‘Replicar’ Business Accelerating
The Evil Empire. A threat to freedom, democracy and the American way of life. The arsenal that imperiled the world.
Thomas Kirkham doesn’t discourage the apocalyptic portrayal of the PZL defense plant in southern Poland, an immense, super-secure aerospace facility the size of a small air base. “It’s where the Soviets manufactured their best fighter jets,” emphasizes Kirkham, a retired Air Force flight-test engineer who appreciates the menace of those MiGs.
The sinister image vaguely amuses Kirkham, because those aeronautical engineers and technical machinists who once armed the Soviets now are his friends.
Even better: They are his employees.
Kirkham, a soft-spoken former Mormon missionary, is one-half of Kirkham Engineering & Sales, a Provo company he and his brother David founded to produce, with the Polish defense establishment’s help, a high-tech, high-quality innovation they believe will drastically change their industry.
Only it’s not fighter jets or nuclear missiles they’re building.
It’s sports cars.
Really, really fast ones, too. The Kirkhams produce exact duplicates of the Shelby 427 Cobra, what Thomas Kirkham describes as “the pinnacle of muscle cars. It was the fastest accelerating road car ever produced. . . . It’s like riding a bullet bike with four wheels.”
Indeed, the lightweight, four-speed, 425-horsepower Cobra will accelerate from zero to 100 mph and back to zero in just 13.8 seconds.
“It’s bad to the bone,” said Dan Neil, an auto magazine journalist who visited the Kirkhams’ Polish operation. “It’s fast as hell.”
But it’s also rare as heck. Carroll Shelby, the car’s designer, built just 348 Cobras in the mid-1960s, combining aluminum English-built bodies with Ford engines. They sold for $6,500 at the time, but by 1970, “the craze was already over and people sold their Cobras for nothing,” said Neil.
Bad move. Today, a drivable Shelby 427 Cobra is worth at least $500,000--if you can find a willing seller. The Kirkham brothers own one of two in Utah; car dealer Larry H. Miller has the other.
The Kirkhams were happy just to repair and restore Mustangs and Cobras for six years, but they became frustrated by the outrageous expense of even low-quality Cobra parts. They tried blueprinting original parts and replicating them themselves, and soon realized they could “reverse-engineer” the entire car.
It wasn’t an original idea, not with Cobra values soaring and the rights to the “Cobra” name no longer held by Ford. In fact, dozens of “replicar” manufacturers specialize in retailing cheap fiberglass close-but-not-quite knockoffs to a thirsty market.
But selling exact duplicates? The consensus was that building them would be way too pricey.
The Kirkhams agreed, until a chance conversation in 1993 suddenly made their lives a lot more complicated. Thomas’ brother-in-law, a pilot, asked him to make parts for a Polish passenger jet being built at PZL. “I thought, ‘Gee, that looks a lot like a Cobra,’ ” Thomas said. “Pretty soon it was, ‘Hey, those plants probably don’t do much anymore.’ ”
Turns out, they were right. The cash-starved Poles were willing--even eager--to make hot rods for the Kirkhams for far lower wages than American technicians. Low enough, the brothers quickly realized, that Cobras could be copied and sold at $50,000, their target price.
So at cut-rate, just-happy-to-have-a-job wages, the Kirkhams signed up the cream of Poland’s work force, accomplished craftsmen with decades of technical experience, a yen for perfection and a reputation for trustworthiness.
On essentially a handshake agreement--the Kirkhams admit they don’t exactly comprehend the papers they signed--PZL made room among its eclectic collection of post-Cold War endeavors to build Cobra copies and ship them to Utah.
“Eastern Europe is full of sharks and vampires. It’s so easy to lose your shirt,” said Neil. “But the Kirkhams got lucky. Being honorable people, they managed to find people who were also honorable.”
Not that subcontracting work to Poland is without its perils. There are few legal recourses if something goes wrong, and bureaucrats are inevitably suspicious. When David Kirkham showed up in Warsaw with his original Cobra, a check for $1 million, a ton of parts and a library of blueprints, customs agents detained him for three days.
It’s all worth it, said Thomas Kirkham. The Poles have access to factory equipment American replicar manufacturers could never afford, and the results prove it.
PZL digitally mapped the two-seater hot rod with near-impossible accuracy, then constructed an aluminum-forming model from the 3-D blueprint. They copied and reproduced every part, right down to the springs that operate the gas and brake pedals.
Not satisfied with just producing the best replica ever, the Kirkhams’ Polish friends even improved on the original Cobras, using aeronautical welding techniques for a cleaner and more secure hold.
The finished product is distinguishable from the original only to an expert.
“It’s impressive,” said James McDonald, a Salt Lake City collector who has researched Cobra copies. “You see them side by side, there is virtually no difference. Maybe one has a Shelby label, one doesn’t; that’s it.”
Kirkham Cobras have two other advantages on the originals: They’re affordable, at least by comparison, and drivable. “You would never take an original Cobra and flog it on a racetrack,” said Neil. “You would be afraid of scratching history.”
But at $50,000 for the Kirkham kit containing everything but the engine and paint, which they hope to sell separately for another $30,000 or so by the end of the year, collectors can have their own chunk of automobile history. The brothers plan to limit production to 50 cars annually to protect quality.
“They’re toys,” said Kirkham, whose love for cars began with his ’67 Mustang in high school. “They’re quite impractical.”
Also irresistible, at least to car nuts.
“There’s an addiction to that kind of car. You get mesmerized by it,” said Archie Hamilton, the Kirkhams’ first customer.
“I sit there in awe every time I look at it. And the thrill of riding in one is indescribable.”
