Although no people were hurt in the least, the accident in Kittredge on Sunday was tragic, nonetheless.

A cherry-red 1982 AC Cobra Special sustained moderate front end damage. The exact nature of its injuries was not available at press time, Tuesday.

Several units of the Evergreen Volunteer Fire Department responded to Highway 74 in Kittredge at about 1:30 after an accident was reported in front of the Country Roads Café. What they discovered was a minor two-car dust-up in which some of the finest Detroit steel ever to hit the streets had been cruelly battered. Sources at the scene described the event as follows.

Two Denver couples, connoisseurs of ultra-fine roadware, had driven into the mountains to enjoy a pleasant lunch at one of the area’s many fine dining establishments. After their lovely repast, they headed homeward down Bear Creek Canyon, an excellent cruise for a high-performance vehicle. Leading the small convoy was the ‘82 Special, followed by a 1972 Cobra replica, also blazing crimson with two wide, white stripes running stem to stern like a mighty, counterfeit Pepe LePew.

As the splendid roadsters entered Kittredge, a young girl driving a black Suburu Outback Limited sporting a Kerry/Edwards sticker in the aft port window blithely entered the highway from the carwash adjacent to the café, directly into the path of American industry’s proudest achievement. Despite its high-performance tires and a braking system that could stop a tank dropped from an airplane, the King of the Road lightly struck the Suburu in its Kerry/Edwards causing minor, and very clean, damage.

Alas, the Cobra was not so lucky. A finely-tuned machine, its clean-lined, manly, altogether beautiful front end was not designed to answer such an insult. The dream-machine was hors de combat, its magnificent nose – the immaculate paint job, the perfectly worked grill, the chrome impossible to look at without eye protection on a cloudless Sunday afternoon – was savaged.

Paramedics quickly ascertained that all human parties were sound and in good running condition. The Cobra, sublimely aloof and projecting an almost supernatural gravity from its muscular lines, was ignominiously loaded onto the back of a wrecker and driven away, it is hoped, to the tender ministries of a competent, licensed mechanic.

It is unknown if the young lady, though clearly rueful, appreciated how the entire community is diminished when a really cool muscle-car is mistreated. If the driver of the genuine article felt the Cobra reproduction should rightly have taken the hit, he did not say so.

The victim, in happier times