Rodney Smith, owner of Southeastern Customs in Supply, North Carolina, is a total gear head with a love for hot rods and motorcycles so it’s no surprise to find out that he too loves anything Shelby. Building a Shelby Cobra themed trike he calls Shelster is not that far out of the ordinary as it’s about as elemental as one of Carroll’s ‘rorty roadsters. How he got to that point wasn’t a straight line as Rodney says, “Originally the trike was going to be a ’59 Corvette, but that all changed when I saw a ’66 AC Cobra replica body for sale on eBay. As luck would have it, the body was located in Charleston, South Carolina, so I bid on it and won.”

   Simple as that, a tribute to Carroll Shelby and his sensuous Cobra began. “I started out with a stock 1990 Sportster and used the drive train and neck. I built the frame from 1.25-inch DOM tubing. I started having ideas and as they came to me, I would write them down then create them in metal and fiberglass. The most difficult thing about this build was trying to decide what things to build for the bike. There are a lot of parts on this bike that are hand made. I have over 900 hours into it, but once I had everything I wanted to put on the bike it just fell in place.”

   Using one of Harley’s XL series bikes for the basis of the trike is a bit unusual in the trike world, yet Shelby brilliant in its own way as most trikers seem to go for the big blocks. Carroll’s first Cobra originally was to be powered by Ford’s new 221-inch small block V8, but quickly changed to a larger 260-cube version. Later production Cobras installed the even bigger, yet still small block, 289-inch mill before big block 427 and 428 engines became standard fare. So, I guess I could say that using the 1200cc Sporty small block engine is equivalent to Carroll’s early small block Cobras. Even though the engine is internally stock, in true Shelby-go-fast tradition, Rodney couldn’t help but blurt out that “The engine also has a nitrous plate system and a two-pound chrome bottle.” Carroll would be proud.  

    Rodney did his research on Cobras and found out what made them tickle a Cobra freak’s fancy and what Shelby bits he wanted to incorporate into his build. “I wanted to create a fairing that looked like the front of a Shelby so I hope I did it justice,” he said. “I also wanted to stay with the blue/white colors of the racing Shelby, but wanted to put my own spin on it. I went with white pearl and solid blue stripes with a thin red pinstripe dividing the colors. I tried use as much Shelby items as possible in the build, so the emblems, mirrors, and medallions are Shelby.” There are lot of other Cobra-inspired touches like the roll bar, the Sporty’s header wrapped ‘side pipe’ exhaust, and the infamous Cobra hood scoop sitting on the ‘hood’ of the one-off fairing. 

   One area that Rodney took a little Cobra liberty with is the audio system. I doubt many Cobra owners spent much time listening to the radio as they were hanging on for dear life banging through the gears or sliding around corners, but Rodney likes his tunes. Back then there was basically only AM radio anyway so it was never all that important unless you had a radio with reverb to spice things up. “The bike has a killer stereo system with a seven-inch DVD screen, DUB amp, MTX Audio front speakers, and 10″ Kicker subs,” said Rodney. Audio’s come a long way to say the least.   

  With the Shelby trike finished and ready to find a new owner, Rodney insisted on a shout out to a couple of people who were with him all the way. “I want to think my pinstriper, Eric Thomas, and my co-designer, my wife Tammy. She was my biggest critic,” said Rodney adding, “I think if Carroll Shelby would have built a trike, this is what he would have done. I know I accomplished what I wanted. This is not an old guy’s trike, it’s just plain cool!”

  For more information on Southeastern Customs and what Rodney’s up to lately (“building two baggers for the Baddest Bagger Contest”), click on

http://southeasterncustoms.org/.