Superformance MKIII SP03536

The build in detail.

There are two lines on this car’s build sheet that do not usually appear together: a front tow hook, and a full custom air conditioning system. One of those is what you fit to a car you intend to strap down. The other is what you fit to a car you intend to drive in Tucson in July, with someone in the passenger seat who would like to still be speaking to you at the end of it.

A Superformance MKIII arrives the way all of them arrive. Licensed, beautifully made, and completely unable to move under its own power. There is no engine in it. No transmission. The hardest part of the car is already done and the car is still useless, which is a strange thing to stand next to in a shop. Everything that makes it a Cobra rather than a very expensive sculpture happens after it lands.

This one got a Roush 427SR crate engine and a Tremec TKO-600 five speed. That part is easy to write on a page and slow to do properly. The work that actually consumes the calendar is the work nobody photographs: the hydraulic throw-out bearing, the driveshaft, the ignition and the wiring, the cooling system that has to keep 427 cubic inches civil at a stoplight in a car with almost no room for a radiator and no interest in your comfort.

Then there are the details that tell you what this car was for. A Bluetooth stereo with the speaker box hidden. A master electrical kill switch, also hidden. Adjustable electric power steering, which is the sort of thing purists sniff at until they have parked one of these in a real parking space. The pattern is consistent: every modern convenience is present, and none of it is visible. Nothing on this car announces the year it was finished.

The last item on the sheet is the least romantic and the most important. Arizona title and delivery. You can assemble a flawless car and still hand somebody a very fast paperweight if it cannot be registered and driven home. Getting that right is unglamorous, and it is most of the difference between a project and a car.

If you have a chassis sitting in a crate, or you are thinking about ordering one, the engine choice is the fun decision and the smallest one. What determines whether you drive it is everything after. Come talk to us before you order, not after.