Introduction

1986 I think it was.

It all started then.................................

That's when I first came across a kit car in the form of the Dax Tojeiro Cobra. I wanted to build one. It looked beautiful. So much better than the Minis, Escorts, Vivas and even a Capri I had been driving in those days. Funds were too challenging back then. But I caught the bug and I wanted to build something.

I was living near Falmouth and not too far down the road in Plymouth was Marlin Sportscars. I was talking to my girlfriend (now wife) about building a Marlin and then, on my birthday I received a photograph album from her with a load of photos of the red Marlin Roadster demonstrator. She had sneaked off Plymouth, gone to Marlin, took a load of pics and put them in an album for me......!!

So in late 1987 I put my first Marlin on the road.

It was Morris Marina based with the old 'B' series engine and although I was never going to burn rubber in it, it was great fun. 

But what I really wanted was a Cobra. 

I sold the Marlin in the mid 90's and have never been able to track it down again since and I'm pretty sure the Marlin Owners Club have no record of it either.

Wind the clock forward to 2010 and I had done all sorts of sensible things in the intervening 23 years or so. Perhaps the less sensible thing I did though was mountain biking which meant that in June 2010 I was laid up with a broken collar bone and three broken ribs on my left hand side and an ulna collateral ligament torn off my thumb on my right hand side. So while idle I started, for no obvious reason, to wonder what Marlin were up to. Of course, unlike 1986 there was now the internet, and websites and stuff like that. So I had a peak at Marlin's website and Marlin were now doing a BMW based Sportster kit. The kit car bug bit again. Again I looked at Cobras but this time, I didn't have room to build one. So I built another Marlin and in June 2013, put it on the road.

This is a very different car to the first Marlin. Great handling. Great performance, and surprisingly comfortable on a long journey.

But I still wanted to build a Cobra.

So, in 2015, having had loads of fun with the Marlin, I decided that if I was going to build a Cobra it had to be done now. And finally, 3 1/2 years later, the bits are sitting in my recently enlarged garage and the build can begin.

This is an intro and I hope to keep the blog updated as the build progresses. The other Cobra build blogs on here have been a real godsend and encouragement and have already given me a lot of clues and answers as to how to approach things. I hope this blog will add my ten penneth to the picture and future builder will find something useful here.