Not Ranked
I noticed that no one really answered the question of why the 427 cobra stayed with a 90" wheel base, after Ford spent large sums of money to perfect the 93" frame and suspension. If you go to page 57 of Wilson McComb's book, AC (Shelby) Cobra, you will find the answer. Yes the book is from the AC perspective and biased towards them, but they were there. It is more a case of what was not said, then what was said. Alan Turner, AC Ltd head of design, received a computer print out and a couple of graphs showing wheel movement and ideal pivot locations on the rear suspension based on Klause Arning's mid engine Mustang project. When Turner rolled this out, he found the forward pivot points were in side the driver and passenger, so he set out to redesign it. No mention from Ford on a lengthened Cobra. About that time Phil Remington showed up, and he chalked up the useless computer drawings to the Ford computer, not knowing the magic 93" parameters. Finally Bob Nagstadt showed up, but he never mentioned 93" to anybody there, he just rolled up his sleeves and spent a couple of weeks helping Turner. This is condensed of course. I think it was a case of the ultimate dysfunctional family! Ford was already moving on from the toy called Cobra, to Eric Broadley and the GT40 program, Carrol just wanted 100 427 cars to homologate them for racing, and he wanted them last week, and Derek Hurlock, owner of AC Ltd was getting tired of Shelby and his bragging. Keep in mind, yes AC Cars was tiny, but the Hurlock family was a pretty big company with government contracts. I heard it best on why the Herlock's would keep building cars in such limited numbers, AC builds cars, because AC builds cars, It's a Zen thing! So, no one was talking to each other and that is how we ended up with the most reproduced cobbled together car in history. Hay, it rally is a Zen kind of thing!
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