Carroll Shelby Built Only 2 Super Snakes — Bill Cosby Returned His After One Drive, the Other Sold for $5.5 Million

Three of the fiercest machines Detroit and Shelby ever built: a twin-supercharged Cobra with 800 horsepower, an all-aluminum big-block Camaro so rare only 69 left the factory, and a 426 Hemi Cuda built almost entirely for the drag strip. Here is why each one earned its dangerous reputation.

Carroll Shelby built exactly two Cobra 427 Super Snakes, and the first thing he did with one of them was hand it to a nervous Bill Cosby. The comedian took one drive, decided the twin-supercharged, roughly 800-horsepower monster was trying to kill him, and gave it back before the week was out. Shelby kept the other one for himself, and decades later it sold at auction for $5.5 million — the most anyone had ever paid for an American car at the time. Those two Cobras are only the beginning of this story. A viral breakdown of the three most dangerous muscle cars ever built pairs the Super Snake with an all-aluminum Camaro so rare Chevrolet made just 69 of them, and a 426 Hemi ‘Cuda that Plymouth essentially engineered for the drag strip and then, almost as an afterthought, let people drive on the street. Here’s the real story behind all three, and why each one earned its fearsome reputation the hard way.

The Video Behind the List

Lost Auto Story’s “The 3 Most DANGEROUS Muscle Cars Ever Made!” does exactly what the title promises, walking through three cars that pushed 1960s and 1970s Detroit engineering about as far as it would go before something had to give. The video leans on archival footage and owner lore to build its case, and the comment section has turned into its own mini history lesson, with viewers filling in chassis numbers, horsepower claims, and what actually happened to each car after it left the factory.

What makes the video worth watching isn’t just the cars themselves — it’s the pattern connecting them. Each one came from a manufacturer or independent builder deliberately ignoring the usual constraints of insurance, emissions, or basic drivability in pursuit of raw output. None of them were built to be easy to live with, and that was precisely the point.

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The Cobra So Fast Even Bill Cosby Gave It Back

The Super Snake starts the list, and it has the best story of the three. Shelby built the 427 Cobra as the ultimate expression of his original small-block roadster, swapping in Ford’s big 427 FE V8 and, for just two examples, adding a pair of superchargers that pushed output to roughly 800 horsepower — nearly double what a standard 427 Cobra made. Shelby kept chassis CSX3015 for himself and gave CSX3303 to Bill Cosby, reportedly because he disapproved of Cosby driving a Ferrari instead of something American. Cosby found the car too much to handle and returned it within days, later turning the episode into a bit on his 1968 comedy album. CSX3303’s story ended badly: a later owner, Tony Maxey, drove it off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean and died from his injuries, destroying the car for good. CSX3015 survived, and Carroll Shelby’s personal Super Snake sold at Barrett-Jackson’s 2007 Scottsdale auction for $5.5 million, a record for an American-built car at the time.

Chevrolet’s Secret Drag-Strip Engine Hidden Inside a Camaro

Chevrolet’s entry is less famous but arguably just as extreme. The 1969 Camaro ZL1 was a Central Office Production Order car — COPO 9560 — built around an all-aluminum 427-cubic-inch big block that Chevrolet designed almost entirely for drag racing, not street use. Officially rated at 430 horsepower, the ZL1’s aluminum block shaved roughly 100 pounds off the Camaro’s nose compared to the cast-iron version, and real-world output was widely believed to run well past that factory number. Chevrolet built only 69 production ZL1 Camaros, plus two prototypes, and ordering one meant paying over $4,160 just for the engine option — pushing the final price past $7,000 at a time when a standard Camaro sold for a fraction of that.

The Hemi ‘Cuda Plymouth Barely Bothered to Make Street-Legal

Plymouth closes out the trio with the 1970 Hemi ‘Cuda, built around the 426 Hemi V8 that the factory rated at 425 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque — numbers most enthusiasts agree were deliberately conservative. Of the roughly 55,000 Barracudas Plymouth built for 1970, fewer than 19,000 wore the performance-oriented ‘Cuda badge, and only 652 of those came with the Hemi engine in hardtop form. The Hemi option alone cost $871.45, a 70 percent premium over the already potent 440 Six Barrel, and buyers who paid it got a car that was, by nearly every account, built with quarter-mile times in mind far more than everyday comfort.

Why These Three Still Command Respect — and Millions

What ties these three cars together isn’t horsepower alone — plenty of modern cars outrun all of them on paper. It’s that each one arrived with almost none of the electronic safety net that makes big power manageable today. No traction control, no stability control, often not even power steering as standard. The Super Snake’s dual superchargers could overwhelm a solid rear axle and skinny period tires in an instant; the ZL1’s aluminum 427 was tuned for a drag strip, not a daily commute; and the Hemi ‘Cuda’s 490 lb-ft of torque arrived through a four-speed manual that gave a driver no room for hesitation.

That rawness is exactly why all three still command attention and, in the Super Snake’s case, multimillion-dollar money. They represent a brief window when manufacturers and independent builders alike were willing to build genuinely difficult cars and sell them to the public with barely a warning label.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.