Bill Cosby 200 MPH – Shelby Cobra Super Snake (CSX3303)

In 1967, Bill Cosby bought a Shelby Cobra Super Snake CSX3303 from his friend and former race car driver, Carroll Shelby. The CSX3303 was one of two Super Snakes built, which is a modified 1965 Cobra Competition roadster retained by Shelby American as a PR car and then modified with the addition of two superchargers and a Ford C-6 automatic gearbox. Of the two cars built, one was retained by Shelby and the other was sold to Cosby. The album title, 200 M.P.H., refers to the car’s top speed, which unnerved Cosby so much that he only drove it once before returning it. Shelby American sold it to S and C Motors in San Francisco, who then sold it to their customer, Tony Maxey. Maxey destroyed himself and CSX3303 by driving off of a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean.

Why is CSX 3015 so historically significant? Carroll Shelby. He built at a time when Americans were just Americans and proud to be Americans. He told me he built it just to see how fast it was and he told me it was a Monster that threw belts off on a regular basis.

200 M.P.H. (1968) is the eighth album by Bill Cosby. It was recorded live at Harrah’s, Lake Tahoe, Nevada by Warner Bros. Records.

While the majority of Cosby’s Warner Bros. standup albums were regularly re-released on LP, and eventually issued on CD in April 1998, 200 M.P.H. was not reissued on vinyl (although it was available on cassette in the ’80s), and did not see a CD release until 2005, mainly due to controversy over the main sketch’s punchline, where Cosby returns the car and suggests that it be given to former Alabama governor and pro-segregationist George Wallace, who was running for President as a third party candidate at the time. In a recent late-night talk show appearance, Cosby briefly re-told this story and said that he had heard that Jimmy Webb (of “MacArthur Park” fame) eventually ended up with his Cobra.