Cobra Clones Battle

[robert]

Guys

I have been sent this, would anyone care to comment on this.

Robert
Forum Admin

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Hello British Cobra Club
I am doing a magazine story on the Cobra clone controversy. Here is my rough
draft. If you think any of your members familiar with A.C. history would
like to read it and add their opinions or point out new facts (in
parenthesis) I would appreciate it. All comments will be welcomed. All this
will be distilled down by my editor if he decides to use it.

Wally Wyss (author of Shelby's Wildlife: the Cobras and the Mustangs,
published 1977)

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The Snakemeister vs. The Clones

AC stands for “Auto Carriers” and originally they made invalid carriages (i.e. wheelchairs). But they eventually got into the car business and actually sold cars in North America before WWII.
With the outbreak of World War II, they did like a lot of British firms, jumping whole hearted into the war effort, making fire-fighting equipment, aircraft parts, radar vans, flame throwers, guns and sights. After the war, it took them years to get back into car production, which they did with a two liter model, which was available in several body styles.
The A.C. “Ace” came about by serendipity. John Tojiero , a Portugese-Brit (don’t know if he was born in England-WW) was building one-off “specials” for club racers and happened to devise a twin tube ladder frame using transverse leaf springs at both ends, an idea he reportedly stole from a Fiat Topolino. For two of his specials, he used the same body design, an aluminum roadster shape brazenly copied after the Ferrari 166 “Barchetta” which Ferrari had bodied by Carrozzeria Touring.
One owner ran an MG engine, the other owner a Bristol engine, a zippy in-line six that , if truth be known, was actually a BMW design done by Fritz Fiedler before WWII. The Aldington Brothers had imported the BMW line before the war, understandably cutting importation during the war. Bristol Aircraft Co. had licensed the engine and it was sold to A.C. as the Bristol engine.
When A.C. Cars Ltd. saw the zippy little Tojiero-Bristol mopping up the opposition, they saw their next design. They approached Tojiero and proposed a royalty deal—they would put his design into production as the A.C. Ace and
the would get a royalty per car. It was a good deal all around, and apparently over in Italy, Touring never objected to the cloning of their body design.
The AC Ace made its debut at the 1953 Earl’s Court Motor Show. It was more refined than Tojiero’s Specials (they had paint, for instance…) and quickly gained a big following for the fact they could be street driven with docility and still raced on weekends.
A.C.’s directors, the Hurlock Brothers, didn’t think it was that special. Just to make sure they had their bases covered, they came up with a different design for the Aceca Coupe and went into production with the coupe
the following year.
A.C. also built a special that was more attractive than the Ace, this one raced at Le Mans with a Bristol engine, finishing tenth overall, a foretelling of future Cobra successes.
As proof the A.C. directors never trusted the car market completely, they continued to knock out invalid carriages at their factory in the small village of Thames Ditton, seeing nothing incongruous with producing them alongside the high powered sports cars.

A Cowpoke Rides into Town
About 1962 Carroll Shelby, a failed chicken farmer from a small town outside Dallas, started a race driving school in Riverside, California. He bought small space ads in Sports Car Graphic and those who sent in money got a brochure. He had the PO box for the School in Hollywood. He would make a weekly pilgrimage to Hollywood, collect the mail, and if there was enough money, take his buddy, John Christy, of Sports Car Graphic, out to lunch.
One day Christy told Shelby that A.C. might have to give up on the A.C. Ace on account of Bristol was thinking of dropping the Bristol six. Shelby cogitated on that and remembered that Ray Brock, editor of Hot Rod, had told him Ford had an experimental 221 cu. in. lightweight truck engine in development. In actuality, Shelby was more than a failed chicken farmer.
Wearing his proverbial chicken-pluckin’ overalls, he had also won LeMans in 1959 for Aston Martin, LeMans being the most celebrated race in Europe. Using his reputation as a race driver, he called Ford and hornswoggled a couple of engines, which by that time were up to 260 cubic inches. Then he wrote the Hurlock brothers and said Ford was backing him with engines and could they send him an A.C. Ace to install an engine in for experimental purposes.
Impressed by his obvious clout with Ford, the Hurlocks shipped him a car. Shelby then went to Dearborn and presented his case for them backing a sports car using a Ford engine. Reportedly Lee Iacocca was at the meeting and , once Shelby was out of the room, told the other executives something to the effect of: “Let’s give him some money before he eats the curtains.”
Ray Brock tells a slightly different version, that Shelby looked and acted like he was a Texas oil baron, more along the lines of Houston car buff and oilman John Mecom, though in reality, says Brock, Shelby owned little more at the time than his cowboy hat, his overalls and his #####-kickin’ boots. And the closest he’d been to an oil well as a
roustabout, an itinerent oil field worker.
Shelby had the refined A.C. Ace delivered to Dean Moon’s shop in Sante Fe Springs, Moon being the hot rodder who invented the spun aluminum “Moon” hubcaps.Together they savaged the refinement out of the Ace, made engine mounts, and lowered the cast iron block 260 Ford V8 in, and connected up fuel lines and electricals. When they were done, they wiped the sweat off their brows, got into the car, fired it up and pulled her out onto the dirt field outside the shop. There was an endless vista of oil wells and Shelby, after a cold beer or two, reportedly went slaloming off around them, the first ever test of the first ever Cobra.
The prototype was later sent to the Hurlocks who were impressed with its potential and gave their approval of a production model to be sold by Shelby. The deal was they would make the chassis and bodywork and ship them
off engineless and transmissionless to Shelby. Shelby wasn't that impressed with the quality of the bodywork joking for years "it was knocked out by winos under bridges."
Ironically, the Hurlocks were under the impression that the result was to be sold as an A.C. Cobra and sent the cars to Shelby in California badged as A.C. Cobras. Shelby would take delivery of the cars, pry off the A.C. hood badges and put his own Shelby Cobra badges on in their place. There has been an undercurrent of resentment among True Brits ever since that Shelby was a pirate who merely appropriated A.C. Aces to make his Cobras, but Shelby can document dozens of changes he had to make to the A.C. Ace chassis so it would take the torque of the Ford V8, though body changes in the small block were minimal (most apparent is the flaring of the wheelwells, and later, in the 289, side wastegates to exhaust hot underhood air)

The Road to the 427
The road to the 427 Cobra body style actually started out with the racing version of the 289. As Shelby’s factory team prepared the 260 and later 289 Cobras for racing, it became apparent that the car needed wider rubber. An early casualty was the wire wheels, which snapped spokes when really pushed. So they began to flare the wheelwells as much as the rules would allow. There were differently flared versions for USRRC road racing and FIA racing in Europe. Gradually, the 289 racing Cobra began to take on the appearance of a characterature of its earlier self, all bulgy like a Venice Beach body builder zoned out on steroids.

The Big Block
The big block Cobra came about because , if truth be told, the vaunted 289 High Performance engine was actually on the frail side by racing standards. Note even close to the small block Chevy which Shelby had tried to promote out of Chevy some years earlier in a proposal involving Chevy-powered Healeys. One Shelby mechanic told this author of the 289: “we couldn’t keep an engine together.” But they still managed to win races and , largely through the slippery Daytona coupe body style, Shelby won for Ford the World Manufacturer’s Championship in 1965.
But back in ’64 Shelby had already been planning on using a more reliable engine from Ford’s warehouse, the tried and true 427 FE-series big block that had been used in NASCAR racing in the Galaxie 500’s. The big block could take sustained running at top end and hang together a lot better than the 289. Since Shelby knew Chevrolet was going to bring out the 425-hp. 396 in the Corvette in ’65, he thought this an excellent way to blow away the Corvette. He could make the horsepower anything he wanted, as “425 hp.” was just a figure picked off the dyno chart. The engine could be tuned to produce something like 550 hp. for all out racing. Insurance companies still fainted away at “425 hp.” so Shelby never revealed the real horsepower and, according to Al Dowd, Shelby’s right hand man, if you looked like a real weenie when you bought a Cobra from Shelby’s own dealership, they’d slip in a 428 so you wouldn’t kill yourself and pocket another $200 in profits (bait and switch? Hey, the statute of limitations probably applies by now….)
In order to meet SCCA and FIA rules for homologation, Shelby had to make 100 427 Cobras. No problem, with Ford still backing him.

Ford Bets on Another Horse
Or so he thought. There was a dark horse gaining on him also wearing a Ford oval. back in 1963 Ford had started a second front in GT racing--the development of the Ford GT, a much more exotic car than Shelby’s Cobra. Unlike the Cobra, the Ford GT was designed from the ground up, though it borrowed heavily from the Lola GT design they bought from British race car builder Eric Broadley, who had even gamely run his experimental car at LeMans as a prototype in ’63, though DNF’ing.
Henry Ford II, “Hank the Deuce” as he was known around Dearborn, had given the green light to Ford’s “Total Performance” program which funded racing in dozens of categories. He had earlier approved the Cobra but realized by 1963 that the fastest Cobras could never win first overall at LeMans, that the aerodynamics wouldn’t allow it to top the 200 mph speeds needed to blow off the Ferrari prototypes. So he poured more millions into the Ford GT program, running concurrently with Shelby’s Cobra program.
The Ford GT was developed through 1964 without any input whatsoever from Shelby, ironic because here Ford had a genuine certified LeMans winner on their payroll. After the Ford GT flopped miserably in its first three races in ’64, Ford somewhat sheepishly called Shelby and told him they were shipping him two Ford GT’s for re-evaluation and re-engineering where necessary. While Shelby was fixing what broke, Ford also began an effort to fit the 427 just as Shelby was doing with the Cobras. These big block versions were the Mk. II GT’s which won LeMans in ’66.
So the upshot of Ford’s bankrolling of the Ford GT was that, with the racing season of 1965, the big block Cobra was suddenly deprived of its raison d’etre as far as International racing. True a 427 Cobra could reach 200 mph, but it was an extremely dicey car at 200 mph, likely to jump over a whole lane if it hit a bump, according to ##### Smith, who has had his own 427 do that more than once. Not to mention the wind buffeting in an open car at that speed! The Ford GT at 200 was more in its element. It could, in fact, do 220 mph.
So the 1965 season saw the irony of Shelby schlepping some big block Cobras around Europe but not using them, while the 289 Cobras continued to race alongside the Ford GT’s ironically beating the Ford GT’s at times when the mittelmotors proved unreliable, both mechanically and aerodynamically.
Back in the U.S., the 427 Cobras rolled over the 1,000-lb. heavier Corvettes in SCCA racing like they weren’t there even without the support of Shelby-American (who had pulled contingency money for race winners) . They continued to beat the Corvettes through 1967. That year Chevy began to offer the L-88 427 a 500-hp. plus engine that eventually killed the snake.
But Chevy’s L-88 wasn’t needed. The big Cobras went out of production in 1967 with 356 built.
(Or at least that was the number before the revisionists started to meddle with history).

The Birth of the Clones


Ironically, A.C. had been quietly producing Cobras for European markets while most Cobras were shipped to Shelby. A.C. first sold the 289 body style but later sold the 427 chassis and body style but with a small block 289 since gas cost four times the U.S. price in England and they couldn’t envision anybody foolish enough to want a big block 427. They called it the Mk. III. Several buyers later quietly peeled off their Mk. III i.d. plates and pop-riveted on Cobra i.d. plates, some some even adopting the serial numbers of crashed Cobras,thereby metamorphizing their lowly A.C.’s into big block Cobras in order to increase their value. (this is called larceny by conversion but maybe that's not a crime in England...)(One such owner, lawyer Richard Pierce of Encino, near Los Angeles, converted no less than five Angliss-built Cobras into 427 Cobras. He was murdered, and his was not the first body to be found on the Cobra trail…)
A.C. also had a newer body design made for the 427 chassis. Called the A.C. 428, only the first one had a 427 and the rest had the milder 428. The body design was by Carrozzeria Frua of Turin. There were 29 convertibles made and 51 fastback coupes. Production ended in ’73.
During the 1970’s and early 1980’s AC repeated history by seeing a one-off sports car they liked and buying the design to produce in-house, this one a mid-engined car called the ME3000, which met an indifferent audience. Ironically at least twice Ford used ME3000 chassis for one off prototypes built by Ghia in Italy, leading some to hope Ford was considering bankrolling a new A.C. as they had once done with the Cobra (on the other hand, maybe it was a cheap mid-engined chassis that fit their body design).
While Shelby was off in Africa big game hunting, selling chili mix (with Alka Seltzer included in case it was too strong for non-Texans), he apparently didn’t raise much objection when the 427 Cobra body style, with a 5.0 liter Mustang engine was re-introduced to North America, using the original tooling (albeit with thicker gauge aluminum) and meeting 50 State EPA and DOT Federal Regulations. This series was called the Autokraft Mk. IV. They sold for roughly $65,000, and among the proud owners of one is Bob Lutz, the much lauded executive visionary who now oversees GM’s design efforts. He credits his Cobra clone as giving him the idea for Chrysler to produce the Viper.

The Fiberglass Clones
Meanwhile the cloning of Cobras in America had a good start, the first one being one made by a man named Arntz, who had splashed a 427 body, made a frame and built his first replica. After Arntz came ERA and then dozens more. There are at least twenty five manufacturers, in countries as far flung as Germany and Mexico. By far the biggest is Factory Five. Excalibur, who used to make baroque recreations of prewar Mercedes cars, even switched to making Cobra 427 clones, seeing a better market for the baby boomers who no longer remembered a pre-war Mercedes but who sure as hell remembered the Cobra.
After close to 56 years of ownership, the Hurlock family sold their controlling interest in AC Cars to the joint ownership of Autokraft Limited and the Ford Motor Company. William Hurlock's son Derek retired as Chairman. They began another adventure with another modern car called the A.C. Ace but the new one was received with indifference. It clearly lacked the cojones of the 427 Cobra body shape.
AC Cars abandoned Thames-Ditton, which used to flood over periodically when the creek rose, and moved into a new purpose-built factory of some 90,000 square feet alongside the historic Brooklands race track, scene of so many achievements by AC Cars during the 1920’s.
A man named Brian Angliss ran A.C. for some time, having backed into the Cobra clone business by repairing real Cobras and finally building some exact replicas for those who owned real ones but preferred to prang the replicas. He believed in the A.C. Ace, launched in ’93. But it crawled along. Nobody wanted it. What they wanted, dammit, was the 427 body style.
So Angliss dusted off and re-engineered the AC Cobra Lightweight to meet 1993 EEC and 49 State North American Certification Standards and continued to sell Cobras. He sold the company and the new owners continued to make the body style, which had the distinction of being the only clone with an aluminum body. This ticked off Shelby who was fighting a running verbal battle in the press with Angliss, implying that he, Carroll Shelby was the one true owner of the 427 chassis and body style (Shelby has a good argument on the chassis since Ford engineer Klaus Arning had designed the coil sprung chassis for Shelby who at the time worked for Ford, so technically Ford owns the 427 chassis design). Meanwhile Shelby was making inquiries into producing his own replicas. He inspected more than one British plant of a replica maker. He hit up a golfing buddy, Del Molinari, at the Bel Air Country Club and asked him if he wanted to bid on building some Cobra frames for him. But the man declined, not wanting to be caught up in any fakery.
Shelby shocked the sports car world by announcing he had “found”
several unbuilt Cobra 427 chassis which he had forgotten about. These were purportedly left over when the 427 Cobra competition cars had no buyers and he had refitted some with street equipment calling them the 427 S/C for “Street competition.” He had then skipped over a fair number of already allocated serial numbers so he wouldn’t be stuck with a parking lot of white elephants. Shelby sold a few of these rediscovered and newly bodied cars (some say as many as five) with 3000-series serial numbers (continuing the original numbering system) for as much as $300,000 before the California DMV began to question their provenance.
Shelby promptly moved to Nevada and continued building them, but in order to be on the safe side in case Nevada contested their origin, began producing cars he clearly labeled as replicas, in a new series to be called the 4000 series. With ads, and extensive promotion, he has managed to convince the hundreds of buyers of the 4000 series that they are buying real Cobras. And, in a way, they are, for they are made by The Man Himself, who, for a generous contribution to one of his charities, autograph the glovebox door.
Meanwhile there was a fight boiling over regarding the Cobra name. Shelby had made a big mistake in selling it to Ford for one dollar back in the Sixties. But he hadn’t sold them the name “GT-350” and when Ford revived it to sell some nondescript Mustangs in the ‘80’s Shelby sued, as he was no longer receiving residuals. This suit dragged on for years until Shelby met with Edsel Ford III, Henry II’s son, and buried the hatchet. But part and parcel of the burying was Ford’s support for Shelby in going after other people using the name “Cobra.”Ford, it turns out, had revived the use of the name “Cobra” and Mustangs and was making lots of money from ’94 with the Mustang Cobra. They apparently agreed to look the other way on Shelby’s use of the now profitable word.
This brings us to 2002. Shelby, with a large facility in Las Vegas, is selling replicas like the proverbial hotcakes. There is much more interest in his 427 Cobra clones than there ever was in the vaunted but hideously ugly Series I sports car powered by the Oldsmobile 4-cam (a car which he sold off rights to) . Shelby has even introduced aluminum bodied clones, buying bodywork from some Utah Cobra fans who spent a million of their own dollars converting some plant in Poland to making them, the workers no longer having orders for MIG fighters now that the cold war is over.
Shelby recently went to court in Boston over the rights to the Cobra and Cobra model names, and still plans to fight for the rights to the body shape of the 427 Cobra. He won a divided judgement in round one-- his competitors can no longer offer their cars with Cobra badges already attached, or use the “427 S/C” name. (but, hey, what’s to stop them from sending those badges to you in a plain brown wrapper?) But Shelby is going for the whole shootin’ match, wanting to forbid them from using what he calls “his” body style, or at least pay him a royalty if they do….

[dave]

In response to the original question....what was the original question?
This page is so long that even if i scroll straight to the bottom of the page without reading i still can't remember the bl**dy question.

P.S. have you had to copy all this out letter by letter Robert?
:P

[TonyD]

I read all the way through...Do I get a prize..........

Cheers,

Tony.

[Mike]

Hey Wilf,
Always new Carol didn't like Ford engines.

[wilf]

Mike - I quote "Back in the U.S., the 427 Cobras rolled over the 1,000-lb. heavier Corvettes in SCCA racing like they weren’t there "

So he didn't like Ford engines huh????

Wilf

[Purple Ronnie]

But of course, you get to borrow Rob's GD for the weekend, and thrash the pants off it!}> }> }> }>

[robert]

>But of course, you get to borrow Rob's GD for the weekend, and thrash
>the pants off it!}> }> }> }>

Ronnie

I could be bitchy and say that he would ay least be driving a proper car, but I won't.

:7 :7 :7

Robert
Forum Admin

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[Kevin W]

I think first part of this guy's story is wrong.
AC didnt start off making the famous 3 wheelers. They made a whole variety of vehicles and teetered round imsolvency for many years until the Ace was born.
I think it wasd the 1970s when they started making the famous invalid carriages.

Its quite entertaining though, although I'm not keen on the yee-hah style.

I think the earliest Dax was bummed off an Arntz mould, but could be wrong.

Kevin

[mal]

Being bitchier! be careful the elastic band does break if you do get a go dangerous dave

Mal with the it`s never going to be finished AK}> }> }> }> }>

[robert]

Funnily enough, I have never seen an elastic band that would put out over 500 gee gees, have you????

Robert
With a finished fast GD

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