The Shelby Cobra story is usually told as a front-engine legend, a British chassis stuffed with American V8 thunder and pointed straight at Le Mans. Lost in that familiar script is a tantalizing “what if”: a compact British sports car that, with the right engine and layout, comes shockingly close to the mid-engine Cobra Ford never signed off on. To find it, you have to look past the famous snakes and into the world of small makers and one-off Prototypes that pushed the formula further than Dearborn ever dared.
In the 1960s, as mid-engined exotics like the Lamborghini Miura rewrote the rulebook, Ford stuck to front-mounted muscle for its road cars while experimenting quietly in the background. That left room for a British-American Collaboration to pick up the Cobra idea and twist it into something wilder, with the engine behind the driver and performance that could stare down a 427 without flinching.
The British-American Cobra Killer That Went Rogue
To understand why a mid-engine British sports car feels like the Cobra Ford skipped, it helps to remember that The First Ford Cobra Was a partnership between a small British company and Ford, a mix of light chassis and big American power that created the original Cobra. That same cross-Channel chemistry later produced the TVR Griffith Series 400, a car openly pitched as a Cobra Killer and built around the idea that a tiny fiberglass body plus serious V8 grunt could embarrass bigger names. Griffith convinced Ford Motor Corporation to supply 289 cubic-inch V8 engines, and the resulting 400 used that 289 with a four-speed manual to deliver brutal straight-line pace in a package even more compact than the Shelby.
What makes this lineage relevant to a mid-engine fantasy is how far TVR and Griffith were willing to stretch the formula. The 1965 TVR Griffith 400 Coupe was a true British-American muscle hybrid, Built with a lightweight TVR Grantura-derived shell and that same Ford small-block, the 400 Coupe showed how much performance could be unlocked when a British chassis designer was given free rein with Detroit hardware. In spirit, it was already edging toward the kind of wild, low-volume experiment that a mid-engine Cobra would have been, even if its engine still sat up front.
The Mid-Engine Leap Ford Would Not Take
While Ford never made a mid-engine Cobra in period, it did flirt with the idea of a mid-engined road car at the height of the Miura era. One project, described as The Mid Engined Sports Car That Ford Did Build, used Mustang underpinnings to explore a central-engine layout, a sign that the company understood how quickly the performance world was changing. At the same time, mid-engined supercars were just taking off with the likes of the Lamborghini Miura, and enthusiasts who could not afford Italian exotica were left to imagine what a more attainable, Ford-powered mid-engine machine might look like.
That gap between fantasy and showroom reality is where a British mid-engine concept starts to feel like the missing link. Reports on a 60s British sportscar with more power than a 427 Cobra describe a compact machine that took the mid-engine idea seriously, using a transversely mounted powertrain and even experimenting with a different transmission in the later Prototypes to handle the output. While this car never wore a snake badge, its layout, power, and scale line up neatly with what fans picture when they talk about the mid-engine Cobra Ford never built.
The Lone Star, the Prototypes, and the Road Not Taken
Ford did come close to a spiritual successor when the Shelby Lonestar Prototype appeared as a secret Cobra follow-up. The Shelby Lonestar Prototype was developed as a Cobra successor using Ford GT40 underpinnings, with a mid-mounted engine and sleek bodywork that clearly pointed toward a new kind of Ford-backed supercar. It was a bold attempt to drag the Cobra idea into the mid-engine age, even if the project stayed under the radar for years.
Internal evaluation did the Lone Star for any chance at production. After Ford reviewed the car, the company declined to greenlight it, citing Concerns that ranged from awkward ingress over wide fuel-filled sills to the cost and complexity of putting such a radical shape into showrooms. The Lone Star became a one-off, a rolling reminder that the company was willing to think mid-engine but not quite ready to sell that vision to regular buyers.
More from Wilder Media Group: