[Harpoon PV2]

The First Ace and Aceca cars were AE and AEX. A is for AC powered cars, E is for engine and X is for export. Next generation were BE and BEX. B is for Bristol and E is for Engine and X is export. Fun side note, AC in their ledger had a space to write in which country their cars went to, in 1957 three Ace and one Aceca cars went to the country of Hawaii. Now comes the Ford 2.6 Zypher powered cars. You would think they would be FEX, instead they are RS, RSX, and one oddball Ace, RXS5001. The RS stands for RuddSpeed and X is export. RuddSpeed was the performance shop owned by Ken Rudd, a race car driver and the biggest AC enthusiast. He was instrumental in getting AC to put the Ford motor into the ACE. If you want a rare car, find one of only 8, 2.6 powered Aceca's!

Now finally the Cobra. The first mention of the car that became the Cobra, was on the AC chassis drawings. Ace 3.6. Why that, well 3.6L is almost 3622cc which is 221ci, the size of the Fairlane engine. Although this turns out to be wrong. Apparently Ford did not bother to tell Shelby or AC that they had already switched to the 260ci or 4.2L engine. Not the last time Ford did that, witness the 427 Cobra mess! Years latter, Barrie Bird of the AC Owner Club bought the original engine that AC put in CSX2000 for the short test hop. No, Carrol never drove it in England. Barrie of course pulled the heads off to see what condition it was in. When he measured the bores, it came out to 4261cc, or 260ci, so no 221 prototype! Finally, they got their own code, still no Cobra as we all know, Shelby still hadn't had his dream, and CSX2000 was in bare metal and Shelby hand lettered front and back. All early cobras were CS and CSX. We know what CS stands for, as it is in the margin on the ledger. C stands for Carol, (yes I spelled that correctly) S stands for Shelby, and as always X is for export. I am sure the shop steward thought, if some lady named Carol want's to buy a bunch of Ace cars, who am I to argue. Carrol did not spend much time at AC as he latter clamed, as usual, he was like a hurricane, came in fast and left AC to clean up the mess. The CS cars were home market cars mostly race cars and a couple that were sent Turin Italy, unlike the Daytona Coup Chassis which were sent from AC to Milan by air. The most interesting of the early cars was CS2030, which AC kept for a demo car. It is unusual that it is smack dab in the middle of the 260 Cobra run, and it was right hand drive and had rack & Pinon steering! A full year before these features became available from the factory. The big block cars reverted to just CSX, even though several stayed in the UK.


COB and COX. I had to do some searching to find what these letters stood for. The answer came with the fallow on car to the Cobra, the longer chassis, Frua designed body cars. Their letters were CF, Cobra Frua. Odd, since the AC428 never carried a Cobra badge from the factory. So C is for Cobra, O is for other, B is for Britain or right hand drive cars and X as always is for export. Other meant, cars not sent by air or ship to Los Angeles or New York. As always to confuse things, at least two chassis were sent direct by air to Dearborn. AC, Ford and Shelby maid an agreement, that once Homologation was meant, AC could start making cars for the home market and most of the world. Made sense, since it would be a waist of money to ship the cars to Shelby LA, then back across the Pond to AC, then to their final home. After a handful of CS leafspring cars were built, AC built 99 COB and COX small block leafspring cars for the home market and Europe, they had the Cobra badge on the nose and the AC script badge on the Boot, with no Powered By Ford badges. One of the most famous of these cars was, COX6057. This car was sold in 1965 to a man named Ken Weir, who was a young officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then took it to his new base in Spain, then to various bases in the USA, finally ending up in Richmond Hills, South Carolina, where Weir had retired. You can read the rest of the story in Tom Cotter's book, Cobra In The Barn, in the chapter titled Cobra In The Bedroom. When AC diverted to building the coil spring big block cars for Shelby they started production of there own versions called AC289, also coded COB and COX. The first cars had the narrow hip rear with skinny wire wheels, and the trusty 289 engine, hence AC289. They had AC scrip badges front and back, though, it's not uncommon to see them with Cobra badges on the nose these days! The final cars had the wide hip rear and wider wire wheals, though many had mag wheels installed. Many who have driven all the variants when new, consider this to be the best handling, and all around best mannered of all the Ace derived cars! 21 cars were made as COB, and six COX cars which were exported. One car COX6108 has no destination or date of completion. The last car COX6127, was exported, appropriately enough, to the USA, with the notation, "chassis parts supplied loose, no engine"


Like I have said before, AC was a millionaires hobby, not a big business, it was patterned off the sports car companies of the 30s, built for gentlemen, they did things their way and had a lot of fun. Though later on, Derek Hurlock wished he had not gotten involved with the Texan, who took more and more credit, and acted like AC had nothing to do with it. Derek did live long enough to see the big block Cobra become hands down, the most replicated car in history! Not bad for a hobby!