The Shelby COBRA

The Shelby COBRA

The Shelby COBRA, Also known as the AC cobra.

AC Cobras had a pretty Big racing career. Shelby wanted it to be the "Corvette Beater" and at nearly 500lb less than the Chevrolet Corvette, the lightweight car did just that. It was February 2, 1963 at Riverside International Raceway that the driver of the Cobra Dave MacDonald beat an impressive field of Corvettes, Jaguars, Porsche's, and Maserati's to give the Cobra its first ever victory. Later, Shelby offered a drag package, known as the Dragon snake!! This Cobra won several NHRA National events with Bruce Larson or Ed Hedrick at the wheel. How cool is that! Dragon snake Pic Below.

Cool Shirts!

The Cobra was SO successful as a performance car and that is contributed to the putting in to placement of the national speed limits in the United Kingdom. An AC Cobra Coupe was clocked to have done 186 mph on the M1 motorway in 1964, driven by Jack Sears and Peter Bolton during shakedown tests prior to that year's Le Mans 24h race. However, government officials have cited the increasing accident death rate in the early 1960s as the principal motivation behind speed laws.

The Cobras Competition Above (The Corvette Z06)

Although being successful in racing, the AC Cobra was a financial mess, which led Ford and Carroll Shelby to discontinue importing cars from England in 1967. AC Cars kept producing the coil spring AC Roadster with narrow fenders, a small block Ford 289 and called the car the AC 289. It was built and sold in Europe until late 1969. AC also produced the AC 428 until 1973. The AC "Frua" was built on a stretched Cobra 427 MK III coil spring chassis using a very cool steel body designed and built by Pietro Frua. With the demise of the 428 and succeeding 3000ME, AC shut their doors in 1984 and sold the AC name to a Scottish company. The company's tooling, and eventually the right to use the name, were licensed by Autokraft, a Cobra parts reseller and replica car manufacturer owned by Brian A. Angliss. So you can still get your hands on replicas of this little muscle car!

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