AC Cobra 289: from NASA, with love

By Charlie Calderwood

| 13 May 2026

Classic & Sports Car – AC Cobra 289: return of the space cowboy

The proof of this classic car being something special is actually at the back, in the boot.

The AC’s roof has been stowed here for decades, and the bars for it are in a homemade protective wrap made from newspaper.

Now yellowed, a couple of exposed folios reveal dates from 1970: the roof, like the rest of the car, has barely been touched for more than five decades.

Had someone responded to Robert Lindauer’s classified advert in the July 1965 issue of Car and Driver offering his Shelby Cobra 289 for sale, the world would have been deprived of what has gone on to become one of, if not the most original Cobras left.

This AC Cobra 289’s hood is wrapped in a newspaper from 1970

The accident of history, however, that no serious buyers came forward – nor again in 1969 – preserved the car, which shows just 15,466 miles on its odometer more than six decades later.

Famous among model fanatics, the ‘Lindauer Cobra’ is now one of the definitive examples of Carroll Shelby’s much restored, much replicated roadster.

What a beautiful thing an unmolested 289 Cobra is. Think Shelby Cobra and most will picture the bulged arches, gaping mouth, bright colours and racing stripes of the 427.

That is the icon, but this 289 MkII is far closer to the AC Ace on which it was based: the only major differences are the slightly rolled arches and its front-wing vents.

The ‘Lindauer’ AC Cobra 289’s aged tyres must be treated with caution

It’s less imposing, for sure, but it retains the Ace’s subtlety where the 427 has gone all aggressive.

Even this car’s original silver paintwork adds to the air of discretion and finesse – attributes that are not often associated with a Shelby of any kind.

This car – CSX2344 for those who speak Cobra – was bought new by Lindauer in Florida in July 1964 while he was a trainee engineer at NASA, working on fuel cells and cryogenics.

While the astronauts of the Apollo programme famously benefitted from cut-price Chevrolet Corvettes, it appears even trainees weren’t doing too badly if Lindauer was able to afford a brand-new Cobra.

This AC Cobra’s leather seats wear their patina with pride

The young engineer traded in his 1963 Chevrolet Corvette for the AC – presumably to the chagrin of the image-conscious high-flyers at Cape Canaveral.

He was clearly pleased with the purchase and satisfied with how it drove, because just a month later he took the car on its sole journey outside Florida in his ownership.

First Lindauer drove up to Queens, New York City, to view the 1964 World’s Fair where the new Ford Mustang was on display, having been released just a few months earlier.

Flying out of showrooms and on sale with a similar 289cu in Ford V8 engine to that powering the Cobra, the Mustang cost half as much as the list price of the Shelby.

Robert Lindauer used this Standard Oil map to navigate north-east USA during his 4000-mile road trip by Cobra

Lindauer then drove north-east to Boston and visited Cape Cod before cutting back across Massachusetts and Upstate New York on his way to Chicago to visit his parents.

Remarkably, the Standard Oil road map with which he navigated is still in the Cobra today, with his route marked out in green pen.

Tackling that journey – including Georgia and the Carolinas – in a swelteringly humid August was a heroic feat, but even then Lindauer was demonstrating the fastidious nature that would be key to the Cobra’s future preservation.

Every fuel receipt – and there’s a lot of them – from the 4000-mile journey remains in the car’s history file.

Driven sensibly, a 289 isn’t the scary beast of AC Cobra legend, but treat it roughly and it will still bite back

Once back home in Cocoa Beach, just south of Cape Canaveral, Lindauer used the AC Cobra as his occasional weekend car for the following decade, along with some trophy-winning forays into gymkhanas.

He twice listed the car for sale, but later changed his mind, then in 1970 he and the AC were involved a minor accident that required a small cosmetic repair that Lindauer attended to himself.

It would be the last time in the 20th century during which the Cobra received any significant work.

Lindauer decided to put the Shelby up on axle stands in his climate-controlled garage in 1974 and, other than the occasional turning over of the engine, there it remained until his death in 2001.

Even the ‘Lindauer’ Cobra’s fanbelt and water pump are original

His son, Robert Lindauer Jnr, stored it in the same way in North Carolina for a further eight years, before a delicate recommissioning by Lee Holman of Holman-Moody that returned it to the road in 2010.

After 53 years, the family finally divested itself of the car, tempted by the booming prices for original Shelby Cobras, when Lindauer Jnr entered it into the RM Sotheby’s sale during Monterey Car Week in 2017.

The Lindauers’ efforts at preservation were well rewarded when the car sold for $1,100,000 – a level of return that far exceeded the performance of the stock market over the same period.

The 15,466 miles recorded on this AC Cobra’s odometer make this classic car near-unique

At that point the AC Cobra made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the collection of Friedhelm Loh, now open to the public in the Nationales Automuseum in Hesse, Germany.

Fittingly, that means a climate-controlled environment once again – even if the air conditioning is as much for the visitors as the exhibits.

It would be unfair to call the rest of Dr Loh’s collection garage queens, because there are plenty of very original cars with lengthy backstories behind them in the museum’s halls, but that doesn’t prevent the wrinkles of the AC’s leather jarring with an otherwise polished collection.

Texas meets astronautics in the story of this remarkably original AC Cobra 289

Sadly, there is not enough space to display all of the artefacts from this wonderful AC Cobra’s long and storied life to the public, but in the glovebox is the original owner’s manual, while in the boot sits the untouched jack, grease gun and toolkit.

Its carpets are as fitted by AC in Thames Ditton, in the south of England, while the lettering on its Stewart Warner dashboard gauges has faded and turned a little yellow.

An original, slightly worn Shelby logo dangles from the car’s keys as they are handed over, but with them comes a few unsettling words of warning: “The tyres are original, too.”

‘Unlike many of the other performance icons of the 1960s, this is a sports car that remains fun to drive’

Remarkably, the Cobra starts on the Holley four-barrel’s autochoke with just a few cranks of the starter.

This classic car has only covered only a mere handful of miles since its sale back in 2017 – in fact, our photoshoot today will be the most it has racked up in nearly a decade.

At rest, the V8’s mechanical tappets are noisy, and the power stroke of the engine can be heard swapping from bank to bank to create the characteristic uneven rhythm of a cross-plane V8.

A prod of throttle elicits a mighty roar and a slight rock to the entire car.

Having neglected to check the date codes of the Goodyears, I don’t know if ‘original’ means dating back to 2010, 1974 or 1964 – but even 16 years is past it.

NASA engineer Robert Lindauer’s meticulous care turned this AC Cobra 289 into a time capsule

Best to go easy at first, then, despite the encouragement of that gurgling Windsor V8.

A slightly heavy clutch makes it difficult to pull out of a junction without at least a chirrup from the rears, but the Cobra resists the one-wheel-peel of a muscle car thanks to the standard-fit Powr-Lok limited-slip differential.

This is a Cobra MkII, which means you’re still dealing with transverse leaf springs front and rear as opposed to the later coils, but the old steering box has made way for a modern rack-and-pinion set-up.

It’s an unimpeachably rigid chassis, benefitting from its tubular steel structure, low weight and squat proportions, and it resists scuttle shake well as a result.

The ‘Lindauer’ AC Cobra 289’s pedals show minimal wear

A slightly vintage feel lingers nonetheless when the wheels meet imperfections on the road surface, forcing the body to jolt, jar and shudder.

It’s only a mild annoyance on the well-surfaced highways of rural Germany, but you would be wishing for the greater compliance provided by coils on potholed UK roads.

That’s really the only thing you’d fault the old snake for, though, because otherwise it is a delight.

Its gearshift is a real surprise, far from the slightly vague, over-long shifters typical of American metal of the 1960s.

The synchro never fails to keep up with changes as it races between ratios via a short, stubby gearlever.

The AC Cobra 289’s Borg-Warner T10 gearbox is swift

That said, so torquey is the 4.7-litre V8 engine in such a light car that you rarely feel the need to go below third gear, except in the tightest turns.

Instead you pick ratios based on whether you want your accelerative effort to be very urgent or slightly less so.

With 271bhp it doesn’t feel a monstrously fast car by modern standards, but it’s important to remember the 289 Cobra was the 0-60mph king of the mid-1960s at just 5.5 secs, even if it never challenged the Italian exotics or the Jaguar E-type for top speed.

Autocar’s 1965 road test – which it conducted in Ken Rudd’s own car, so overwhelming was UK demand for right-hand-drive Cobras – featured a quarter-mile acceleration graph that was the steepest the magazine had yet printed, lasting 13.9 secs.

The wing vents mark this as a 289cu in V8 AC Cobra

With clear amazement seeping between the lines of the formal tone of ’60s journalese, the author stated: ‘The problem on most roads is not finding gaps in the oncoming traffic stream to pull around the car in front – this barely takes more than two or three seconds – but finding gaps in one’s own stream to tuck back into.’

The power level feels just right, allowing you to do everything you’d want on a public road without veering into stupidity, terror, or jail.

Even only half-spirited driving will have the rear starting to slip on tight hairpins – at least it will on these tyres – but it’s comfortable and predictable all the same.

It doesn’t take much to unstick the AC Cobra’s rear – especially with its antique rubber

The AC has a slight rearward weight bias (48.7% front, 51.3% rear), which is an impressive feat of engineering in an aluminium-bodied two-seater with a big iron lump up front.

The result is a delightful balance with a tendency to power oversteer without the pendulum effect of a Porsche 911.

The ferocious reputation of later Cobras makes it easy to mischaracterise these 289s as similarly animalistic.

Many hotted-up replicas, and even some restored cars, have morphed into that breed.

But while it’s true the Lindauer Cobra is never refined, it’s a delicate, playful sports car and a British roadster that finally has the power to match the potential of its chassis without overwhelming it.

The AC Cobra 289’s vinyl dashboard is stocked with dials and fronted by a stylish steering wheel

Unlike many of the other performance icons of the 1960s, this is a car that remains fun to drive even at low speeds, where it retains the agile, lithe character of the AC Ace on which it was based.

The term ‘museum piece’ is often used with derision when it comes to cars, implying either one that hasn’t moved in decades and barely runs, or something glitzy and over-restored. The Lindauer Cobra is neither.

It is a rare artefact revealing what a Shelby Cobra 289 was as it left the works in Venice, California, and what it was like to drive – wooden tyres aside.

Suffice to say, it’s brilliant. Thank you, Mr Lindauer.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Nationales Automuseum, The Loh Collection

Factfile

AC Cobra 289

Sold/number built 1962-’64/654
Construction steel chassis, aluminium body
Engine all-iron, ohv 289cu in (4735cc) V8, Holley four-barrel carburettor
Max power 271bhp @ 5800rpm
Max torque 269lb ft @ 4800rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, by wishbones, transverse leaf spring, telescopic dampers f/r
Steering rack and pinion (worm and sector on early cars)
Brakes discs, with servo
Length 12ft 10in (3912mm)
Width 5ft 1in (1549mm)
Height 3ft 9in (1143mm)
Wheelbase 7ft 6in (2286mm)
Weight 2100lb (953kg)
0-60mph 5.6 secs
Top speed 135mph
Mpg 15
Price new $5195 (1964)
Price now £650,000-1.2m*