I’ve finally taken the plunge. No backing out now. The deposit has been put down.

Eek. What have I done!

 

After almost a year of deliberating over which kit to build (has it really been so long!) and an epic 45 page thread over on the UK Cobra Club forums – which you can read here if you wish – during which I’ve gained something akin to notoriety, I finally made my choice and put my money where my mouth is and as Neil says on page 45, I’ve made my bed, now I have to lie in it!

 

In the end my decision really came down to a choice between two kits: the Dax or the Crendon. The build quality and engineering in the Crendon is a thing of beauty, it really is, and the finished product affords a degree of authenticity very rarely surpassed in the land of FPSBs – but ultimately I had some requirements that I wouldn’t be able to fulfil had I chosen the Crendon. The design & build of the Dax is perhaps a little more industrial (sorry fellas!) and the body is much less authentic, but any unconventional choices I make during the build are much less likely to give the owner of the company a heart attack.. and I have far too much respect for the man behind the Crendon to go giving him a heart attack over what’s been done to one of his babies!

 

So as I say, after a year of swinging back and forth between options like some kind of demented pendulum, I finally settled on the Dax DeDion chassis and took a trip up to Dax – my third trip there, in fact – to put the deposit down. Sadly they’re now so busy (damn my indecision!) that the earliest they can get me a chassis is some time at the back end of March, so all I have to show for my deposit cheque right now is the build manual.. but that does give me time to get all the other jobs that need doing out of the way; like clearing at least one car out of the garage (anyone want a Nissan 300ZX?), finding a donor (anyone got a cheap Jaguar?) and getting all the donor bits ready.

 

Actually, what I say isn’t strictly true, I have more sitting in the garage than just a build manual – right now I’m the proud owner of an entirely stock Ford 390 FE engine, a Ford 428 FE with Edelbrock heads, a set of TWM throttle bodies and Accel DFI injection & ignition and a Tremec T-56 gearbox taken from an Aston Martin. So there’s plenty to be getting on with, especially considering the 428 desperately needs a rebuild as the previous ‘engine builder’ appears to have been half blind and slightly dim-witted…

 

Still, at least that means I have a picture to add:

Isn’t it pretty?