AC COBRA

AC Cars Ltd. formerly known as Auto Carriers Ltd., is a British specialist automobile manufacturer and one of the oldest independent car makers founded in Britain.

The AC was born from the meeting between a car technician and a meat dealer who in 1903 presented a small three-wheeled vehicle, the Auto Carrier, mainly intended for the transport of goods and equipped with a small single-cylinder engine. Production began the following year when the Autocar & Accessories Ltd was created; the van was soon joined by the first car, always on three wheels, the AC Sociable which remained in production until 1915 [1]. In 1907 the company changed its name to Auto Carriers Ltd, in 1911 it opened a production plant at Thames Ditton in Surrey and began designing four-wheel vehicles, whose production began at the end of the First World War. The tests of the cars took place on the Brooklands circuit, located near the headquarters; there were also established numerous land speed records of the category.

In 1922 the property passed to the Australian pilot Selwyn Francis Edge who renamed it to AC Cars Ltd; a few years earlier, in 1919, an engine had been created to remain in production until 1963; designed by John Weller, it featured a 6-cylinder architecture in line with a displacement of 1,991 cm³; of reduced weight, he earned the nickname of light six. This engine equipped the subsequent models of the British house.

In 1927 the company was renamed AC (Acedes) Ltd and in 1929, coinciding with the great depression there was the interruption of production, with voluntary liquidation of the company.

The activity was resumed, in terms of craftsmanship, in subsequent years, with the presentation in 1931 of a sports car built on the basis of the chassis that equipped the SS 1, but with the engine designed years before by the house itself.

After the interruption for the second world war, the civil production resumed with the novelty of the use, as well as of the classic two-liter engine, also of engines of manufacture Bristol and Ford.

The main models built were AC Aceca (berlinetta version) and AC Ace (roadster version), used in various competitions in the sixties [2]

Further notoriety was acquired with the 1961 agreement with Shelby Automobiles for the production of the chassis for the AC Cobra, equipped with a Ford V8 engine and later became Shelby Cobra with three models: the Cobra 260, 289 and 427.

Subsequently, models such as the AC 428, a spyder designed by Frua and the AC ME 3000, a mid-engine sports car presented in 1973 were built.

In 1996 the brand was taken over by Alan Lubinski who moved the production to other British locations and, in Malta since 2004, a model based on the very famous Cobra: the MKV. However, sales declined, in 2008 the CA participated and the joint venture with Malta failed.

In 2009 the brand reappeared in German hands with the announcement of a new model [3], which came out in South Africa in 2012 and was named AC 378 GT Zagato.