When Carroll Shelby built the first Shelby Cobra sports cars in the early 1960s, he didn’t design the iconic open-air body from scratch. Instead, he shoehorned a small-block Ford V8 into the stylish AC Ace chassis from AC Cars, a small, independent British carmaker. The Shelby Cobra – and the AC Cobra – were then cemented into automotive history, in somewhat of a symbiotic relationship.
Now, AC Cars, originally founded in England in 1901, is back with a new AC Cobra and, after facing some financial misfortunes, a new home in Sweden. Early efforts from the Swedish owners created electrified Cobras, but the company is now also collaborating with Ford to once again fill the compact engine bay with a powerful 5.0-liter 454-horsepower V8 gasoline engine, accompanied by 575 pound feet of torque.
The iconic Ace silhouette will remain. While a real Shelby Cobra can sell for millions of dollars, the new cars will come in at a comparatively affordable $250,000 or so per copy, depending on options, including a solid-roofed Coupe (+$30,000) along with the expected open-air Cobra GT Roadster. Buyers can also option a 663 hp V8 in the GT Roadster “S” model. There are no plans for any hybrid powertrains.
They will also be up to date technically, with a choice of a six-speed manual gearbox or Ford’s 10-speed auto with paddle shifters. And below the old-school gauges in the dash, a wide-format touchscreen adds in modern tech like GPS, performance metrics, and audio options. Overall, however, the interior remains minimalist, as in the original cars.
Performance should also meet modern standards, with 0-60 mph times under 3.5 seconds in “S” tune, and a top speed around 150 mph. Before Britain had speed limits on its expressways, so the story goes, Cobra owners would spool their cars up to triple digits without concerns about tickets. As legend has it, a Cobra driver dialed up nearly 200 miles an hour on one occasion, leading the powers that be to implement the first speed limits.
Not looking for the full Cobra experience? AC Cars says they will also offer the physically similar AC Ace with a turbocharged inline four Ford engine. No pricing was immediately made available for the Ace.
Some of the new Cobras have been spoken for, and production is limited, of course, so prospective owners should move quickly to get a spot in the production queue.
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