It's Mine

When Coastal Breeze News last checked in on Lely High School media specialist Chris Black in November of 2020, his replica Shelby Cobra race car was a shell of its current self. On Saturday, July 9, 2022, Black’s father Robert strapped in and drove his son’s race car for the first time.

"It’s based off of the 1965 427 Shelby Cobra,” Chris Black said. The kit is a product of Factory Five racing, the world’s largest manufacturer of build-it-yourself component car kits.

Black admits that he had constant doubts about his ability to complete the project.

“Every week,” Black said with a knowing smile. "There were a lot of days where I threw wrenches. Being in the heat, with no air conditioning in my garage, you work for a couple of hours and you mentally get tired.”

Black pinches himself on a daily basis when he looks at the glistening race car that he built. It just doesn’t seem real.

“I’m still amazed,” Black said. "Every day I walk out the door and I look at it and I say, ‘It’s mine.'  All my life I wanted a car like this, a muscle car. It still amazes me that it’s my car. And it amazes me that I built it.”

A full 45 percent of people who buy one of the kits never successfully build their car. 

"Some people never open the boxes,” Black said. "Some work on it for a couple of years then get rid of it. I think they say 55 percent of people complete their car. If you don’t finish the car, you’ll never recover what you paid for the kit. If you sell it unfinished, you’re losing money. It came as a complete, unassembled kit. There was nothing bolted on. Every piece, every screw. I did 95 percent of it. A friend of mine, Henry Renaud, an Air Force retiree who builds these, helped me. I met him when I first got the kit. Since then, we’ve become friends. A couple of things I had trouble with, I took it up to him in Punta Gorda. These are race cars. They’re not something you want to play with. With me, being a novice builder, it was worth it to have someone like Henry give it a safety check.”

Black said he didn’t log the hours he put in during the build.

“It was definitely 300 to 400 hours of work,” he said. "The longest wait was at the body shop. They had it for five months. I was getting antsy. I was figuring six to eight weeks at the body shop.”  

Black made his wife a part of the decision making process.

"My wife Kerry picked the color,” Black said. "That was the deal from the beginning. I was worried. I knew purple was her favorite color. There’s a lot of shades of purple that I don’t think would look as good. But it worked out really well. The color makes it stand out from all the others. You get a lot of attention in this."

Black felt proud watching his father climb into the driver’s seat for the first time. His dad had a 1957 Chevy, a 1962 and 1963 Corvette, and a 1964 GTO. “I’d like to have any one of them back,” Robert Black jokes.

“I was always a gear head,” Chris Black said. “I rebuilt my 1967 VW’s engine.”

The payoff for Chris Black was when he watched his father drive the car for the first time.

"He’s 82 years old and he’s going to drive a race car,” Black said with a smile of admiration for his father. "He spent a lot of afternoons sitting with me, giving me support and ideas. He was always there for support and hung out with me while I was working.”

His aging father was a strong inspiration for Black to finish his build.

 "This definitely makes it worth it,” Black said as he watched his dad pull out of the driveway. He listened to the engine roar as his dad shifted through the first couple of gears and disappeared down the road. “I didn’t want him to miss getting a chance to drive this,” Black said, “He always loved the muscle cars. He got rid of them all because of kids, four boys in four years. That kind of ruined his muscle car days. I’m sure he’s feeling like he’s 28 right now instead of 82.”

Robert was enthused when he returned from his test drive.

“That sucker took off like a rocket ship,” Robert Black said when he pulled back in the driveway. 

Those words were music to his son’s ears.