[Trevor Legate]

Coo wot a lotta replies in a short space of time - sorry I was writing a Cobra book (great excuse!) but back to the task in hand....
In answer to REAL1 & CalMetal- Yes I agree 100% with everything you just posted. The 427 was pure Americana, would never, ever have been thought of over here, guaranteed. And so, in many ways, was the 289 Cobra. I think the Ace could, just maybe, have ended up with a V8 but the development would have been crap. I watched the progress of the AC 3000ME and it was painful to say the least. Shelbys boys would have had it sorted overnight - took about 7 years over here and it never was right (but still under-rated). AC had some good people but they moved at a different pace, a bit like Derek Hurlock. Lovely man, a true British gentleman, but he belonged to a different era. People like him would be chewed up and spat out if they tried to run a car company today, more's the pity.
The "AC Ace V8" might have been fun but scary. (Actually, to be accurate, all the first 75 cars were titled "AC Ace-Cobra" in the factory registry but the Ace bit got kinda dropped by CS.) All the feedback to jolly old Thames Ditton came via Ken Miles, Remington & co to get the twisty, bendy old thing to go and stop. Sort of. Somewhere amongst my tons of paperwork I have an American magazine interview with CS during the 1970s. He said he was glad to see the back of the goddam things with their ol' buggy springs - never did work proper, etc etc......then they came back and started making MUNNY! Which takes us onto a quite different topic........
But obviously, the whole Cobra project was Shelbys idea - he had been trying to get the thing off the ground for years, years before he stopped racing. Had Donald Healey been up for a laugh, we would now be celebrating the "Austin Healey Cobra 3000". Maybe. Or the Aston Martin equivalent. Or the Corvette (and so on)
One of the reasons Brian Angliss (sorry) got in a huff with CS was that he considered that every rolling chassis that left the factory in the 60's was carrying an AC chassis number, so they were AC's, but it was no problem to have them sold 6000 miles away as Shelby Cobras if thats what it took to move them on. Shelby American never added a chassis number to any car. Nor did they pay for any (Ford Motor Credit did) nor did they carry public liability insurance (AC did). And so on.
The 427 was built purely for the US market but the instructions were interpreted by Alan Turner. He was the first person I talked to when I began writing the first book and he could not recall too many visits from anyone from SA. Remington would drop by en route to European races, but that was about it.

To; rdorman;
Fire off a message to Gerry Hawkridge and tell him I sent you. He's your man for just about anything Cobra and knows more about the greasy bits than most so-called experts. Daft as a brush but a luvverly man with it!! I confess that he lives/works/drinks not far from me and I spend too much time under his feet drinking his tea but he is the fount of all knowledge. (Why do you think AC Cars survived the tough times? Jimmy Price was not the only person to suffer from the recent farce)
Hawk Cars are a great source of Cobra bits and Gerry now owns a pukka AC427MkIII, a Kirkham FIA, plus a 289 under construction. Plus other things. Also in his little showroom is a Kirkham 427 painted black with twin white stripes and black side pipes. Nice.
Sorry for the long rambling postings, but I can bore for England when I get onto the subject of Cobra history.
Cheers