Quote:
Originally Posted by mullen2
Wanted to thank the gentleman from AC Heritage he was able to shed some light on the original tooling and also the practices used to build the AC Shelby Cobras. Below is word for word from AC Heritage. Very nice to be able to share this information here for everyone. Happy Motoring!
"There has been much misinformation regarding who does what who has what etc. In the Cobra world. I suggest you quote us on this. The AC / Shelby cars were manufactured on the wooden jigs despite various people claiming they all went in the dumpster. The wooden front end section is used for the hood section and catwalks the trunk buck and door skin jigs are used English wheels used to form the panels are from the original A.C . Works at Thames Ditton we have internal period memo's of tooling being requested in Fibreglass. A.C. Cars used fibreglass for the foot boxes and soon realised that tooling produced using this process was more economical than wooden bucks. For the Kirkham guys who own Kirkham Shelby's or KMP cars these are very well built by artisans and are more durable being manufactured using aircraft 14 guage material an Tig welded . The shape in the 289 and 427 differs from the original however they represent great quality and value. Your car retains the spirit of the old firm and the most important point is that you enjoy it. We repair Shelby period cars Kirkhams and just like the fact all you guys like Cobra's!"
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I believe half of what is written by this unnamed fellow. The rest is carefully crafted
PR and nothing else, sorry. In 1985 I spent a few days at the AC facility, I spoke with the folks on the floor who were building the MK IV's, I saw bits and pieces of the original bucks, but was told the ones they were using were built from the original blueprints, but were not the originals. Way back then, why would they lie about such things. Especially given the value of originals at that time. Fast forward to the present day when the cars are worth far more, and greed has now been added to the equation. I think you get my drift.
I'll leave it at that.
Bill S.