I can name quite a few of the big dogs that put out a dead duck on a routine basis. Year in and year out they put out one impressive driver after another…which is more then most golf companies can say. I have to say Cobra might be the most under-rated driver company in all of golf.
OK…I am impressed! The guys at Cobra have created a driver that not only looks good…but it feels good…and sounds good too…there aren’t many drivers like this out there. The car's structure may have retained seat, shifter, wheel, and pedal positions for enough years to accentuate their inconvenience for extremely tall drivers (for whom the seat does not track back enough and for whom the control relationships are never optimal), but it has received enough reinforcement and tuning tweaks to provide civilized levels of noise, vibration, and harshness, even at the new performance level.Cobra ZL Driver – looks good…feels good…and sounds good too But in every other way the Cobra manifests considerable refinement. The best one can say is that selections are mechanically positive. It's fair to say that none of the other shifts is slick and natural-feeling, either. In fact, at Willow Springs, where you rush out of a downhill left-hander in second gear into a right sweep onto the back straight, it takes real concentration to keep the car pointed and find third gear. The T45 gets the job done, but it isn't the smoothest, most precise cog swapper around.
That power goes to ground via a new 11-inch clutch and a T45 five-speed box (now made by Tremec under license from Borg-Warner). However, keep the Ford mill in its sweet band, and you're rewarded with good power and one of the least inhibited exhaust notes in the business. The engine pulls well, particularly from 3000 rpm up to its power peak at 6000 rpm, but there isn't a rush to the redline like there is with GM's LS1 motor, and revving the Ford V-8 beyond 6500 isn't very productive. Obviously, corrugated surfaces no longer produce the yaw found on solid-axle-equipped cars, and the new Cobra also handles two-wheel bumps with little tail hop. On smooth California pavement, it was hard to discern any comfort gained from the IRS based on our distant memory of the previous Cobra. This kind of handling finesse was not available from the solid-axle car. Hence, 0.03 g better skidpad performance at 0.88 g.Įven power-induced oversteer through Turn Three at Willow Springs raceway could be easily modulated at the throttle, allowing the driver's right foot to control rotation through the corner.
The rear end is less susceptible to bump steer than before, and as the geometry has been set up for a touch of toe-out as the car begins to heel over, then for toe-in (and safe understeer at the rear axle) at full lean, its off-center steering response is better, and its handling is more neutral at the limit. The IRS makes the car feel more supple and thus more readable in corners. Straight-line performance may have missed the target, but more important to sporty drivers is the feel of the Cobra on twisty pavement.