A PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE!
Back in about 1987, I got a chance that many car guys would love to have. I went to work for a gentleman named Tom D'Antonio down in Scottsdale, Arizona building one of the most accurate Cobra replicas on the market! Tom was the owner of a company that he called Hi Tech Replica. Hi Tech was a great description of the approach that he took to building Cobra replicas. This is one situation where the term "clones" may be more accurate! His goal was to build a car where virtually every part was directly interchangeable with an original Shelby. His flagship cars were so close that outside of having a very high quality fiberglass body, they were almost indistinguishable from an original.
He also built a slightly less expensive version that was set up for a 9" Ford live rear axle versus the fully independent rear suspension on the original and also had a Mustang II based front suspension versus the full tube A-arm duplicate of the original. You could order it set up for any engine/tranny combo you wanted and the wheel/tire combo was up to you. But outside of those things, almost everything else was a Cobra duplicate.
The car shown here is one that I found advertised on the internet with some interesting bits of history that I was not aware of. I have included some of the details from that add about this specific car here before I resume with my narrative on Tom and Hi Tech.
66 SHELBY COBRA 427 Sebring 12 hrs Replica (Spelling and punctuation edited)
The car has only 600 break in miles on it !!!!!
If you are looking for a Cobra that is close to the original this car is a must see.
This Cobra is a copy of the Sebring 12 hrs 427 Competition Cobra ( # 6 Team USA ). All parts are new or rebuilt. The body is fiberglass but the rest of the car is a copy of the real Cobras. (Not a KIT) Alloy interior panels, alloy fuel tank (42 gallons) alloy inner fenders etc. The rear end is independent, same as Shelby, wheels are 6 (?) pin drive with large spinner nut, brakes are large Wilwoods. The vin number is HTR0012 as on the ID plate from Hi-Tech and the Title. This is a Hi-Tech Cobra. Hi-Tech was owned by Tom D'Antonio who now runs the Shelby operation at the Nevada facility, and is considered one of the closest and best replicas out there. These cars are highly spoken of in the Cobra Community !!!!
Engine is a 460 BB Ford with MSD ignition, Edelbrock Aluminum Heads, etc. All NEW!!!........Power ??? Lots of it !!!! Secondary Fuel Pump like the Originals !!!!
Transmission is a Ford 4 Speed Top Loader.
This Cobra is just standing in the garage and needs a new home and driver that can handle the full potential of this impressive car!
Have US Title in Hand !!!!!! Car was titled in Virginia as a 66 Ford!
THIS CAR SHOULD NOT BE COMPARED WITH ALL THE SUPERFORMANCE OR BACKDRAFT CARS OUT THERE. THIS CAR IS IN THE SAME LEAGUE WITH KIRKHAM AND SHELBY CSX CARS!
Sounds like a lot of fun doesn't it? I'll Share a couple of stories a little later on, but for now let's continue on with a little of the history of Hi Tech that I am familiar with from my time there.
Tom's operation was always a very low production operation because the focus was on accuracy and quality. We were building truly awesome collector performance cars! Tom D'Antonio was an awesome craftsman! He was a big dreamer with some visionary ideas of how he thought a Cobra replica should be put together.
We were usually about a 3-4 guy operation. Tom was the head craftsman and designer. When I got there he had a truly world class fiberglass guy who was laying up super high quality bodies completely by hand instead of the much cheaper, but far heavier chopper-gun blown bodies that are so common throughout the industry. Unfortunately this guy was killed in a car wreck on the way in to work one morning. Then there was me and occasionally one other guy who did fabrication and assembly work of all kinds.
I was only there for a year or so and after I left Tom moved the shop and I completely lost track of him until I recently found this particular add. It included a little piece of history that I was totally unaware of but I think it makes an awesome tribute to a great car guy. Here it is:
"History of Hi Tech !
The Hi-Tech replicas made in Arizona were a very nice car. Most of them were fiberglass, though a few aluminum versions were built. These cars were made to original Cobra specs - every chassis part for an original Cobra would fit a Hi-Tech! Hi-Tech made both 427's and 289 FIA's.
The fiberglass Hi-Tech is really what the 4000 series Shelby 'glass cars are derived from. Tom D'Antonio sold Hi-Tech and went to work for Shelby in the early 90's when Shelby decided he was going to start making new Cobras. His Hi-Tech design, including the realistic detailing of the tubular frame around the hood and doors, is the basis for the CSX4000 cars."
I'm sure Tom thought he had died and gone to heaven! What a great tribute to be recognized by the original creator of the Cobra, Carroll Shelby himself, as the best starting point for his own personal recreation of his legendary supercar!
I'd like to learn more about what became of Tom and his dream!
Check out some of the aluminum work on this car and it will give you something of the feel of the level of craftsmanship that went into every Hi Tech car ever built. Just a note here, that contrary to this owner's information, many of the Hi Tech cars were actually sold as kits for the owner to assemble. However, having built a kit from another company and having seen many others, I will tell you that the quality of Tom's cars was something seldom, if ever, matched by his competitors.
He even went so far as to put rivets on the rolled under edges of his fiberglass body to simulate the original's riveted on aluminum panels! Many of his parts were actually sourced directly from the original manufacturers.
In just the short year that I was with Hi Tech, I had an opportunity to witness some fun stories.
Somebody had brought in a Cobra replica from another company because it had become so complicated that they weren't able to finish it on their own. Tom put me to work on it. It had a big hefty square and rectangular tube frame that was rather a clunky assembly compared to the work of art that Tom had created, but it worked. It had a big old hopped up 460 Ford in it and a 4-speed. The body was a chopper-gun blown creation that was probably 3-4 times as thick and heavy as our hand-laid piece. If I remember correctly, I had to sort out some fitment problems and create a wiring harness for it. After working on it for several days, I finally got it running and decided to take it for a test drive around our industrial complex parking lot. I could barely keep the thing running and was having problems with the shifter. The thing was so loud that I could barely hear myself think and I was really frustrated trying to keep the thing running. When I pulled back into the shop the other guys were laughing and giving me a hard time, because all they could hear was that big old engine revving up and the squealing of the tires every time I tried to take off! I had no idea it was even doing that because of all of the exhaust noise!
So yeah, they are powerful!
We had one of our car owners who was a local guy and would stop by every few weeks to shoot the breeze and talk Cobras. He was a fun old guy who always had some great stories to tell. He usually showed up in his plain white Cobra. It wasn't much to look at as Cobras go, no racing stripes, no numbers or other insignia on the side. Just a deceptively simple hi-performance car in a plain white wrapper. If I remember right he had a full on 427 in it too!
Well one day he shows up without his Cobra but with a crazy story to tell that brought back all of the wonderful days of yore and was a reminder of why the insurance companies wanted nothing to do with the original cars!
He had taken one of his grandsons out for a ride and was showing off. While flying down a winding road, he got on it really hard and spun the thing out. It went flying across the median and took out one of those great bit rectangular electrical transformer boxes that are about 3 feet high! He folded that sweet little ride around it and as it ripped open the gas tank the sparks ignited the fuel and burned that little baby to the ground! Sad day! Especially when you've always wished you could even be lucky enough to just ride in one, let alone own one yourself!
One of my favorite cars that I got to work on there was a really nice yellow 427 Cobra that was just being finished. I got to do the final assembly on it right after it came back from the paint booth. This car ended up as a feature car in one of the national magazines of the day. It was that nicely done. In fact this guy was offered $60,000 for it at the first show that he took it to. To put that into perspective, that was in the day when the originals were just starting to hit the $100,000 mark!
The coolest part of the story of this car was its engine. The original owner of the kit had actually found a brand new factory 427 side-oiler Ford engine, still in the crate at a marine dealership! This was about 1987, roughly 20 years after they had ceased production and before we had the internet to locate such a rare find! Needless to say, that made it one very unique Cobra replica!
Because of Tom's reputation as a craftsman, we got the chance to work on all kinds of very unique projects. I can remember a Ferrari of some kind and a Jensen-Healey Interceptor that was in for a Dodge 440 engine swap. Tom was also contracted with a couple of other kit car designers to manufacture their fiberglass and metal assemblies. We did several of the Ferrari-esque Fiero body kit conversions shown below. The one that I got to put together was a cake-walk to assemble because of the quality of the parts. Here are a couple of pictures from the internet. They are not very common today.
Another kit that we built the body for was an ultra-rare, super high quality replica of a 1957 Testarossa. The build quality on it was a fitting tribute to the original. The one fun touch on this replica was a very hot 350 Chevy under the hood, dolled up with some one-off valve covers and intake manifold cover/air cleaner.
At the time, it was the only one of it's kind that had ever been produced, although I think that we had another body curing in the mold at that time. I have no idea how many of them were actually made, but I suspect that there will only be one or two of them at most.
The Testarossa in the picture below is a real one, not the replica. Just imagine one that looked exactly like that but with more modern tires and probably at least twice the horsepower! Way too much fun!!!
If I can ever dig out the magazine that featured the yellow Cobra, I'll try to scan in some photos. Interestingly enough, that issue had a definite Hi Tech Replica focus because not only did it feature one our most unique and nicest Cobras, but it also had a couple of our Corson bodied Fieros and a separate article on the Testarossa too!
Ever since I found the add on the Hi Tech Replica Cobra for sale with those little tidbits of extra history on Tom and his company, I've been thinking that I'd like to do an article here as a tribute to an amazing man and his commitment to excellence that led to some of the greatest examples of art work to come out of an often maligned industry. It just goes to show that one man with a sense of reverence for a wonderful piece of engineering can really do something unique!
One of the things that I have always wondered if Tom actually ever got to produce was this intriguing brain child of his that sat around in the corner of the shop as a constant reminder of what a Cobra could have become with one more iteration! He had taken the awesome looking tail section of the super rare and beautiful Cobra Daytona Coupe and redesigned it to fit on the back end of a 427 roadster! It would have looked awesome! I wonder if he ever got around to building one???
