We saw what Cobra Golf was capable of when they sent us their wedge entries for #ThePimpList. Now Cobra is bringing that same sort of pimp swagger to the driver, and better still, they’re opening the doors of their new Design Lab to the public; letting you design (and buy) the Cobra driver you’ve always wanted.
And if you’ve never wanted a Cobra driver, this might just change your mind.
What Is the Cobra Design Lab?
Simply put, Design Lab is the industry’s new gold standard for direct to the consumer driver customization.
What the hell does that even mean?
Are you familiar with Callaway’s UDesign? Cobra’s Design Lab is like that…only positively steroidal.
You pick your base head color (black or white).
You pick your crown color (8 different colors to choose from).
And then you pick your crown pattern.
Crown pattern? Say what?
That’s right, Cobra has created 4 distinct crown patterns that will further set your customized BiO Cell+ apart from the pack.
Marble
Why shouldn’t a driver have a marbled finish? Don’t answer that. The point is I like it, and so I ordered mine in an awesome marbled finish.
BiO Cell
Already like the cell finish on the BiO Cell and BiO Cell+? By all means, add it to your custom job. There are other ways to make your BiO Cell+ totally your own.
Digital Camo
It’s like camouflage only digital. It’s a bit more subtle than marble, but not nearly as safe as matte.
Matte
And for those of you who like to keep it simple, Cobra is offering a plain ol’, boring matte option. I’m sure it looks great, but man…you could have marbled, or digital camo instead. To each his own right?
Limitations
Just so you aren’t unpleasantly surprised, not every color is available with every pattern. For example, Cobra didn’t think that orange paired well with the marbled finish. So rather than disappoint you with an ugly driver, they removed the options that they felt didn’t work. I hear Rickie is distraught. No I didn’t. I made that up. Sorry.
But wait there’s more. . .
Because this is truly a custom offering, Cobra allows you to choose your grip (between sizes, models, and colors, you have 36 options), and your shaft (by my count, between weights and colors, Cobra offers 58 different shafts). One of the really cool things that Cobra did is take work with Matrix to create custom colored versions of the 6Q3 shaft that is stock on the BiO Cell+. In addition to the white Q3 that Matrix created just for BiO Cell+, through Design Lab, the Q3 is also available in black, blue, light blue, green, orange, silver, yellow, and red. A red tie, in blue? Yup…that’s happening.
Additional shafts from Matrix, Oban, Graphite Design, Fujikura and others are also available. While the Diamana D+ and Project X PXV are free upgrades, most shafts do have an associated upcharge, but $150 appears to be the max hit you’re going to take, which is considerably better than many other OEM upgrade prices.
In addition to shaft flex, Design Lab allows you to specify the length at which you’d like to play your driver, additional wraps of tape of under the grip, and there’s even a Special Instruction box which is there for you to say things like “please align the shaft graphics on my awesome new driver to the 9.5 Draw° setting”.
Cobra Design Lab Drivers start at $449, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t push the price above $604.
For now Design Lab is limited to BiO Cell+ Drivers only, but if this takes off, you never know…Cobra might offer BiO Cell and BiO Cell Pro drivers through Design Lab as well.
Nathan
10 years ago
Head color = Black
Crown Color = Red
Crown Pattern = Marble
Shaft = Aldila RIP Phenom 50S
Grip = Lamkin REL 3GEN – Red