AC enters the fray - Page 5

searanch · #81 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by bmalone Its heresay, not here say da*nit.

Wrong my well educated friend(s) - its hearsay...

Dan Semko · #82 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 10:51 AM

Brent,
While you're researching please check on Lubinsky and the filing of Chaper 11 thus abandoning the Frimley aluminum AC Autocraft business and note the complete separation of the alloy verses carbon fiber business. I'm confident that if you ask Lubinsky personally, you'll receive a "used car salesman's" reply and if you sift through the rhetoric, you'll soon find that Jim Price provided the life preserver for AC.

Great Asp · #83 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 12:00 PM

Of course it is important that Jim Price owns it (BTW, I knew this in June, that's months ago).

The Cobra would not be around "as we know it", if there was never an AC in the first place. So it is important.

Evan, think of it like this. Your parents got divorced, and you have a new Step-Dad.....................and his name is Jim Price.

You should send him a Christmas Card.

Eric

bmalone · #84 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 01:50 PM

Doh, thanks Martin.

pderouss · #85 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 01:51 PM

Brent/Excaliber.

If Jim Price does not own AC then who does? Can you also explain why in my last visit to the AC factory in Frimley on 27th November 2002 the management and employees there believed that they were working for him?

I will not bother to re-enter the debate as to who can lay the greatest claim to being responsible for the original Cobra. I would suggest that people ask some of those who were originally involved in the project back in the 60's. You may be surprised by their answers!

This thread has also suggested (yet again) that AC would not have survived without Shelby. I would again point out that AC manufactured other products (including invalid vehicles and railcars) which were able to sustain their business with or without the Cobra. While I fully share the Cobra obsession that is the lifeblood of this website the Cobra was only produced by them for around 6 years of their 102 year history to date.

computerworks · #86 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pderouss

I would again point out that AC manufactured other products (including invalid vehicles and railcars) which were able to sustain their business with or without the Cobra

good point.... but no one has ever made a replica of their invalid vehicles, railcars or three-wheeled pretzel wagons...

...it was only the Shelby Cobra that has been worshipped and replicated.

Chaplin · #87 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pderouss

I would again point out that AC manufactured other products (including invalid vehicles and railcars) which were able to sustain their business with or without the Cobra. [/b]

Invalid vehicles? Is that like the SPF in CA that has a blocked title?

Great Asp · #88 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 02:48 PM

Evan,

Come on, fess up.

If CS would have bought AC, you would have posted:

"Now that CS owns everything down to the spare rivits at the AC plant, it once again shows WORLD DOMINATION by CS and SAI!!!!"

LOL

JP buys them, and it's "what difference does it really make"..

Eric (jabs Evan with sharp thingys)

SPF604 · #89 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 03:01 PM

In college in the early seventies, a friend of mine, Chuck West, had an AC Cobra with the 289. He never called his car a Shelby! He referred to it as an AC. Ours are "all" replicas. If you don't have one of the originals from the 1960's, then all you've got is a replica. I don't care who built it or when it was built. You know, it does not really matter who owns AC today.

ToyCollector · #90 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 03:24 PM

I have it in writing that Hi-Tech (a Jim Price company), has purchased everything RT stated in an above post. I have no reason in the world to disbelieve what I have seen. The AC Autokraft brand name, tooling, factory, etc. I could disclose more, but I won't out of respect for Jim Price, who I happen to think is a great businessman.

Edited for a typo and clarification of brand

pderouss · #91 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 03:41 PM

Chaplin. Great word play!

Computerworks. Also a good point but now that some people are even collecting Trabants who knows what the future may hold for the replica invalid vehicle market?!

REAL 1 · #92 (**permalink**) 09-10-2003, 04:04 PM

To me it matters not whether JP owns AC or not. Couldn't care less.

It was the Cobra and Shelby who breathed new life into AC in 1962. They were tedering on the brink pretzel wagons and all when Shelby showed up. Shelby and the Cobra probably saved AC not their pretzel wagons.

While the AC is very nice and has the allure of being built by the same Company that built the original body and chasis their product no longer, their car no longer has any connection with the father of the Cobra.

In essence and correctly stated the AC 289 and AC 427 are actually a replica or copy of a Shelby Cobra. They copied Shelby's developements and refinements to the car and sold it in Europe as the AC 427. Especially true as to the FIA variants and 427s. Without CS and his Cobra there never would have been a AC Cobra nor any of the subsequent Autokraft lookalikes. Period.

What made the Cobra special and gave it its "magic" came from CS and Shelby American along with their tremendous efforts, tremendously talented personnel and the legends of motorsport from Shelby American including CS himself that make the car the stuff of legends. Not AC. Either AC or SAI was capable of physically fabricating the body and chasis. In fact look at the development of Flip Top/427 and the Coupe'. SAI chose to let AC continue with their subcontract role as fabricator for economical reasons.

Today Shelby American through their own fabricators builds their Cobra (and it has always and will always be "their Cobra") to exact historical specs and with better quality than AC ever did in the 60's.

Without Shelby and SAI the Ace was a washed up little roadster destined to be nothing more than a footnote in some history book. Shelby saw the potential in the car and developed and refined it into a world beater in both 289 and 427 variants. Anyone who thinks different is just kidding themselves.

It was fortuitous coincidence that AC happened to have been already producing a chasis that Shelby saw promise in and which needed saving and developement. Thats AC's role.

Those are the facts. The truth hurts but there it is.