Written by independent automotive journalist Steve Statham

“The Cobra To End All Cobras” – Carroll Shelby’s personal 1966 427 Super Snake (Lot #1396) will be crossing the block at the 2021 Scottsdale Auction.

There are cars, and then there are cars. In this second category you’ll find the truly unique, one-of-a-kind, fire-breathing motorized chariots that it’s hard to believe were ever legal to drive on the street.

The 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra Super Snake, the famous CSX 3015 offered for sale at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale as Lot #1396, is just such a car. Featured in their February 1968 issue, Road & Track famously called it “The Cobra To End All Cobras.” Pedigree? It was built for and driven by the man whose name was on the factory, Carroll Shelby himself. He ordered its creation to give himself a Cobra with second-to-none performance, and he definitely achieved it. He personally drove the car to 190 mph at the Turismos Visitadores, a Nevada open-road event, an unforgettable experience even for the former 24 Hours of Le Mans winner. “It’s a special car. There was never anything else built like it,” Shelby said to a packed Barrett-Jackson audience when it first rolled across the Scottsdale stage in 2007.

What does it take to propel a 427 Cobra to those heights? In this case, a pair of Paxton superchargers feeding dual Holley four-barrel carburetors sitting atop a cross-ram intake manifold. Adding dual superchargers to a big-block-powered, aluminum bodied roadster sounds like ‒ and is ‒ outrageous overkill, but made sense of a sort given Shelby American’s direction at the time. In the mid-1960s Carroll Shelby had formed a relationship with Paxton’s Joe Granatelli, which led to the addition of Paxton superchargers to the Shelby catalog as a factory option and over-the-counter accessory for Shelby Mustangs.

The installation of the superchargers to the 427 Cobra was no mere bolt-on affair, requiring the fabrication of supercharger mounting brackets and belt drives. The eye-grabbing hood with large scoop was not just for show, but necessary to clear the superchargers, dual carburetors and plumbing from the blowers to the dual four-barrels.

The 427 V8 sports headers feeding into sidepipes that announce every bit of the estimated 800 horsepower. The Super Snake was fitted with a rugged C6 automatic transmission, as that was the best option at the time to actually contain the power.

Those twin Paxton superchargers helped appease Shelby’s competitive nature, too. As the story goes, he wanted a 427 Cobra that would keep up with his friend and former lawyer Stan Mullin, who drove a Ferrari, on their weekend trips up to Lake Tahoe. After the high-performance modifications were added to the Cobra, Shelby tipped Mullin off that he was in for a surprise on their next Tahoe run. As Mullin remembered, “The darn thing nearly exploded past 140 mph, and actually accelerated faster at that speed than from a standstill. It ate my Ferrari alive.”

The history behind the car is as singular as the performance of the Super Snake itself. (Not to be confused with the other Super Snake, the 427-powered 1967 GT500 that was built for speed runs and to test the concept of a 427 Shelby Mustang.) Originally one of the handful of Competition Cobra Roadsters built, this car was initially shipped to Europe and invoiced to Ford Advanced Vehicles for a promotional tour. In late 1966 it was sent back stateside, after which it was given the twin Paxton surgery and reclassified as a Semi Competition Cobra, making it technically legal for street use.

The bodywork is a combination of Competition and Semi Competition Cobra features. It has the full windshield as used on SC Cobras, although it still has the enlarged nose and flared fenders of a full Competition model and the three-point chrome roll bar, among other race-oriented hardware. Extra instrumentation on the dash allows the driver to monitor boost.

Besides being Carroll Shelby’s personal car, the Super Snake ownership chain is unbroken and includes other heavy hitters. The car was purchased from Shelby in 1970 by songwriter Jimmy Webb, best known for “By the Time I get to Phoenix,” “Up, Up and Away” and “MacArthur Park.” He owned it for more than two decades until an unfortunate reckoning with the IRS, in which the car was seized and auctioned. The Super Snake then passed through the hands of a variety of serious collectors, most notably becoming part of the renowned Ron Pratte Collection, which sold over the Barrett-Jackson auction block in 2015.

The previous owners of CSX 3015 have known not to mess with success. The car still has its original 1965 date-coded engine block, original Competition brake calipers, original Competition rear end with oil cooler and pumps, and original headers and sidepipes.

It is one of only two such twin-supercharged Cobras ever built, the other (CSX 3303) being owned by an infamous person for the length of one terrifying test drive before returning it to Shelby. That car was sold and later destroyed in a wreck that took the life of its owner. Parts from it were salvaged and circulated through the hobby, adding to the legend.

Super Snake CSX 3015 has changed hands at Barrett-Jackson before, and was always the headline news of the auction, as well as being a record-setter. This time, it is the centerpiece of an astonishing private collection being offered at Scottsdale in March. Whether from the bidding floor or watching live on TV, witnesses will watch a new headline being written and history being made when the Super Snake rolls across the stage once more.

For an in-depth look at the incredible significance of this special car, check out the video below: