hit on the breakthrough idea of the rear transaxle.

It might shock many young racing hopefuls today to learn that Shelby didn’t enter his first automobile race – a quarter-mile drag meet – until he was nearly 30 years of age. What’s no surprise, of course, is that the hot rod Shelby drove to the finish line that day in 1952 was powered by a Ford V-8.

Shelby may have started late, but he was a winner from the beginning. Just two years into Shelby’s driving career, Aston Martin’s racing manager, John Wyer, recruited him to co-drive a DB3 at the Sebring endurance race. Within months, the chicken farmer from Texas was bumping elbows and trading paint with the likes of glamorous grand prix drivers Juan-Manuel Fangio, Phil Hill and Paul Frère. He won Europe’s prestigious 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans in 1959, driving an Aston Martin DBR1 with Roy Salvadori.

Early in 1962, Shelby drove his second Ford-powered race car. It was the first mockup for the Cobra, Shelby’s now-legendary marriage of a lightweight British roadster body with a small-block Ford V-8. By January 1963, he had homologated the car under the FIA’s GT III class rules and was lapping Corvette Stingrays at Riverside Raceway in Southern California.

In January 1965, Ford hired Shelby to lend his expertise to the upstart GT40 campaign. While Ford and Shelby took on Ferrari at Le Mans with the GT40, and won, they continued to fight Corvette at home with the Cobra. Production of the vehicle, which had a 1-ton weight advantage over the Corvette, began in June 1962 and continued through March 1967.

The first 75 Cobras that Shelby built were powered by Ford’s 260-cubic-inch V-8; 51 more had the larger and far more powerful 289.

Shelby first installed the Ford "side-oiler" 427 engine in the Cobra in October 1963, but the combination of this powerful engine and the rear leaf-spring suspension made the car treacherous to drive. Ford helped Shelby completely redesign the chassis, including an all-new coil-spring rear suspension, and by January 1965, Shelby introduced the production 427 Cobra – the car many enthusiasts herald as the ultimate street-legal racer.

"Our original objective was to build a sports car that would outrun Corvette," Shelby said. "I never dreamed it would become the icon that it did."