1965 Shelby Powered Mercer Cobrat By Virgil Exner

A magazine assignment to imagine a forgotten luxury nameplate reborn somehow became a fully functional one-off, built on a genuine Shelby Cobra chassis and dressed in copper and brass. Commissioned by a metals trade association rather than an automaker, the Mercer-Cobra combined retro coachbuilt styling with real Shelby performance underneath. Decades later, it sold for $660,000 at a Monterey auction. How does a concept car built to promote copper end up among the most valuable one-offs in Shelby history?

The 1965 Shelby Powered Mercer Cobrat by ex-Chrysler design chief Virgil Exner was commissioned by Esquire magazine to design revival cars that interpreted vintage brand automobiles from the past.

Ecah car would be modeled with their signature branding and made into the modern design of the current time.

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The Mercer was a re-skinned 289 cu. in. V-8, four-speed manual Shelby Cobra 289 built by Turin coachbuilder Sibona-Basano and was one of four originally drafted. Copper is used for the radiator shell, exhaust guards, wheels, inner door panel trim, even the disc brakes were crafted from copper, as it was believed the materialâ€™s â€œsuperior thermal conductivityâ€ helped reduce fading.

Very cool one of a kind car from the automobile vaults of yesteryear.

Front view of a black car on a white background. — One of 4 custom made

A magazine assignment meant to imagine what a forgotten classic might look like decades later somehow turned into one of the strangest, most beautiful one-off cars ever built on a genuine race car chassis. The starting point wasn’t a blank sheet of paper — it was a bare rolling chassis ordered directly from Carroll Shelby himself, the same underpinnings that powered one of the most feared sports cars of the era. A design house known for reviving extinct American nameplates took that foundation and dressed it in copper and brass details meant to evoke a luxury brand that had not built a car in decades. Everything about the build was a study in contradiction: a race-bred chassis wrapped in retro-luxury bodywork, commissioned by a metals trade group rather than an automaker. How does a concept car built to sell copper end up worth over half a million dollars at a modern auction?

An Assignment From Esquire Magazine, Not Detroit

The idea began when Esquire magazine asked designer Virgil Exner and his son to imagine what four defunct American luxury nameplates — Mercer, Packard, Stutz, and Duesenberg — might look like reimagined for the 1960s. Those renderings caught the attention of the Copper Development Association, whose president, George M. Hartley, approached the Exners about actually building the modernized Mercer, partly because the original Mercer had used substantial amounts of brass and copper trim, matching the material the association wanted to promote.

Why a Cobra Chassis, of All Things

Rather than engineer a bespoke chassis from scratch, the Exners ordered a bare rolling chassis, tubing, and a Ford V8 directly from Carroll Shelby, based on Cobra chassis number CSX2451. That chassis and drivetrain were then shipped to coachbuilder Sibona-Basano in Turin, Italy, where the retro-styled body was fabricated around Shelby’s proven mechanical package — giving this leisurely-looking classic-revival concept genuine sports car performance underneath.

Copper and Brass in Eleven Different Finishes

True to its sponsor, the Mercer-Cobra used eleven different materials, alloys, and finishes throughout the interior and exterior specifically to showcase the versatility of copper and brass. The design leaned into a classic-era look, with a brass grille built from eight large elements and pivoting headlights that swung back flush with the nose when not in use, paired with long blade-style front fenders and a tapered rear deck that echoed pre-war luxury coachwork rather than 1960s styling trends.

A Concept That Actually Ran

Unlike many show-only concepts of the era, the Mercer-Cobra’s Shelby-sourced running gear meant it was a fully functional automobile rather than a static display piece, capable of being driven under its own power on real roads. That distinction matters enormously to collectors today, since a concept car that can actually be started, driven, and demonstrated tends to hold far more value and historical interest than one that exists purely as a styling exercise.

What the Auction Result Says About One-Off Concepts

When RM Sothebys brought the Mercer-Cobra to its Monterey auction, the car sold for $660,000 — a striking number for a one-off concept car built to promote a metals trade association rather than sell production vehicles. That result underscores how significant the combination of Exner design pedigree and genuine Shelby mechanicals can be to serious collectors, who increasingly treat documented, driveable concept cars as blue-chip pieces of automotive design history.

Virgil Exner’s ‘Revival Cars’ Series

The Mercer-Cobra wasn’t a one-off idea — it was part of a broader series Exner and his son pitched to Esquire, imagining modernized revivals of four defunct American luxury nameplates: Mercer, Packard, Stutz, and Duesenberg. Each design leaned into the same basic concept of dressing a period-correct silhouette in a genuinely modern chassis and drivetrain, though the Copper Development Association’s sponsorship is specifically what pushed the Mercer concept from a magazine rendering into an actual, driveable car — something none of the other three revival designs fully achieved in the same way.

A Concept Car That Kept Reappearing at Auction

Unlike most one-off show cars that vanish into private collections and stay there for decades, the Mercer-Cobra has surfaced at public auctions more than once, giving collectors and historians repeated opportunities to document its condition and provenance over the years. That kind of visibility is unusual for a car built to promote a metals trade association rather than sell production vehicles, and it’s part of why the Mercer-Cobra’s history is unusually well documented compared to other one-off concepts from the same era.

Why Genuine Mechanicals Change Everything

A show car built on a purpose-built display chassis can look just as striking as the Mercer-Cobra in photographs, but it can never replicate the experience of actually driving one — and that distinction matters enormously once a concept car reaches the auction block decades later. Buyers aren’t just purchasing a piece of design history; they’re purchasing something they can start, drive, and demonstrate at concours events, which keeps a genuinely functional concept relevant to collectors in a way that a static display piece never can be.

The Broader Appeal of Coachbuilt One-Offs

Coachbuilt one-off cars like the Mercer-Cobra occupy a strange corner of the collector market, sitting somewhere between a production classic and a piece of automotive sculpture — valued not for how many exist, since the answer is always some tiny handful, but for the specific story behind why they were built at all. That storytelling element is a big part of why a car commissioned to sell copper trim can end up worth more than plenty of genuine production muscle cars from the same era.

A Chassis Number That Tells Its Own Story

The Mercer-Cobra’s roots trace back to a specific, identifiable Cobra chassis rather than a generic donor car, and that kind of traceable origin point is exactly what serious concept-car historians look for when trying to separate a well-documented build from one whose history has become muddied over decades of ownership changes.

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