As to yesterday's Mustang Trivia, the 1980-81 Mustang Cobras were NOT Canada only - here's a pic of a US 1980 version:


and here's an '81:

 

Someone owes Mike a watch!

 

What trivia? kennyg

 

WAF employees provided some for door prizes at the Club cookout on Tuesday. Winner was our illustrious President, Ralph! (Yes, they were mostly Fox Body questions...)

 

And the watch was given back to allow another to win it.

Gary Dempsey took the watch home.

 

The orange car is not an 81, It is a 1979. The car pictured is an early prototype. Notice the center caps come from the standard styled steel wheels but painted argent. Also, the Cobra door name decal was moved to the front of the door on production models.

This picture of this orange 1979 Cobra is incorrectly listed in The Mustang Source 1982 picture gallery .

The 1980-81 Cobra is in fact the white car above which adapted the look of the 1979 Indy Pace Car. Cars built for the US market did not have the Cobra name decals on the quarter windows as they did not pass many state visibility laws. You will often find that the Cobra quarter window decals are listed as "Canada Only" in parts replacement references.

Of course the entire look of the 1979 Indy Pace Car and 1980-81 Cobra was carried over into 1982 in a monochromatic paint scheme to reintroduce the Mustang GT.

 

Thanks for the corrections - not much error checking on the internet these days!

 

I can vouch for this to be true. My first Mustang was a 1981 Cobra, orange with T-tops, C4 auto trans, and the anemic 4.2L V8 putting out a whopping 120 hp. It had the same hood scoop, spoiler, TRX wheels, front fascia and graphics as the white one pictured above, but thankfully no big snake decal on the hood scoop.

After determining that the original 4.2L V8 wasn't worth messing with (IIRC Ford only used it for two years) I bought a 1979 Mustang parts car with a 5.0L and swapped that engine in. I opened up the exhaust, put a 500CFM 2-bbl Holley carb with open air filter on the stock manifold, cut a hole in the hood (under the hood scoop) and cut out the back of the hood scoop to make a somewhat functional cowl induction, and it definitely ended up being a lot more peppy that it was when I bought it. I still miss that car.