Ken Miles’ one-of-one Shelby Cobra prototype heads to Mecum Kissimmee

There are plenty of Shelby Cobras that can make a car enthusiast's pulse quicken, but there’s only one of these. This one-off 1964 Shelby 427 Prototype Factory Team Cobra, better known as the “Flip Top,” is headed to Mecum's Kissimmee auction in January 2027 along with some other super-significant race cars and impossibly rare collector cars. 

Mecum always brings the heat, but this Shelby is a real stand-alone machine. With an estimated value exceeding $25 million, the Flip Top is one of the most significant Cobras ever built, and not simply because of the number attached to its price tag. That price tag isn’t random; it comes from its unique design and history. This is a one-of-one experimental machine developed by the man himself, Ken Miles, the legendary Shelby American driver and engineer whose fingerprints are all over some of the most important American racing cars of the 1960s. It represents a particularly ambitious chapter in Shelby’s history, when the team was willing to throw conventional thinking out the window in pursuit of building and racing faster cars than the Europeans.

The Flip-Top Cobra 

The Flip-Top was one of just two Cobras built in the United States at Shelby American, the other being the prototype Daytona Coupe. It began life as a 289-style roadster fitted with a 427 engine, and competed as a Shelby American Factory Team entry in the 1964 12 Hours of Sebring. But it was far from finished.

Following Sebring, Miles and the Shelby crew set about transforming the car into something considerably more weaponized. The original roadster chassis was reworked into a Daytona Coupe-style platform, with revised suspension voodoo, structural upgrades, and a lightweight aluminum body. Its most obvious update was its bizarre bodywork, which could flip open at both ends to provide access to the mechanical components. The arrangement earned it the nickname that has stuck ever since: Flip Top Cobra.

The goal was to build a killer for the Nassau Speed Weeks in the Bahamas, where Shelby would be facing some formidable competition. The field included Corvette Grand Sports, Ford GT40s and Ferrari racing machinery. These weren’t exactly cars that could be intimidated by a few stripes and a big American V8. The Flip Top, however, made an immediate impression, opening the proceedings with an eight-second lead on the first lap. That’s a fairly emphatic way of introducing yourself to the competition.

The experimental V8

Much of that performance came from an experimental all-aluminum Ford 427/390 side-oiler V8. Feeding the big-block were 58mm Weber carburetors that looked more like buckets of gas than carbs, helping the engine produce more than 500 horsepower. In a car weighing approximately 1,800 pounds, that’s a decidedly spicy power-to-weight ratio, particularly considering the technology available in 1964. The combination of being super light, aerodynamic and having a carefully developed racing chassis made the Flip Top an extraordinary piece of engineering for its time.

Ken Miles was all over this thing

Of course, the significance of this Cobra extends beyond its performance figures. The car is a physical record of the experimental approach that defined Shelby American during its most important racing years. Miles wasn’t interested in building something merely recognizable as a Cobra. He was interested in finding out how much faster one could be, even if that meant effectively reinventing the car along the way. The Flip Top is what happened when that philosophy was given a big boy budget.

It also remains remarkably original. Its chassis, body, engine, suspension, brakes, radiator and gauges are all retained, making it an unusually complete survivor of a period when competition cars were often modified, rebuilt or simply used up in the pursuit of another checkered flag.

The Cobra has undergone a four-year, ground-up restoration by Legendary Motorcar, using original and new-old-stock components. It’s won all kinds of awards on the concours circuit, too, like a Premiere Award at the Shelby American Automobile Club National Convention, a place on the lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and a First in Class Award at The Amelia Island Concours. It’s safe to say it’s a pretty nice car. 

The Flip Top Cobra will cross the auction block at Mecum’s Apex Collection at Kissimmee, Florida’s Osceola Heritage Park, with the auction running Jan. 5-17, 2027. A $25 million-plus estimate has it squarely in the upper atmosphere of collector-car territory, but this isn't just another eye-searingly expensive Cobra. It’s a full-blown, one-off experiment cooked up by one of the heaviest hitters in American motorsports. It’s a properly remarkable piece of Shelby American history.

The Mecum Kissimmee 2027 auction still has more gems

The Flip-Top Cobra is nuts, but that doesn’t make some of the other show-stoppers any less nuts. Alongside the Cobra, Mecum will also be auctioning the Porsche 917K Hero Car that Steve McQueen drove in “Le Mans.” Although it was heavily altered for production, it’s since been restored to factory condition, but the camera mount points are still intact. 

Another big boy crossing the block is the 1959 Ferrari 250 Super Monza. This one is a particularly fascinating piece of Maranello history, with a racing rap sheet and ownership history to match its striking appearance. Originally built with a Prototipo 250/GT engine, the Ferrari was driven by Maurice Trintignant and original owner Luigi Piotti to a First in Class finish at the 1954 12 Hours of Hyeres before placing 15th overall in the 1955 Mille Miglia. In 1957, it got the fancy pontoon-fender bodywork from Scaglietti, and then was brought to the U.S. by Luigi Chinetti and sold as a 1959 Super Monza. Wearing a white and blue North American Racing Team (NART) racing livery, it made its American debut at the 1960 New York Auto Show, where it took first prize in the Concours.

The car was restored by Wayne Obry's Motion Products in 2014, quickly after that earning Second in Class at Pebble Beach, a Platinum Award and Best of Show at Cavallino Palm Beach in 2016, and a place among the 60 Fabulous Ferraris on Rodeo Drive during Ferrari’s 60th anniversary celebrations. Dana Mecum even owned this car at one point.

Because we have to stop at some point, the last for this offensively short list of main-attraction cars at the auction is the only first-generation Camaro Z28 convertible produced: a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 Convertible. Shooooweeeeee. This was a special-made thing made as a gift for Chevy’s then-GM, Pete Estes. It only has 41,000 original miles, was the pace car for the 1968 Road America Can-Am, and comes with a slew of original paperwork for GM nerds to pore over. 

These are only four of the cars at the 2027 Mecum auction in Kissimmee, Fla. Check out the rest of the lineup at Mecum for further mind-blowage.