Lynn Parks is the King of Shelby Cobras, well, besides Carroll – who was a close friend. His friends even refer to him as Mr. Cobra; involved with Shelby Cobras for 52 years, the name certainly fits.

Before he could even drive, Lynn was taking apart his mom’s old ’56 Ford in the driveway and at the gas station where he worked at the time. When he finally got his license, he took out his mom’s old engine and dropped in a big Edsel.

Lynn would frequent wrecking yards and buy what was left of these then-new musclecars (many were possibly stolen recoveries), and he would build a new engine for it. That would be Lynn’s life. Buy a car in need, build it up, sell it and then do it all over again once another car showed up that caught his interest. “I was always driving a nice, brand new muscle car,” says Mr. Cobra.

After his sister’s boyfriend, a muscle car guy, came home with a Road & Track magazine with this new Shelby Cobra – a Ford hot rod in an English body – Lynn made his way to Shelby American the following week to learn more about this new car. He was at the shop so much that people started to think that was his place of employment.

Lynn got his hands on an AC Cobra and put his own Ford motor in it and drag raced it until he left for the Army in 1967. After leaving the service in ’69, he had to go find his own Cobra again and purchased one for $2,100. He worked on it, and then bought another one for $2k which still sits in his Cobra collection along with one of the first FIA cars ever built by Shelby.

“Ever since then, Cobras became more than just a hobby. It’s a passion with me that has lasted up until this very minute.” Owning over 50 Cobras over the years, Lynn built and sold many of them. Rarely did he get one and left it the way it was supposed to be.

Fast forward to the late ’70s/early ’80s, vintage racing came about and he had to get in on it. He still races some of these Cobras as a full-time passion. Can you see yourself owning this many cars – all of them the same make and model?