LAKEVILLE, CONN. (29 August 2025)- The 43rd running of Lime Rock Park’s Historic Festival opened Friday with more than 300 drivers representing 31 states and four countries taking to the track. Among the day’s highlights was an unexpected reunion of a pair of Shelby Cobras brought together by two men who have devoted much of their lives to celebrating and preserving these legendary machines.

Grand Marshal Rob Dyson arrived with a fleet of 15 rare cars from his personal collection to display during the Festival, including his 1965 Cobra, a car that has spent its entire life based within 20 miles of Poughkeepsie, New York, where it was first sold to Dyson. Tom Cotter, the noted Barn Find Hunter and author, brought a curated selection of five vintage AC Cobras including his own well-traveled 1965 example that he purchased in California 25 years ago and has driven from Alaska to nearly every corner of the country.

What makes the pairing extraordinary is that Dyson’s Cobra CSX 2491 was built side-by-side in England with Cotter’s CSX 2490 six decades ago. The two cars have never been together since leaving the assembly line in 1965 until now. Historic Festival 43 has reunited them, offering fans a chance to see the siblings together for the first time in 60 years.

Cotter has always believed these cars were meant to be driven, not just admired.

“Once, when I was in Charlotte at a Shelby meet with this Cobra, I had the car jacked up fixing something in the chassis when someone in a Ford Lightning pickup drove up,” Cotter recalls. “A gravelly voice belonging to someone I couldn’t see said to me, ‘Well, I didn’t build no damn trailer queens…’ And that, of course, was Carroll Shelby.”

At Sunday in The Park on the Lime Rock Park Concours, Cotter and Dyson’s Cobras will be parked together, joining several more examples for a powerful display that underscores both the heritage and living spirit of Shelby’s creation. Unlike many concours displays these Cobras aren’t polished museum pieces or trailered collectibles. They’re cars with stories (including a bear attack), scars and memories still making history on the road and track.

Friday evening closed with the Competitors Dinner presented by Nuvance Health where John Fitch and Sam Posey were inducted into the Legends of Lime Rock. Their markers will be installed alongside Skip Barber’s, the inaugural inductee, by the Skip Barber Tower where fans can read about the celebrated drivers’ impact at Lime Rock Park starting Saturday. Family members of Fitch and Posey himself were in attendance to accept the honors.

The dinner concluded with a panel discussion featuring Dyson, longtime NASCAR announcer Mike Joy, former Formula 1 and sports car racer David Hobbs and veteran motorsports broadcaster Bob Varsha.

Vintage racing continues on Saturday, starting at 9:00 a.m., with a full schedule of 18 races across nine different groups, keeping Historic Festival 43 rolling into Labor Day weekend.

For tickets, entry lists and the schedule, visit: Historic Festival 43 – Lime Rock Park