Five years ago I researched every conceivable kit car site and manufacturer, trying to find a car that was buildable by a semi-experienced amateur auto mechanic (me), street legal, open-top, affordable, thoroughly engineered (so no welding, fabrication, or backyard engineering would be required), cool looking, and carrying only American parts (sorry!). About then, two brothers in Massachusetts, Mark and Dave Smith, were getting the word out on their new company’s kit car, the Factory Five Racing “replica” of a 1965 427 S/C Shelby Cobra roadster. Replica hell, I considered it BETTER than the original Cobras after reading their brochures: a steel tubular frame, with aluminum sheet bonded and riveted to the frame to form the interior, firewall, trunk, and engine compartments, jig welded to precise tolerances, and designed to make use of the engine, tranny, rear axle, electronics, switch gear, and brake/cooling/steering systems from a wrecked Fox-body Mustang (’87-93 vintage). I flew to Massachusetts to meet the Smiths, toured their factory, verified they were for real, and laid my money down.
I started building my car, FFR #1152, June 1, 1997, finished it in December, 1997, and drove it 62,000 miles all over the USA the following four years. It was a conservative car, stock 5.0 Ford engine with EFI and 5-speed T-5 transmission. Along the way, I learned to autocross race it, ran it on the open track at Charlotte and Sebring, raced the incomparable open road autocross “Bay Bottom Crawl” at Sugarloaf Key three years in a row, drove it from Jupiter , FL to the top of Pikes Peak and back, road-tripped to Sacramento, CA for a “team autocross” event, to Cape Cod, MA for a Factory Five sponsored autocross, and ran all over the Blueridge Mountains in North Carolina every chance I got. It was even the getaway car for a wedding last year of some folks deeply connected with this forum! The car never failed me, I always made it home, and had an absolute BLAST driving it. FFR #1152 was constantly a point of conversation and interest with folks I met while traveling, and was the greatest car I ever owned.
Well, that’s all history. February 4, 2002, FFR #1152 spontaneously ignited in our garage and burned to the ground, along with the entire contents of the garage…including my wife’s S2000! What happened is still a bit of a mystery, and maybe the subject for a later article. The bottom line is: Gotta build a new FFR. I have a new kit scheduled to arrive around March 20, 2002, at the house we’re renting while our former home is rebuilt. It’ll be a good thing: I have all new tools, a relatively empty rental garage to work with, friends who have built FFR’s recently to help push this thing forward at a rapid pace, and Factory Five has just improved the kit so significantly it’s now referred to as the “Mark II”. I’m calling this effort “The Phoenix Project” (because “Project Phoenix” makes for an unpalatable acronym), and will try to keep you all abreast of how the project progresses via these reports.
STOP ME if this in uninteresting, OK? The administrator swears you Acura-heads want to know about this American V-8 heavy metal project, but if he is wrong, please feel free to tell me so! I’m connected somewhat to ya’ll because my wife, Lynn, chose a silver 2002 TL-S to replace her S2000. So far we love the car, but are still breaking it in so no enthusiastic driving yet. I'm hoping to learn a lot about mods and other tips from this forum.
More news as something happens! John Phillips