[Harpoon PV2]

I think I found the smoking gun on the AC prototype 260 rather then the 221! It was hiding in plain sight in Trever Legate's book, Cobra The First Forty Years. First, indulge me with a little pat on the back! I stated that Carrol was on top of Pikes Peak for the 1961 Hill Climb, when he asked GM executives to use the Buick aluminum small block engine. What did happen, at about the same time Derek Hurlock, sent a letter to GM asking for the same engine, of course we know how this ended, a big fat no! Buick was making a deal where Rover would get all the tooling and even the chief engineer, Joe Turlay, so no dice. Of course, Shelby probably wasn't on top of the peak when he asked, he probably was down in Manitou Springs at one of the rented garages, or at the Broadmoor Hotel, or the Antlers Hotel, in Colorado Springs, where a lot of the Big Three executives stayed during the race. But, he was there! While it was a big set back for Carrol, fate was about to smile on him in a big way!

I will let Trevor take up the story on page 43 of his book: "but by chance he had recently met Dave Evans of Ford at the Pikes Peak hillclimb, in Colorado during July. He had been told that Ford were in the process of embarking on a whole new marketing strategy called 'Total Performance' aimed at a huge push into all forms of motor sport and was developing a new range of lightweight V8 engines as a result. Shelby decided it would do no harm to drop a letter to Evans at Dearborn to outline his plan. Evans, to his eternal credit, was not just a senior executive at a major automobile manufacturer, but that rare creature, a car enthusiast who happened to also work in the automotive industry. He phoned Shelby as soon as he received his letter, a meeting was planned and the salesman in Shelby sweet-talked two 221cu.in Fairlane engines on credit and $25,000 to 'blow the doors off the Corvette'. With the authority of Dave Evans, the engines were sent to Dean Moon's hotrod shop in Santa Fe to see what Shelby could do with them." I know what you are thinking, there the proof other prototype 221 engine, well, as Paul Harvey would always say, "and now for the rest of the story". "To Shelby's surprise, Evans was not yet finished for he received another call from him to say , that he was sending two further, brand new, high performance he versions of the Fairlane motor, now increased to 260cu.in".

This was sometime after The Forth of July1961. Shelby's first letter arrived at AC on September 8, 1961. The prototype engine arrived at AC at the beginning of November. So the XHP engines were preproduction engines, which makes sense. There were apparently one hundred produced, and they were doled out to racing teems around the world. Rallye racing was a big recipient of these engines, and the UK were big on that form of racing. So it would not have been much of a problem, to divert one to AC. So when that mysteries Japanese engine showed up from FoMoCo, they may have thought it was a 221, or the crate was miss labeled, hence, the Ace 3.6! Keep in mind, Shelby hadn't even been to AC yet. With the XHP-260 engine, why would they send over a 221?

I have never heard of a 221 being sold by Shelby, so did they ever get two? We know AC sold a 260 to Barrie Bird, which was said to be the prototype, what other reason would AC need with a stray engine? All the other engines they got, went into cars. It appears there never were any 221 engines in the Cobra program! Cheers, Dennis