Why did Dean Jeffries' Mantaray have a 289 Cobra engine? Cool story

Dean painted the first AC Cobra several times for Carroll Shelby.... painting it in different colors in order to fool magazine editors into thinking that many cars had been built... when actually only one prototype was.

So in appreciation Carroll gave Dean a 289 Cobra engine

Below is what it looked like in 1973 from http://www.huffreport.com/archives/oldpics/the70s.htm

photos from http://www.myrideisme.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/701.jpg
and http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/gallery/15647/Dean-Jeffries--Mantaray.html

Dean Jeffries, pinstriper and custom car bulder, Oakland Roadster Show winner

I was just reading an article about Dean and the Mantaray, and learned that he travelled to Indy for the 500, and on year, pinstriped 2/3rds of the race cars

James Dean was one of his early customers, and Jeffries painted "Little Bastard" on the Porsche 550 Spyder that Dean owned.

Agajanian took Jeffries to the 1952 Indy 500, Mobil Oil, noticing his unusual painting and pin striping style, hired him in the following years to paint any of the Indy race cars. It was free to the teams and Mobil got their logo somewhere on the car. Jeffries would paint and pin stripe the cars and helmets of race car drivers like Jim Rathmann, Parnelli Jones, and A. J. Foyt, and become Foyt's paint and body man.

After that, in 1962, he worked for famous race car designer and builder Carroll Shelby on the Cobra.

Dean's show car, Mantaray, first appeared at the 1964 Oakland Roadster Show where it won the Tournament of Fame First Prize. The smallblock Ford engine & 4-speed trans came directly from Shelby as partial payment for work Jeffries had done and to this day that Cobra engine has just a few miles on it.

For more about Dean Jeffries, mostly photos of his pinstriping, Krazy Shirts, and his magazine advertisements: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/label/Dean%20Jeffries

You won't see many '64-'66 Imperials in So cal for sale, the upcoming movie "the Green Hornet" needed 29 built

Seth Rogen (who is the lead in the movie The Green Hornet) unveiled one at the 2009 Comic-con http://www.accesshollywood.com/seth-rogen/comic-con-2009-seth-rogen-unveils-green-hornets-black-beauty_video_1138356 for the video, but a full gallery of photos are here: http://www.autoblog.com/gallery/comic-con-2009-the-green-hornets-black-beauty#6

The original was built by icon Dean Jefferies.

Dennis McCarthy is the picture car coordinator (just 6 years of doing this so far) in Hollywood that made the cars used during filming the last two The Fast and the Furious movies, which he had over a $7 million dollar budget on just Tokyo Drift http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/general/hdrp_0607_movie_car_builds/index.html

and now he's building the Green Hornet "Black Beauty" Imperials.
29 of them.

great interview with Dennis here: http://www.latinoreview.com/news/fast-furious-week-continues-interview-with-car-coordinator-dennis-mccarthy-new-poster-6189 which is the same as the one here, http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/10961/tcid/1http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/10961/tcid/1http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/10961/tcid/1 but with a different writer claiming credit for the writing... odd.