Supercar Classics, July 1987

Supercar Classics, July 1987

Big Bang Theory - Road test of John Atkins' COB 6058
The Boss - Interview with Carroll Shelby
Cobra from the Start - A History
Fancier's Guide
The Lump - Cobra 427

Big Bang Theory

Is the Cobra a good car? Roger Bell no longer has any time for such a debate. Driving the raw brutes leaves him shattered but incomparably excited.

cobra 289 (30 Kb)

John Atkins' 1965 Mk2 Cobra has been kept in standard appearance apart from roll-over hoop. Powertrain is boosted and suspension tuned. Tyres, screen swopped for track
It was petty cash well spent: it gave us an insight into another world of classic four-wheelers. 'I had an offer of £3000 only last week for the oldest.' Romany Jo points to the biggest and brightest of his horse-drawn caravans, none less than 50 years old, all brightly decorated by yellow squirls on red. But he hadn't parted with it. 'It's worth a lot more than that.' His ample spouse prods a sooty kettle deep into open embers. In the other hand, she clutches a copy of last month's SUPERCAR CLASSICS, donated with a folded fiver for photographic services about to be rendered. No flies on Jo when it comes to modelling fees.
'Never seen one like that', he says, nodding at the aubergine AC, incongruously parked alongside his colourful wagon train. 'Friend of mine's got two E-type Jaguars'. We wonder about that, but there was no stopping him. 'They're practically brand new, hardly been used. Got HIS and HER number plates. Must be worth a hundred thousand apiece. Made his money in fish and chips'.
Jo knows more about vintage caravans ('I got a list of who does shafts and wheels. There's a good trade, you know, in these old wagons') than he does about classic cars. He seems unimpressed, even disappointed when we tell him that the AC is worth 'only' £60,000, in truth more than twice as much as his friend's two E-types put together.
It crosses my mind then, talking about money, that this affable tinker was the guy with the real riches. He was the one laughing all the way to Widecombe Fair and beyond. With four wagons, eight horses and a priceless life style, who wants to travel by car, least of all a noisy, uncomfortable, demanding car such as this AC ?

cobra 289 with caravans (27 Kb)

The engine blasts to life again. The horses pause, ears twitching, eyes bulging. Romany Jo steps back, startled by the racket. I stab once, twice, three times at the stiff gearlever before it slots into first. Easing the heavy clutch, I stroke the throttle. The jagged hammering of the straight-through exhaust smooths out into a volcanic burble. Clear of the livestock, I lunge at the accelerator. There's a moment's hesitation, some collywobbles in the carburation. Then wham! With a great gob of awesome grunt, I exorcise all ethereal thoughts about returning to nature with a high-g squirt that leaves Jo receding rapidly in the mirror.
Me for one: I want a Cobra. Maybe a slightly tamer one, though, than this part-time racer, now 22 years old and in formidably rude health despite its weatherbeaten looks. A bundle of old scrutineers' tickets dangles from the dash. It has shredded carpets, a cracked screen, a damaged door and paint blisters round the wheel arches - the result of slick-shod friction in the heat of competition. These and other surface flaws deny it concours status. So what? This is no pampered show car. It's a worker, a week-end dicer that clocks 5000 road miles a year. It's masochistic holiday entertainment, made practical by a passable boot. You need a streak of masochism to enjoy a beligerent beast as fearsome as this, not to say ear mufflers, stamina and plenty of tuned muscle.
By the end of day one, I am close to a physical wreck, ready for spiritual relief - and a treble at that. I am nursing a tender left hand and ringing ears. My spinal cord is threatening dislocation, my head is about to burst. A daytime cocktail of warm lemonade and soluble aspirin has only partially dulled the pain.
I paid for it, this glutinous binge of Cobra motoring. This is a car to be savoured in short, appetizing bursts, not for hour after hour, for two whole days. And yet, in the end, I am sorry we cut it to one-and-a-half. With the tensions of the previous day gone, I am eager for another fix, for another go in the second most exciting car I've ever driven. That its superior on the adrenalin scale also bore an AC Cobra badge says a lot for the raw appeal of these Anglo-American hybrids.
John Atkins' 1965 car, chassis number COB 6048, was one of the very last Mk2s, made just before the original transverse leaf-spring suspension gave way to a more modern (and effective) coil and wishbone setup. Atkins - an auto numerologjst, better known as Jamesigns, purveyors of fanciful number plates - bought the car from Rod Leach's Nostalgia emporium in 1976 as a standard 289. In metric terms, that's a 4.7 litre, as opposed to the earlier 260cu in, 4.2 litre. 'It cost me a Morgan Plus 8 and £2000,' recalls Atkins. 'Say £7000. Cobras were then just beginning to take off. I thought: 'If I don't buy now I'll never be able to afford one.' It was the best deal I ever made. Mk2s are now changing hands at £50-55,000, but mine is probably worth a bit more, £60,000 perhaps, because of its racing history.'

cobra 289 dash (26 Kb)

Scrutineers' tickets and shredded carpet show intentions as racer not concours car.
Atkins laughs now at early setbacks, though they weren't funny at the time. 'The car had had only one previous owner but it was a bit tatty when I bought it. Then it caught fire while being MoT'd.' Brian Angliss's Autokraft operation (which now embraces the reconstituted AC as well), put right that damage, largely confined to the engine bay. Subsequently, another inferno, this one on John's own premises, destroyed boxes full of the car's stripped-out equipment. From 1981-86, Emilio Garcia, Angliss's former partner who went solo with EG Autokraft (Restorations), tended the car. 'Emilio is responsible for much of my success with the Cobra,' praises Atkins. This year, Roger Dowson Engineering at Silverstone has been entrusted with race preparation work.

cobra 289 seats (17 Kb)

Bucket replaces standard slab seat, roadgoing windscreen has effective air deflecting ears
John Atkins had owned COB 6058 for four years before he started racing it. Even then, he was anxious to preserve its standard appearance, marred only by the obligatory roll-over hoop, braced by a cockpit diagonal, behind the driver's seat. 'All we do at the circuits is remove the screen - a two-bolt job - swap the wheels and stick numbers on.' Beneath the skin, however, there are some significant changes, most notably an engine (still with the original's block) stroked by a Boss 302 crankshaft to give a displacement of 5.0 litres. Most small-block competition Cobras have these cranks.
Competition Engine Services of Aylesbury, formerly formula one Cosworth specialists, built - and have subsequently maintained - the engine. 'They're superb,' enthuses Atkins, well pleased with the performance and reliability of what he sees as a good compromise between a full-blooded racing mill and a tame tourer. 'It will develop another 30-40 horsepower on Webers, but the Holley makes it usable on the road.' Using special big-valve GT 40 heads, high-lift (but not wild) camshafts, 650 Holley carburetion and two fabricated four-branch exhaust manifolds, among other things, the engine is said to develop around 370 bhp. That's well down on the ultimate of over 400 bhp, but 100 bhp up on that of the standard 289. More than that, probably, as the original's was a misleading gross figure.
'It's quite a tame car, an unmodified 4.7 litre,' says Atkins, remembering what COB 6058 was like before elevation to the block-buster league. Tame, eh? Not as I recall it. Top speed on relatively short gearing was a modest 135 mph, but the acceleration was by any standards phenomenal: its yardstick times to 60 and 100 mph of 5.5 and 14 seconds respectively still look good by modern supercar standards. And yet John Atkins is right: the old 4.7 really is quite tame compared with his tweaked 5.0, assisted in pick-up by gearing that's effectively lowered through the use of special low-profile Bridgestone tyres.

cobra 289 and cottage (28 Kb)

Though a full-bore thunderer, car can burble through Cotswold villages at tickover revs provided carburettor is clear.
Internal ratios and final drive are unchanged, but a Ferrari Boxer clutch is sandwiched between engine and gearbox. Alterations such as this and the stroked engine are within the competition rules of the HSCC, it seems. The use of a five-speed box, like that fitted to current Mk4 Cobras made by Angliss, is not, more's the pity. On the road, the absent fifth gear was sorely missed. Pronounced negative camber, giving the front wheels a knocked-kneed appearance, betray tuned suspension that has gained anti-roll bars at both ends. The knock-on wire-spoked wheels are standard, as they have to be under HSCC rules.

cobra 289 on track (33 Kb)

Class win in Intermarque Challenge, May '87 Brands Hatch
It has quite a competition record, COB 6058, all of it established at club level by the present owner. 'So far, it has 36 outright victories from 88 races. It failed to finish only five times because of mechanical failure.' The only accident damage the car has sustained was when a trailer carrying it broke loose and crashed, smashing the front end. 'The irony of that,' recalls John, 'is that the car is usually driven everywhere'. Autokraft - who else? - provided the new aluminium body panels needed in a £5000 repair job. 'It's a pity, because it was one of the few Cobras left with totally original bodywork.'
In 1982, Atkins' first serious year of competition, COB 6058 collected nine outright wins and seven lap records to amass 99 points out of a possible 100 in the HSCC's post-historic road sports car championship. 'You scored points for wins, lap records and driving to the circuit. I only dropped one.' Atkins won nine races again in '83, but lost the series by a single point. By his own high standards, he did badly in '84 (seven starts, three wins) because of car trouble. Following a winter rebuild Atkins returned with a vengeance in '85 to win the championship again with a perfect 10-out-of-10 score. Semi-retired in '86, the Atkins/Cobra combination was discouraged from further participation in this series after a couple of late-season comeback victories.

John Atkins (22 Kb)

From the moment the muscular V8 erupts into life at John Atkins' lovely rural home in Oxfordshire, I know I am going to have to fight feelings of guilt and embarrassment about the outrageously raucous exhaust. Do I get conscience money for this? The noise is devastating in a confined space, ear-rendering at full bore. 'There's no answer to it', John had explained. 'Racing revs just blow out the silencers.'
With relief, I soon learn that the engine is very tractable, capable of bumbling in top through towns and villages, even of idling indefinitely with a lazy rhumba beat, stereo in the open, quadrophonic between walls, providing the Holley's lungs are clean. When they are not, the engine chokes itself and faints. Restarting needs full throttle and lots of churning before the big Ford stutters back to life, one cylinder at a time. Even then, hearty throttle-blipping is needed to restore mixture strength, and rid the system of rich black smoke. I am to reverse half a mile under gravity at one stage to avoid disrupting the peaceful tranquility of a Cotswold village where the engine stalled and was reluctant to refire. Docile it may be, bereft of temperament it is not.
So much for the downside. The first tentative squeeze on the throttle is sufficient to reveal awesome acceleration. I'd promised to go easy on the revs. 'No', says Atkins. 'Take it to six-five a few times. You'll find it quite interesting.' It is. This is no asthmatic lump of soft Motown iron. There is nothing benign about it. It's a top-drawer powerhouse of formidable strength and potency, even if it doesn't have the creamy wail of a V12 aristocrat. It's a rough-edged crackler, a Big Bang double-four lump that gives it to you in raw bursts, one drainpipe for each of your ears.

cobra 289 engine (52 Kb)

Running cleanly, the engine will lug from 1000rpm, full throttle at that. With 2000 on the tacho - an American Mallory instrument with adjustable change-up and cut-out settings - it is in full cry. Never mind the gear: top will do. Fifth wheel testing would, I suspect, have revealed record-breaking fourth-gear pick-up, swifter even than that of John Wolfe's tweaked 7.0litre, once blasted by Motor to a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest accelerating road car of its day - and, indeed, for many a day afterwards.
That was two decades ago, with a 10sec 0-100mph run through the gears. COB 6058 must be nudging that all-out performance, judging by the one exploratory sprint start which leaves such outrageous wheelspin tracks that I consider compensating the owner for lost rubber. What helps to make the car's top-gear acceleration even more amazing is sprint gearing endowed by 205/60 Bridgestone tyres, fitted by John Atkins to resolve a wheel-arch clearance problem. This low-profile rubber must drop the mph/1000rpm in top from the standard 4.7 litre's 21.5 to something nearer 19.5 per 1000rpm. If I'm right, the six-five limit restricts top speed a mere 127mph, call it 130. The speedo is calibrated up to 180mph.

cobra 289 side view (20 Kb)

Too low for road use, this ultra short gearing makes the engine sound as though it is running in third gear of a five-speed box. I have to persuade my left hand that the right-back position is the final one, that there's nothing further to come in the top right corner. The engine sounds busy even when ambling along twisty secondaries. At speed on main roads, it becomes hysterical, which seems alien to a big V8 with colossal mid-range urge.

cobra 289 rear badge (11 Kb)

Several hours and hundreds of indulgent gearchanges later, the palm of my left hand has become tenderised, like a hammered steak. There's not much leverage afforded by the stubby little lever, but that's not the problem. I suspect it's a dragging clutch that's obstructing engagement, especially into first at rest. When everything's simmering hot, it's best to switch off, slot into gear without effort, and restart with the clutch depressed. To get reverse, it's the only way.

cobra 289 fuel filler cap (9 Kb)

Low flywheel inertia and close, short ratios make the natural shift rhythm faster than the baulky lever wants to move, even when punched through its gate with aggressive resolution and double declutch assistance. Changing up, I soon learn to hit the throttle prematurely, to prevent the revs dropping below clutch release speed. Going down, it's a lightning stab on the throttle. Brroomm. Response is razor sharp, provided the engine is breathing freely. If it's not, pick-up can be slow and ragged.

cobra 289 gear lever (14 Kb)

Cockpits don't come much simpler or more workmanlike than a Cobra's. In place of the usual non-grip seat - little more than two right-angled cushions, still occupying the passenger's side - COB 6058 has a vice-like racing bucket for the driver, tailored to embrace its owner's hips and thighs. It's bolted to the floor so there's no means of adjustment. I prise myself in - another waistline inch and someone else would be writing this - to find the floor-hinged pedals more or less where need them, the Moto Lita steering wheel, smallish and grippy, aiming at my navel. Strapping into the full harness belts is a struggle.
You sit tall in a Cobra, as much on it as in it, with a lofty, unobstructed panoramic view. The cowled cockpit mirror bolted to the dash, alongside a tiny aero screen used for racing, doesn't want to move so I have to lean left to see what's behind. There are no outside mirrors. Still, I feel relaxed and comfortably in charge, though the absence of decent lumbar support is later to give my ache-prone back a lot of trouble.
Once under way, remembering how past Cobras have taken my breath away, I am immediately impressed by the absence of wind buffet round the side of the windscreen. The bolt-on 'ear' deflectors - a standard Cobra accessory - are remarkably effective. Ergonomics had little to do with shaping the slab-fronted dash or the layout of the controls, which are placed where there is vacant space for them. Everything works bar the fuel gauge. Atkins had advised a refill every hundred miles or so, as consumption is very heavy - low teens if you're gentle, single figures if you're not. 'You'll know when you're running low by cut-out on the corners. No need to check the oil and water. It doesn't use either.'
Were other sounds not drowned by the cacophonous cackle of the exhaust, COB 6058 would still be a noisy car, especially on bumpy roads. It doesn't just rattle. Anguished clunks and creaks emanate from the whole structure, like cutlery that's fallen into the waste disposal. The car is alive, the bonnet adither, the shutlines mobile. And yet beneath all this surface disturbance and scuttle shake, there's an inner bedrock of solidity. Carrying the lightweight aluminium bodywork is a massive twin-tube chassis - a stronger version of that penned by John Tojeiro for the 1953 AC Ace. The Ace's chassis was based on Tojeiro's earlier sports-racing cars, its bodywork inspired by post-war Ferrari barchettas.
There must be some give in the transverse leaf springs of the all-independent suspension, but supple they are not. The ride is hard, agitated and jolty on anything but smooth roads. At speed on testing secondaries, I jiggle up and down like gravel in a grader. I am under physical attack, eyes shaking, guts jarring, muscles tensed. The car, noisy and beligerent, becomes an aggressive assailant, rather as though it's bent on shaking me off and out, like a wild bronco. We are not so much partners, AC and I, as combatants, locked in a violent contest of nerve and stamina.
It's tough work but it's tremendously exciting and addictive. After brief periods of go-slow respite, I am ready for more punishment, more of the same. To drive quickly on anything less than a perfect surface is to call on reflexes and concentration held only deeply in reserve. It is an obedient car, this Cobra, but not a totally faithful one. On indifferent surfaces, which means on practically any rural secondary, it tends to buck and weave and jiggle off course, its low-profile tyres tramlining this way then that along cambers and ridges. Steering is heavy but sharp, a combination that demands firmness yet delicacy. Kick and wriggle at the wheel rim, never mind subtle variations in weighting, telegraph intricate messages to hands firmly clenched round the wheel's generous rim.

cobra 289 at sunset (12 Kb)

The roads are dry so I don't have to contend with any serious tractive deficiency. Even so, the throttle is treated with respect and circumspection on the turn. Power oversteer is easily induced in first or second gear - and just as cleanly checked. There's no elastic bushing here, no sloppy compliance of the sort that robs a chassis of sharpness and resolution. To indulge opposite lock skills at higher speeds, though, is to cast caution aside. The greater the torque to the back wheels through corners, the more edgily responsive is the steering.
On smooth roads, I get the hang of assisting the car onto a tighter line with a dollop of power. On bumpy ones, I don't try. The low-slung exhaust, already well scraped, is in danger of being unceremoniously removed over even the mildest of yumps taken too fast. John Atkins describes the brakes as the 'awful original factory-fitted discs and calipers' but they work well enough on the road, and have decent bite and reassuring progression. I am never troubled by their performance, though the car's tendency to buck and weave is exaggerated when braking hard.
Back at base, tale-swapping with the owner, I wonder whether I'm getting too old for this sort of car. I recount my reservations about the noise and low gearing. I confess to finding it all nervously demanding and physically grinding. I mention my aches and pains. John Atkins smiles, and puts me at ease. 'It wears you out very quickly,' he agrees. 'But I'd never sell it.' Nor would I. What masochist would?

cobra 289 on take off (45 Kb)

Performance truly shattering by any standards. Few modern supercars get to 60 mph quicker, and probably none beat it to 100. It's helped by very low gearing. Bell's one run left rubber

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The Boss

'I always knew putting an American engine into a European car would blow off the foreigners'

It was Carroll Shelby's idea shoehorn a lump of V8 iron into the dainty AC Ace, creating the most fearsome sports car of the '60s. Paul Lienert meets the opinionated Texan, still involved in the fast car business.

Carroll Shelby (44 Kb)

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway seems an appropriate backdrop for a meeting with motorsport legend Carroll Shelby, particularly since he's driving the pace car at this year's Indy 500. On arrival in Gasoline Alley, Shelby, tanned and lean at age 64, immediately dispels two commonly held misconceptions. First, these days he favours expensive jogging suits and baseball caps to the once-familiar striped bib overalls and his signature, battered black cowboy hat. Second, he never raced at Indy.
'I came here in 1958 to take my rookie test,' Shelby relates in a relaxed East Texas drawl. 'And because it was going to be a week before my car was finished in California, Jack Insley said, 'You can take your test in my car'. So I passed the 120mph part of it then, which was about the maximum, I think, back in '58. And Harlan Fenger called me in and said, 'who's going to drive that car?' Jack Insley, I told him. And he said, 'Well, two of you can't take your rookie test in the same car'. So ...'
'I never did get along with Harlan. He was kind of a hard-assed old man anyway. So I just got on the airplane and went on to Belgium and drove in a sport car race at Spa, and finished third in an Aston Martin. And I made more money than if I'd won Indy by the time I paid for everything. I never came back here. I never really cared to after that. Not that it put such a bad taste in my mouth, but Indy could be pretty archaic back in those days.'
Shelby returned to the Brickyard 10 years later with his innovative turbine cars and drivers Bruce McLaren and Denis Hulme. 'I built two turbines, and they disqualified 'em. Said the intake was too big. Shee-it. So I haven't had very good luck at Indianapolis.'
Such stories are pure Shelby - colourful, earthy, with no punches pulled. As first-time listeners soon discover, he is a raconteur of the first order who takes particular pleasure in roasting sacred cows and debunking popular myths. A native of Dallas, his speech is often punctuated with profanity and idiosyncratic turns of phrase; 'bullshit' is stretched to three or four syllables. He still thumbs his nose at the Establishment - typically 'chickenshits' and 'nincompoops' - and has little regard for those who don't measure up to his own code of ethics.
Shelby met the legendary Enzo Ferrari early in his racing career, and took an instant dislike to him. The enmity still smoulders. 'There's a lot of people had a hard-on for Enzo, and you can quote me. I don't care for him particularly. I buried several friends that, in my opinion, he helped needle to their grave. Read Fangio's book: he went into it. Read Niki Lauda's book. Anybody that's ever been close to him knows he's not a very decent man, and nothing like what is portrayed to the world. Devious. I was offered a job by old man Ferrari for the '57 season in sport cars, and I turned him down. In the first place, Ferrari paid absolutely nothing. He thought that the drivers owed him for the honour of driving for Ferrari. I didn't want to get into the politics that he created.'
Instead, Shelby drove Aston Martins for John Wyer. 'John Wyer was the hardest old son-of-a-bitch in the world to drive for, but he was fair, honest and straightforward. He was cantankerous, but you always knew where you stood. And in integrity, in my book anyway, he stood head and shoulders above Enzo Ferrari. He had a great influence on my life. I learned from him that you got to fight for what you get. And once you make your mind up where you want to go, go there no matter what gets in your way.'
Born on January 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Texas, Shelby was to become a flight instructor during World War Two. With a wife and child to support after the war, he started a number of businesses, including trucking and chicken farming, and worked briefly as a roughneck in the oil fields.
Shelby started racing British sports cars - first an MG, then a Jaguar - at local circuits in the south-west in 1952-53, then raced in Argentina where he met and signed with Wyer and Aston Martin. He finished fifth at Monza in 1954 and had limited success in Europe the following year, but won 10 US road races to win the Sports Car Club of America national championship. That year, he was named Sports Illustrated's Sports Car Driver of the Year. He was accorded similar recognition in 1957-58 by the New York Times, and collected a second SCCA crown after winning 19 straight races in '57. Shelby's best year in Europe was 1959, when Aston Martin won the World Manufacturer's Championship and he co-drove the winning Le Mans entry for Wyer.
Shelby claimed a third US national championship in 1960, but learned that year that he had a heart ailment and drove many races with two or three nitroglycerine pills under his tongue.
While racing in Europe, Shelby was also scouting prospective sources for chassis and other parts for the sports car he dreamed of building himself one day. The car that became the Shelby Cobra grew out of that dream. 'I always thought that those were kind of silly little cars that came over here back in the '50s, with those 1918-model London taxicab engines in them. And we had the V8s back then in the '50s that put out 300-350horsepower and they'd fit in the same hole as those little ol' cast-iron slugs would. Everybody talked about how great they handled, and so forth. The only reason the European cars handled any better than American cars was because they had different kinds of roads over there. They had to put heavy-duty shocks and springs on to keep from knockin' the bottoms out of 'em on the rough roads. We had the super-highways, we didn't need all that crap, all that so-called roadholding. All it was was just to compensate for the rough roads they had in Europe.

Carroll Shelby (31 Kb)

'I always wanted to build a car having a chassis from over there and put an American drivetrain in it, and blow off what they were building and sending over here.' Eventually, Shelby was introduced to the late Charles Hurlock and his nephew Derek, who ran AC Cars in Surrey. The Hurlocks were building a two-seater called the Ace, with a tubular chassis and all-independent suspension designed by John Tojeiro.
'It was a pretty good little ol' chassis,' Shelby recalls. 'They were available. Wasn't anybody else available to buy a chassis from. I went to two or three Italian guys, didn't give a shit who. I just wanted somebody that would build me the chassis that I wanted built. Ferrari was way too expensive. I wanted to build an inexpensive sport car. So I went to AC and paid them to take their chassis and modify it, and sent them the engines and gearboxes. The whole car was my idea. That was in the fall of '61. And they were very co-operative 'cause they needed something to do, too. They had just lost their engines, their Bristol engines.'
Early Shelby Cobras were powered by the Ford 289cu in (4.7 litre) V8. According to Shelby, 'AC used an engineer named Turner to make the changes I wanted in the old Tojeiro chassis. It was a chassis that AC started using in the early '50s. Had two buggy springs, one at the front and one at the back, transverse leaf springs. It was about as archaic a chassis as you could get in 1961, that we took and won the world championship with. The only thing that I had them do was lengthen the springs, put heavier metal in the chassis tubes and make some minor changes in the suspension. And they made it to my specifications. Bill Remington then took it and, along with Ken Miles, developed it so that it was adequate to handle the 289 engine with up to 400bhp.'
As for the later 427 version, 'That chassis was done by Klaus Arning, a Ford chassis engineer who did it in his own time after work. AC didn't have a goddam thing to with the 427 cube. I'm glad to get the out. There's been a bunch of bullshit in England that AC did all this.
'Those were my jigs and fixtures. Shelby American paid for those. I paid AC to build those chassis jigs and fixtures. AC didn't have anything to do with it. They were a subcontractor. I have the cancelled for the tooling. Paid a total of around $20,000 back then. Remember, I sold those cars for $5995 - engine, transmission, complete, with the dealer mark-up in it.'
'The official name of the car with FIA is Shelby AC Cobra. I gave 'em permission put AC in there. They were whinin' like babies over there, they wanted their name on it, and Ford talked me into it. I sold the Cobra name to Ford for a dollar - one dollar - while I was using Ford dealers. I was appointing them Cobra dealers, and they wanted the name so I sold it to them for a dollar. That's really the reason, and I don't have any real gripes about Cobra being licensed to Brian Angliss or to anybody else they want to licence it to. That's none of my damn business now.'
Shelby says he 'has no beef with Brian Angliss, he's a friend of mine,' but insists, 'Derek Hurlock screwed me by sellin' Brian Angliss my design and chassis jigs. I never wanted the car built again, and that was my way of keepin' it from bein' built. But Derek Hurlock decided to give them to him. I don't blame Brian for seein' a good thing and latchin' on to it. And I have no gripes at Ford for lettin' him use the Cobra name.'
His opinion of Angliss' Autokraft Cobra? 'Well, it's just the same car that I built 25 years ago. With a hell of a lot less power. And they put in a few refinements; Brian certainly improved the car. I quit building the car in 1965, and I would hope that somebody would improve it over the next 20 years. But it's a fun car to drive on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. I still wouldn't want to drive it all the way across Los Angeles, but it's a fun car to take out for a spin on the weekend.'
Shelby says he and Angliss have discussed possible mutual endeavours, including the prospect of building a latter-day Cobra. 'I've talked to Brian. He stayed at my house for a week, a couple of months ago. I might do some business with him some day, I don't know. Lot of different ways. He builds cars, doesn't he?'
In the early 1980s Shelby returned to the car business, after an absence of more than 12 years. He simply walked away from a lucrative partnership with Ford, which saw the Cobras win the World Manufacturer's Championship in 1965 - the first American-designed cars to wrest the GT title from rival Ferrari - and Shelby-managed teams sweep Le Mans in 1966-67.
Before that, Ford had actually tried to buy the Ferrari firm, even as Shelby was beginning to campaign the first racing Cobras. 'Yeah, shit. They did it because my Cobras blew up at Sebring the first year. That's the reason they ran over there to do that. They didn't tell me about it, but they did it. But I got my bucket of blood. If they (Ford) had gone at it right, they probably could have (bought Ferrari). But they went in, kind of condescending to do business with old man Ferrari. And if you know the Modenese, and you know Ferrari's personality, you'd know you couldn't. I mean, Ford could have bought the company very easy. The Germans came in and did a deal with him during the war, during the occupation. He built pieces and parts for the Germans. You can print that, too. For the military, yessir. When I first went to Ferrari in 1953, there wasn't anything there that the Germans hadn't given him, practically. And if he were to deny that, I know people in Modena that could say a lot more about it... shit that he always tried to hide.'
Eventually, Shelby got fed up with Ford. 'I got out in '68. 1 went to John Naughton at Ford and told him I didn't want any more. The cars were too big. I couldn't get to Iacocca any more; he was fighting with Bunkie Knudsen. I was having to fiddle around with about half a dozen of the biggest nincompoops that I've ever met, that thought for some reason because I was using Ford engines and gearboxes that they were my boss. So I just quit. It got to be something I didn't want to do. So I went to Africa and hunted elephants for most of 10 years.
It was Iacocca and his lieutenant Hank Carlini who lured Shelby back from his self-imposed exile from the auto business. 'I thought that it might be fun to take one little last fling,' he explains almost sheepishly. 'I have a wonderful relationship with the people at Chrysler. It's not the petty political crap that I was forced into at Ford. And I'm not knocking people like Petersen. Petersen's a goddam fine, honest man. So is Red Poling. I knew them back years ago. Pete planned the steering wheels of my cars. Pete used to work on product planning when we were building the GT 350s.
The Shelby Performance Centre was established in Santa Fe Springs, California in 1982 to work with Chrysler on developing high-performance editions of production cars, among them the Dodge Omni GLH-S and Daytona Shelby Z. Among the projects under development at the centre are multi-valve cylinder heads for Chrysler's four-cylinder and future V6 engines, and a high performance all-wheel-drive system that Shelby would like to see adapted for the Lancer touring saloon. What about the overlap between his work and the contract engineering being done for Chrysler at Lotus and Maserati? Shelby shrugs and grins: 'Everybody has an idea that they know how to do it better than anybody else. I learned a long time ago, don't go arguing with those guys, go fishing.'
But Shelby still has a few tricks up his sleeve. 'If I were to stay in the automobile business, I would probably enjoy competing with BMW and Mercedes, only selling them for about 25 percent of what Mercedes does and less than half of what BMW does. I would have more fun in that because a BMW or Mercedes body and chassis are not one damn' bit better than a Chrysler body and chassis. We could build cars that would compete with those guys and drive 'em crazy. That to me is fun.' And while he's on the subject: 'Jesus Christ, the prices they get for those boxes, and they're trying to con the public what a great piece of equipment they are. But this dollar's slowing those boys up a little bit. Course, you gotta admire 'em 'cause they're just fleecing the American public, is what they're doing. Hoohoo, are they makin' money. Absolutely, in my opinion, stealin' money from the American public, but that just shows you, though, how gullible and egotistical the American public is. They have to be seen driving down the road in something like a Mercedes or a BMW. It's not that they're bad cars. It's just that they're overpriced so badly.'
Which brings up another sore spot: yuppies. 'The ones that I dislike are the ones that get 'em a 318 BMW and run up and down the freeways like they have a race car. That four-cylinder, poor little ol' thing, there's not but about 25 American cars that'll just about blow 'em off into the weeds. Christ, damn near everything built in America or Japan'll blow 'em off.'
As always, Shelby has his own ideas about how he'd mesh Lamborghini and Maserati with Chrysler. 'If I had Lamborghini, I'd leave Alfieri in charge, and I'd build probably a $50,000 or $60,000, possibly $70,000 sports car. Probably a twelve. And use it to increase showroom traffic at the Dodge dealerships. I wouldn't make a Lamborghini Daytona or somethin' stupid like that. I would keep the Lamborghini name, keep it a separate company, or a group of companies that are based on high performance, tying Maserati in to building something like the top-of-the-line four-doors like they build. And would use Lamborghini to build the real prestigious sport cars. But they'll probably never ask me what I'd do, anyway.'
In which case, he has his own plan to recreate the Cobra in a contemporary idiom. 'Yep, I'm still talking about it. I have about three different designs that would fit the bill. It'd be a two-seater. It wouldn't be very much like anything else that anybody's built. Probably use a Lamborghini engine now that we own it. If I don't build them another ass-kicker like the Cobras were, then I probably won't build one. Another thing is, I'll be 65 my next birthday. and do I want to get into that crap any more? Because you can't make any money doing it. How big is my ego? I have the design, I have the people. Pete Brock would come back on board. Pete and I have talked.'
'But I want to build the kind of car that I want to, and that probably wouldn't be the kind of car that anybody else wanted to build.' If his success with the Cobra augurs anything, Shelby should have no trouble finding buyers.

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Cobra From The Start

Cliff Davis' Tojeiro-Bristol LOY 500 (seen here in the 1953 Goodwood nine hours) sired the AC Ace. Enter, seven years on, Carroll Shelby, looking for a chassis. Ford supplied the power to earn itself showroom traffic, and Shelby got his dream car built / Chris Harvey
Historians will explain that the AC Cobra was born in 1962, having been conceived by a chicken farmer called Carroll Shelby in 1961. They have facts on record to prove it. But, if my memory serves me right, the conception took a good deal longer than that. I recall standing in a shed behind the Hardwick Arms at Arrington, near Cambridge, while a dark-haired engineer called John Tojeiro finished welding a ladder-like array of tubing staked out on the earthen floor. As the joints cooled, he turned to my father's Jaguar - and work stopped temporarily on the Cobra's ancestor.
The longest tubes, 3.0in in diameter, were arranged like a couple of drainpipes, cross braced by smaller tubes, having fabricated steel boxes front and rear to support what was then a very advanced system of all-independent suspension. It used lower wishbones, transverse leaves which did double duty as springs and location members, and a frame-mounted final drive.
Tojeiro was less an inventive genius than a very good craftsman, and the cars he built were invariably an amalgam of other people's ideas. In this case, he was clearly influenced by Charlie and John Cooper who had just started building mid-engined racing cars for the new formula three and had sold a sports version to Tojeiro's friend, Brian Lister. It seemed impractical at the time - late in 1952 - to make a mid-engined sports racing car, so Tojeiro decided to put the engine in the front, but set well back so that the balance 'would be right'.
Power for the car would come from a 2.0 litre Bristol engine provided by the man who commissioned the chassis, London motor trader Cliff Davis. Davis was full of enthusiasm, having just had an excellent season with a Cooper-MG, registered JOY 500, in the 1.5 litre category. This car had been constructed by another special builder, Lionel Leonard, in 1951, the bodywork copied from the 1948 Mille Miglia-winning Ferrari 166MM barchetta. In fact, Davis had wanted the Coopers to supply a new 2.0 litre chassis, but they were too busy at the time, so Davis went to Tojeiro. The bodywork, made by Gray and Rich Panelcraft in Hammersmith, near Davis's premises in Shepherd's Bush, would again be a direct copy of the original Touring design for Ferrari. As the historians will tell you, Davis had a brilliant season with his Tojeiro-Bristol, registered LOY 500, winning most of his races because the car handled so well and had a far more aerodynamic body than rivals such as the cycle-winged Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica.
Tojeiro, meantime, carried on with his normal work, which consisted mainly of painting touring cars produced by one Ernie Bailey, in the shed rented from Vin Davison, who ran a garage next to the Hardwick Arms. These Bailey specials were 2.0 litre AC saloons bought from the makers at Thames Ditton in Surrey and converted into five-seater tourers named after the village where the dark deeds were done - Buckland, about 10 miles from Tojeiro's shed. And Bailey, inspired by Davis's success, commissioned another chassis from Tojeiro, to take a Lea Francis engine, which had shown more power potential than the Bristol unit when installed in Connaught's formula two cars.
By this time demand for the AC Buckland was faltering, to put it mildly. Just after the war, cars were scarce, and there had been a customer for every one built, but as the middle market choice expanded, it appeared plain old-fashioned. The same applied to the normal saloon produced by AC.
The firm was keen to continue making cars, however, although only a hand-built sideline to its normal engineering business. Chairman Charles Hurlock could still see life in the 2.0 litre light alloy single-overhead camshaft six-cylinder engine which powered the Buckland and basic saloons, even though its origins could be traced to 1919. There was also a dearth of medium-priced hand-built sports cars.
Quick to spot a business opportunity, Bailey and Davison packed off Tojeiro to AC with his latest design. Hurlock was duly impressed with the demonstrator, the Tojeiro-Bristol. Davis owned it, and was keen to sell replicas from his London garage. So Hurlock promptly tied up a deal to put the Tojeiro into production with his own engine - considerably cheaper to build than the Bristol unit - on a royalty of £5 per car, limited to the first 100 produced. Tojeiro now admits to having been 'financially naive'.
Davis would not part with his own car, but AC needed one to exhibit at the forthcoming 1953 London Motor Show to help drum up orders to finance the operation. AC tackled the problem by borrowing the Davison car, unregistered at the time. It whipped out the Lea Francis engine, substituted its own and registered the car as an AC Ace (using the name of a sports car they produced before the war) with the local Surrey taxation office number TPL 792. In return, Davison landed himself a job with AC, helping modify the Tojeiro design to take what parts were in stock, notably steering boxes rather than the rack and pinion originally used. The headlights were also raised to a height legal in export territories, particularly the US.

AC Ace (39 Kb)

AC Ace - here in Ford Zephyr-engined-form - sired glamorous Cobra
The Ace was a great success, although the AC engine was not really powerful enough for competition. The answer seemed obvious to a South Coast tuner, Ken Rudd: he fitted a Bristol engine which gave more than half as much power again. In this form the Ace took tenth place at Le Mans in 1957, eighth and ninth in 1958 and seventh in 1959 - the year in which Texan Carroll Shelby won the event in an Aston Martin shared with Briton Roy Salvadori.
American V8 engines were by now starting to look very handy to sports car builders because long production runs made them cheap and reliable, so the weight of the big iron lumps tended to be forgiven. The attractions of such motors had not escaped the notice of Bristol, which needed more power and torque to keep its luxurious saloon competitive, so it phased in a Chrysler V8. This obviously limited the future of its pre-war BMW-based unit, leaving AC searching for a replacement.

AC Ace (47 Kb)

Early AC Aces used AC six-cylinder power, enjoyed mild rallying success
Meanwhile, Shelby found himself side-lined from active competition by a heart complaint in 1960. Faced with the prospect of finding a new career, he started work on the long-term project that had fascinated him ever since he drove a Cadillac-Allard in 1953: building a low-priced sports car to combine the best elements of European handling with American horsepower. The idea was made all the more attractive by low labour rates in Europe which meant that such chassis could be imported cheaply into America, especially as they would not attract the punitive import tax applied to complete cars. Shelby worked out that he could sell a European sports car, fitted with an engine in America, at more than double the profit of importing one. He was, therefore, astounded when British companies such as Healey would not go along with his scheme to build 100 in order to qualify the resultant device for international production sports car racing and so gain the publicity needed to sell road versions.
AC, however, had no such problems. Its cars were hand-built, so it was easy to provide a special chassis for Shelby, whereas a mass-producer such as Healey would have to invest too much time and money on development. Shelby also found AC appealing because, with a solid engineering business to support it, it could provide special chassis on credit. AC, in turn, liked the idea because by 1961 it was having to make do with a less profitable Ford Zephyr powertrain in the absence of Bristol supplies. Using Shelby's figures it was found possible to price the new car at $5995, slightly undercutting the Bristol Ace by the time it had reached the vital sales area of the US West Coast.
AC had itself considered American V8 engines, of course. But they had been rejected on the grounds of weight, with exception of the 3.5 litre alloy V8 used in small Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac cars. Unfortunately for AC this unit - later taken over by Rover - was about to go out of production as making it had cost too much, which had inspired new techniques in thinwall casting that dramatically reduced the weight of iron blocks. Shelby couldn't believe his luck when he told Ford racing engine chief Dave Evans of his plans to produce a new sports car and was promptly offered a couple of lightweight 260cu in (4.3 litre) V8s based on the 221cu in unit intended for use in the Fairlane saloon.
Evans acted quickly because market research had recently convinced Ford that it needed to change its image. It had built an enviable reputation for producing the cheapest and most reliable cars during the early days of motoring and the economic depression which followed, and then found that a more glamorous image was needed in the early 1960s to attract the booming US economy's youngsters with money to burn.
So the link was forged. Shelby had a potential chassis on its way from England and two engines waiting for it.
The snake name was conceived in the night: Shelby reports having dreamed of the fast-accelerating car-to-be bearing a Texan rattlesnake badge on the front. He woke with a start and jotted down the idea on a pad beside his bed, but in the cold light of day changed the name to the more politically acceptable Cobra.
A third engine was shipped to AC in January 1962 to instal in a prototype chassis being developed by its chief engineer, Alan Turner. Turner's task was made easier when it was realised that, at 450lb, the new engine weighed only 15lb more than the old Bristol unit which had performed so well, and the attached Borg-Warner manual gearbox added only another 10lb over the earlier Moss unit. The extra power - around 240bhp against about 150 from the best Bristol and Zephyr engines - was not too much of a problem, but the V8's 269lb ft of torque was something else, needing a new Salisbury final drive of the type used in Jaguar's E-type.
In that installation it had inboard disc brakes, so those were also fitted to the prototype, although subsequent cars were modified to use outboard discs since heat soak could melt the final drive's oil seals (a problem that remained with the Jaguar). Other chassis modifications included heavier-gauge tubing, more cross-bracing and stronger suspension mounts, springs, wheel bearings and driveshafts.

AC 289 (53 Kb)

AC 289 was marketed in Europe; it used 427 Cobra chassis, 4.7 litre engine
Shelby fancied a glassfibre body like that of General Motors' rival, the Chevrolet Corvette, but AC was having none of that: it part-owned the Brownlow Sheet Metal Company in West London, which produced the Ace's aluminium panels, so the new Cobra had to have that material, too. In any case, in its early Cobra form, the body weighed only 50lb - less than glassfibre, at that time in its infancy. Glass was used to make the footwell boxes and sparewheel tray less offensive than sheet metal, however. The only real change in appearance at that time was to include slightly-flared wheelarches to take wider track offset wire wheels of 15in diameter and only 5.0in rim width, rather than the Ace's 16in rims. This change was made to accept the latest rubber from Shelby's chief source of income, a Goodyear tyre dealership.
The 2282lb prototype was then stripped of its power train and shipped to Shelby in February 1962, so that he could fit a new high-compression solid lifter version of the 4.3 litre engine, producing no less than 325bhp against the 260 slated for production. This car was then used for road tests by American magazines, sprayed a different colour every time it went out to give the impression that the Cobra was already in serious production. Such subterfuges were common at the time: Jaguar, for instance, used a blue-printed engine to give its original road test E-type a magical 150mph.
Evans, at Ford, was as impressed as the general public by the Cobra's performance - 153mph and 4.2sec 0-60mph, 10.8 0-100 and 13.8sec standing quarter mile when tested by Road and Track. As a result, the car was initially called the AC-Ford Cobra until Shelby objected, making the line-up of names - in his order of precedence - a Shelby-Ford AC Cobra. Inevitably Joe Public shortened this to Shelby Cobra and Carroll followed suit by removing the AC badges when the first production rolling chassis arrived at his base in California from Britain, and substituting his own Shelby Cobra badges. But AC's script did at least survive on the clutch and brake pedal.
Cooling proved to be the big problem with early Cobras in the Californian heat, the Zephyr radiators installed in the cooler climes of Thames Ditton proving totally inadequate. Shelby personnel were duly dispatched, incognito, to Chevrolet dealers to buy up Corvette radiators as no suitable Ford unit was available. Some of the first 75 4.3 litre Cobras built by the end of 1962 - all left-hand-drive - were then used to dominate American production sports car racing against the heavier Corvettes. Then Ford came up with a 289cu in version of the Fairlane engine, which gave 271bhp and 314lb ft, and a new radiator. This production-line 4.7 litre Cobra had performance more in keeping with the prototype. Tubular bumpers were also developed to offer some protection for street models in supermarket parking lots.

racing 289 (53 Kb)

Cobra proved fast, exciting race car: this is Bob Olthoff, Brands, '64
But under the delicate aluminium skin, the Mk2 4.7 litre Cobra was considerably different. It had rack and pinion steering, both to eliminate the lack of precision inherent with the worm and sector box's long linkages and to avoid failures which had resulted from wear after entering corners at far higher speeds than the Ace. The front suspension's wishbones were also strengthened and, in due course, many MkI Cobras were fitted with the new engine during routine servicing, and others uprated later, making 4.3 litre (260cu in) Cobras a distinct rarity today. Soon after the Mk2's introduction in 1963, wider tyres became available and the rims were expanded to 6.0in and wider flares fitted to suit. Side vents appeared in the wings in an attempt to get rid of some of the enormous heat generated by the engine, along with a wider grille for the same purpose. A shorter bootlid made the body more rigid and Ford uprated the electrics to American standards with an alternator. A 3.77 to one final drive was also fitted in place of the earlier 3.54 ratio to bring the 0-60 time down nearer to 4.2 seconds, following complaints that production Cobras could not achieve that figure. But even in 4.7 litre production form it remained between five and six seconds.

Daytona 289 coupe (45 Kb)

Coupe was response to racing need: this is Willment team's version
Back in Britain, AC found itself in the strange position of having nothing comparable to sell on the home market, other than its 4.7 litre prototype, which was right-hand-drive. Experiments with a Porsche-like flat six engine in a spaceframe, to be fitted with an Italian grand touring body, were less than successful, so late in 1963 - as soon as Shelby's production demands allowed - AC started to build Cobras for Britain and Europe. Whereas it was considered a relatively cheap car in America, it certainly was not in Britain, being priced nearer the top-line Porsche 356 Carrera 2 than the far cheaper E-type Jaguar which offered comparable performance. As a result, only a dozen of what was now officially the AC Cobra (the Shelby and Ford names having been dropped outside America) were sold in the first year, chiefly for competition.
Back in the US, Shelby Cobras were challenging the all-conquering Ferrari 250GTOs in endurance racing, although not with immediate success. Two new cars were entered for Le Mans with special hardtops to qualify them as grand tourers and improve the aerodynamics, one right-hand-drive example, registered 39PH and entered by AC, surviving for Peter Bolton and Ninian Sanderson to finish seventh, the first six places being occupied by Ferraris. Shelby was just a spectator - evaluating the opposition as Ford prepared to enter a team of its own cars. After the event Ford failed in a bid to buy up Ferrari and decided to take Shelby's advice and use another British chassis, Eric Broadley's mid-engined Lola GT, to turn into a Le Mans winner.
Cobras would, meantime, hold the fort until the new car was ready, and indeed the Shelby American Cobra coupes eventually wrested Ferrari's world championship from the 250GTOs. The Ferrari had demonstrated, however, that fixed-head coupe bodywork was essential to the high speeds achieved at Le Mans, so AC sold its works racer to English Ford dealer John Willment to campaign while a special-bodied 250GTO-style car was built for Le Mans in 1964. This achieved enormous publicity during stability testing early one morning along the M1 motorway at 185mph in the hands of its intrepid drivers, Jack Sears and Bolton. But in the race a tyre burst, writing off the coupe. The original Le Mans roadster and a Willment version of the Shelby American coupes went on to thrill motor racing crowds in Europe, with Sears and Australian development ace Frank Gardner at the wheel.

39PH (50 Kb)

First Cobra Le Mans was in '63, when Bolton/Sanderson (3) came 7^th
Other avenues of development were opening up in America at the same time: noted racer Ken Miles had shoehorned the massive 427cu in (7.0 litre) Ford Galaxie racing saloon engine into a Cobra to achieve sensational straight-line speed. Shelby decided to put the 427 Cobra into production using the engine - claimed to give 485bhp and 480lb ft - to stay in front of increasing competition from lightened Corvettes, and with Ford's help had the chassis and suspension redesigned. 4.0in tubes replaced the 3.0in originals, set 2.5in wider part to accept the bigger engine. Upper and lower wishbones and coil springs kept ever-widening tyres in better contact with the track, with massive new wheel-arches to cover the rubber. The results of this development were then relayed back to Turner to put into production in Thames Ditton with an order for 100 as Shelby planned to complete the new cars with 427cu in engines for competition and the far cheaper, but less robust, 428cu in 'Police Interceptor' version for the road. This requisite 100 could not be completed in time to qualify the 427 - or Mk3 - for international production car racing in 1965, so Ford withdrew its support for the project to concentrate on the new mid-engined GT40 bearing its own name. But as a publicity safety net, it also bought the Cobra name from Shelby to attach to go-faster versions of the new 289-engined Mustang production car: the 428-engined 427 was already creating its own publicity by demonstrating on a 3.54 rear axle a 0-60 time of 4.8sec, 0-100 of 11.7 and standing quarter mile in 12.9, on the way to a maximum speed of around 140mph (showing that power alone could not overcome a weight of 2890lb and much bigger frontal area caused by 8.0in more width than the original 260).
AC was then left with a pile of Mk2 parts to supplement declining 427 export production, and began building a new car with the 427's coil sprung chassis and the 289 engine - which was far more acceptable in Europe than the muscle-bound 427 and 428 units which went into the majority of American cars. But because the body shape was so distinctive, these cars, named AC289s, were immediately called Cobras by everybody who saw them.
As the first AC289 was delivered in 1966, it was overshadowed by a new AC428 grand tourer, featuring a lengthened 427 chassis and a body built along Maserati Mistral lines by Frua in Italy. This was a very expensive car, at £4250 - approaching double the price of a 289 - but, by that time, the open roadster was considered so old fashioned that only 27 were built before it went out of production early in 1969, leaving plenty of memories with enthusiasts. It was hard to sell a Cobra in those credit-squeezed days, and I managed to land a leaf-sprung 289 for £1400 in 1967, achieving the near-impossible by selling it soon after for what was considered a massive profit at £1550, and then having an even briefer tenure with an imported 427 which leapt from one side of the road to the other. In reality, the 1000-or-so Cobras built at Thames Ditton were stung by the chassis writhings and the cost of building everything except the powertrain by hand.

Modern Times
Strange to say, less than three years after the Cobra went out of production through lack of demand, the 65 or so sold in Britain became collectors' pieces. By 1972, with Britain at the height of an economic boom, secondhand examples were fetching more than the list price in 1969 - if you could persuade anybody to part with one. The sage heads at AC were not tempted to put it back into production, however, preferring to concentrate on trying to sell the even more expensive, and profitable, 428 coupe and drophead. But come the energy crisis late in 1973, that, too, had to go by the board, along with several other exotic cars.

racing Cobra 289 (38 Kb)

Eric Hauser in typical power sliding Cobra pose at Brands Hatch
Meanwhile Cobra enthusiast Brian Angliss was feeling frustrated at being prevented from buying the car of his dreams. As a highly-qualified engineer, he was sure he could build one himself, and did just that by making a direct copy of an original. He made such a good job of it that word got around and he began producing spares for other people, eventually setting up a firm called Cobra Parts.
From building his own reproduction Cobra to producing spare parts for others, to building a few more Cobras and restoring others, alongside GT40s and the like, plus crafting Ferrari Daytona spyders from original coupes, were short steps. But by the late 1970s, Angliss had also forged an alliance with AC Cars, which passed on orders for replacements for parts it was no longer practical to service, and items such as the original body moulds.
Soon after, finance was found in America to put the coil-sprung 289 (4.7 litre) back into production with numerous detail changes such as a relocated fuel tank, side impact reinforced doors and telescopic bumpers, under the banner of CP Autokraft in 1981. The main problem was what to call the car, since it was not an AC and the Cobra name still belonged to Ford. Negotiations with AC proved fruitful, however, and AC gave permission for Autokraft to use its famous logo on the car - now called the Mk4 - and market it as an AC. The main problem then centred on power as Ford 289 engines were by then very scarce. It needed only a hint that the Mk4 might be propelled by a Rover V8 for Ford to pull out the stops and supply Autokraft with comparable 353cu in (5.7 litre) power trains. From that point, Ford executives, remembering the showroom traffic created by the Cobras of their youth, smiled on the project in many practical ways.
Ford was more than worried, however, by the number of firms trying to emulate Angliss's operation, frequently with glassfibre bodies moulded from genuine Cobras, 'flying bedstead' tubular frames and Rover V8 power units, retailing as kits from as little as £1500 with a consequent compromise in quality. By 1986 the situation was so tense that Ford - having been sued for millions over the placement of a fuel tank in a years-old uninsured Pinto - feared being hauled over the coals again by American product liability laws.
Legal action was not only taken to stop firms all over the world from using the magic name Cobra on their kit cars, but the name was licensed to Angliss on April 22 last year.
AC, meantime, had found itself with no cars to sell in 1974. Considering the Cobra too dated and the 428 too expensive, it looked to the future by taking over the design of a mid-engined prototype called the Diablo, built partly by Cobra owner Robin Stables. Inquiries piled up as chief engineer Alan Turner wrestled with the myriad problems of turning what had been an Austin Maxi 1500-engined project into a production reality. With a reputation for safe and solid engineering to protect, AC - long-time makers of Government invalid carriages - spent five years and an estimated £1million on the new project, soon named the 3000ME after its eventual Ford V6 Capri 3.0 litre engine. The price, meantime, rose from a planned £3000 to £10,000 as AC began to trade at a loss during a general recession in engineering. The 3000ME sold at around one car a week until 1983, when AC realised its chief asset, the factory at Thames Ditton which was by now far too large, moving to smaller premises nearby. Eventually, as Angliss took over the traditional output, the rights to produce the 3000ME were bought in 1983 by Scottish businessman David McDonald.
To complete the story, Angliss - faced with the problem of a limitation on the skilled hand labour needed to produce his new AC Cobras - has moved into prototype work, chiefly with Ford, and designed a new AC taking the resurrected name Ace. This mid-engined machine is now slated to go into quantity production in a new factory near the Autokraft premises in the shadow of the old Brooklands motor racing track at Weybridge in Surrey. And John Tojeiro, the self-confessed loner who started it all, runs a plastics business, and dreams of completing a new mid-engined coupe powered by a Rover V8 engine.

AC Mk4 (25 Kb)

Cobra name is licensed for use by Autokraft, which makes AC Mk4

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Fancier's Guide

The main problem about indulging your lust for an AC Cobra is not the cost. It is finding one that is for sale. It is estimated that in Britain there remain only about 60 Cobras built before 1969, and right-hand-drive versions of the later Mk4 made by Autokraft are even rarer.
In such circumstances it is difficult to put a price on a Cobra because individual histories - or lack of them - can be an even stronger influence on value than condition. In recent times, Mk2s and 289s have been changing hands at between £50,000 and £55,000, which would suggest that a road-going 427 ought to fetch £75,000 to £85,000. Autokraft-built Cobra Mk4s go for up to £40,000, depending on spec.
Rarity and originality nowadays are the keys to all Cobra prices. So few of the original 1962 production run of 4.3 litre 260s remain that they can now cost as much as the superior Mk2 models, despite their poor worm-and-sector steering. Many 260s were fitted with 289cu in engines (which only marginally reduces their value) and very few survive with the original self-lubricating steering and front suspension joints, which had a strong tendency to self-destruct. The period modification was to replace these parts with phosphor-bronze joints which made the steering more precise while introducing harshness.
Of the 579 289-engined cars built at Thames Ditton (only 127 of which were sold outside the United States), the first right-hand-drive production example was not completed until November 1963, and only 12 similar cars had followed by September 1964. Cobras destined for the United Kingdom bore chassis numbers prefixed CS. (Export models were distinguished by CSX initials.) The rear leaf-sprung British cars included the 1963 Le Mans roadster, worth around three times the price of a normal example, and 1964 works coupe - only twice as much because of its less-than-glorious history - along with the five 289 FIA roadsters built for the 1964 season. These had bulges beaten into their bootlids because of regulations which said they had to be able to carry a suitcase. Dents included, one of these would probably fetch a 1963 car's money.
Meanwhile the Shelby organisation listed numerous optional specifications for Cobras, including two levels of road-going equipment, and four competition versions. Stage one was a 'dual purpose' machine with a standard engine and stiffened suspension for weekend competitions. Stage two added wider magnesium wheels, extended wheel arches and stronger steering components, and stage three was a replica of the contemporary American track machinery using special through-bolted hubs, strengthened chassis, engine and axle oil coolers, racing tyres and brakes. Engines mainly came in three power levels, from mildly tuned to full race. But there was an ultimate, fourth stage specification - which gave power similar to that of the 1963 Le Mans roadster. Those cars ought to fetch around £70,000.
By 1964, Shelby was also offering the Dragonsnake, a replica of a 380bhp roadster he used to combat Chevrolet Corvettes in American drag racing. Rear axle ratios went as low as 4.89 to one. There was also a lightweight Cobra Slalom Snake in 1965, aimed at weekend gymkhana competitors. Although these cars feature sometimes-fearsome period competition modifications, they are not so valuable now outside the United States. Only European specifications are truly attractive on this side of the pond. But any of the six Shelby American coupes which contested the world manufacturer's championship in 1964 and 1965 would have to fetch around £250,000 - half today's price for the trendy Ferrari 250GTO which the Shelby coupe beat. This anomaly in values is attributable to the Ferrari's superior appearance, magnificent engine, and noted refinement in performance. The Willment competition coupe of similar appearance to the Shelby coupes would probably fetch around half the price of its American equivalent.
Of the 427 and 428-engined roadsters - 348 of them - built between 1965 and 1967, the 16 427-engined cars, including a Dragonsnake option and an S/C (for semi-competition), are the most valuable, although the 428-powered cars hold up well in price because they are just as good for being seen in. Nobody is expected to race one of these cars seriously, particularly as in Britain much of the thunder in sprints or hillclimbs is likely to be stolen by James Augustus Tiller's even more ferocious Allard J2X, powered by a nitrous-injected Chrysler NASCAR hemi-head V8, of more than 700bhp.
Oddball 427s include the famous ex-John Willment Holman & Moody-engined car fitted with the 1955 Ghia Fiat 8V coupe show body and 2.9 to one final drive. That one is reputed to have a 200mph top speed. Whether or not this has ever been realised seems hardly to have affected its value: probably around £125,000, even though the body is not overly attractive. Much the same could be said for another one-off road car, the 427 Super Coupe designed by Peter Brock.
Once the American involvement with the Cobra ended, the 289s which followed (eight of them left-hand-drive, 19 right-hookers) bore chassis numbers pre-fixed COB for Britain, COX for export. Five more 428 coupe-style chassis were later supplied to a film company to carry vintage-type bodies, two of which were later converted to 427s. It has been estimated that around 40 more replica AC Cobras of one denomination or another - as opposed to kit car lookalikes - were built in the 1970s before the Mk4 went into production, and most of them were sold in California.
For more information on, and involvement with the marque, enthusiasts as well as owners should write to The AC Owners' Club, secretary B.G. Clark, 60 Hill Crest Road, Camberley, Surrey.

AC Cobra (37 Kb)

Cobras now difficult to find in Britain. Not surprisingly, rarity and degree of originality dictate price. Look for Mk2s and 289s for up to £55,000, 427s at up to £85,000

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The Lump

Bob Freeman, artist, celebrates the mighty Cobra 427, the car which was claimed to have 425 FoMoCo horsepower, even in basic street versions. Story by Mark Gillies.

The ultimate Cobra comes with the ultimate Ford V8 engine. The 427 was designed with NASCAR stock car racing in mind and, boy, did it show. This monstrous 6998cc lump could deliver over 485bhp in tuned form, as well as a driveshaft straining 480lb ft of torque.
It is simple, this Detroit powerhouse. It has no fancy overhead cams, no complex aluminium castings. It is just a simple, old fashioned American V8, hewn out of cast iron, with valve actuation by pushrods. Its racing ancestry is known only to a select few, who talk of steel cranks compared with the cast iron items of the later 428 Special Police Interceptor unit, of solid lifters instead of hydraulic tappets and of the row of bolts above the sump line which are for the cross-bolted main bearings. Its massive power delivery is legendary.
Standard street versions were quoted to produce 425bhp, even if the true figure is nearer 360bhp. Grunt could be increased by ordering off-the-shelf extras, such as aluminium heads, higher compression pistons and the whole galmut of tuning parts that were so familiar to the drag racing enthusiasts of the USA.
Good 427s tear along the straightways. No modern production car can live with sub-5.0sec times for 0-60mph, or 12sec for the quarter-mile. But it is little faster off the mark than a 289 with blueprinted engine, and the experts speak of its trickier road manners. Despite the improved back suspension and wider boots handling balance is lost, due to 200lb extra weight over the front wheels compared with the 289.
The collectors, however, still hanker after 427s. Looks may help explain that. A 427 makes a 289 look effete and wimpish due to its bulging wheel arches crammed with massive tyres, its hunky Halibrand wheels and its glittering side exit exhausts. In the case of the 427, brutal looks hide a brutal nature, but the vast majority of owners will probably never discover the darker side of the machine.

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