Why Carroll Shelby Made Bill Cosby A Super Snake

When Carroll Shelby learned Bill Cosby had been driving foreign exotics, he didn’t just object, he built a 900-horsepower Cobra Super Snake to settle the argument. CSX 3303, one of only two automatic Super Snake 427s ever made, arrived at Cosby’s front door via Shelby’s associate Barry Galloway, complete with a dash plaque guaranteeing 200 mph. Cosby drove it once around the block and handed the keys straight back. Read on to find out how a department store argument turned into one of the strangest deliveries in Shelby history.

Carroll Shelby had a habit of settling arguments with horsepower instead of words. When he ran into Bill Cosby at a department store in 1966 and found out the actor, fresh off starring in I Spy, had been driving foreign exotics, Shelby didn’t just object. He issued an ultimatum, then built the machine to back it up. What happened next became one of the strangest one-night ownership stories in Shelby’s entire history, and it started with a bet neither man ever formally agreed to. It’s the kind of story that sounds exaggerated with each retelling, except nearly every detail of it holds up against contemporary accounts. Shelby, for his part, never publicly disputed a word of it.

An Ultimatum Delivered in a Department Store Aisle

Shelby liked Cosby and liked I Spy, but he couldn’t stand watching an American performance icon drive foreign cars. He chewed Cosby out on the spot and told him he was banned from driving another foreign car, period. Cosby’s response wasn’t an apology, it was a challenge. He told Shelby he’d only give up the imports for something that could hit at least 180 mph. Shelby didn’t blink. He told Cosby he was already building something that would do 200.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

← Prev Next →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Car Behind the Boast

The car Shelby built to make good on that promise was CSX 3303, one of only two Shelby Cobra Super Snake 427s ever produced, and the only one of the pair built with an automatic transmission. It started life as a standard street-legal 427 Cobra before being modified into a 427 Cobra Semi-Competition (S.C.) specification sometime in early-to-mid 1967, after returning from a European tour back to Shelby’s shop in America. Semi-Competition specification typically meant stiffer suspension components, a stronger drivetrain, and engine tuning pulled more directly from Shelby’s competition program than anything sold to an ordinary street customer. That reclassification transformed it from a fast street car into something closer to a race car with license plates.

Delivered Like a Loaded Gun

Shelby didn’t hand the keys over himself. He sent his associate Barry Galloway to Cosby’s home, where Galloway rang the doorbell and simply handed over the keys with the Super Snake already sitting in the driveway, ready to go. There was no ceremony, no test drive at a track, just a finished car parked outside a comedian’s house, built specifically to prove a point one man had made in a department store weeks earlier.

900 Horsepower and a Plaque That Meant It

The Super Snake ran twin Paxton superchargers on its 427, feeding twin Holley carburetors at 11.5:1 compression, finished in Guardsman Blue over a curb weight of roughly 2,550 lbs. Output landed right around 800 horsepower, backed by a speedometer that actually read up to 200 mph, not a decorative gauge, but a functional readout for a car genuinely capable of hitting that number. For context, a stock 427 Cobra was already considered one of the most dangerous cars a private citizen could legally buy in the mid-1960s; this one had roughly double the ambition. Bolted to the dash was a plaque signed personally by Shelby that read, “This car is guaranteed to do 200 mph.”

One Lap Was Enough

Cosby drove the Super Snake exactly once around the block. That was it. By his own admission, the experience scared him, the car was, in his words, too fast for any sane person to actually drive on public roads. He turned around, drove back, and handed the keys back to Shelby, fully paid for despite never really using it. Whether that counts as the shortest ownership tenure in Shelby history is debatable, but it’s certainly among the most famous.

A Terrifying Car Became a Comedy Bit

Cosby didn’t let the experience go to waste. The whole ordeal became the basis for material on his comedy album Bill Cosby 200 M.P.H., turning a genuinely frightening test drive into one of the era’s more memorable crossovers between the muscle car world and mainstream pop culture. The album’s success meant millions of listeners who’d never see the actual car still heard its legend secondhand, cementing the story well beyond car-collector circles. Few Cobras have ever inspired a comedy record; this one arguably created the entire bit.

Why This Particular Car Still Matters

CSX 3303 isn’t just a curiosity because of its celebrity connection, it’s one of only two automatic Super Snake 427s built, a genuinely tiny production number even by Shelby’s already-exclusive standards. Its documented ownership history, tied directly to a specific and well-known story involving Shelby himself, gives it a provenance most Cobras can only dream of. Auction houses that have handled comparable documented Cobras routinely note that a verified celebrity ownership chapter, especially one this specific, adds a meaningful premium over an otherwise identical car with no such story attached.

The Rest of Shelby’s 1966 Roster

1966 was a pivotal year across Shelby’s entire lineup, not just for one-off stunts like the Cosby car. The GT350 was maturing into a genuine street performer, and Shelby’s relationship with Ford was producing increasingly serious competition machinery alongside road cars. The Cosby Super Snake sits slightly outside that main product line, a custom, essentially one-off build rather than a catalog option, which is part of what makes it such an unusual footnote in an otherwise fairly well-documented model year.

What Happened to the Car After Cosby Returned It

CSX 3303’s story didn’t end in that driveway. Like most Shelby competition-spec cars from the era, it changed hands multiple times over the following decades, passing through collectors who valued its documented history as much as its outrageous specification. Its current standing among Cobra specialists rests on that unbroken paper trail connecting it directly back to Shelby, Galloway, and Cosby’s single, terrifying lap, a chain of custody that’s nearly impossible to fabricate after the fact and one of the main reasons the car remains a reference point whenever the subject of the rarest 427 Cobras comes up, right alongside better-known cars that never had a comedian’s name attached to their story at all.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Related posts:

Carroll Shelby: Father of the Shelby Muscle Cars Muscle Car: The Ten Best All-Time Models Shelby Mustang Cobra Jet powered GT 350-GT 500-GT 500 KR Ford Mustang California Special 1968 AMC Javelin SST 1968-1970 Happy Birthday Mustang 1964½ to 2014 Chevrolet Camaro 1967 to 2002 American Motors Corporation AMX 1968 to 1970 Chevrolet Malibu 1964 to 1977 Corvette—The Beginning, 1951 to 1962