[Steve Cassani]

Take a look at the early fifties Ferrari 225S roadster by Zagato (I don't have a picture I could post here). You'll find much in the car's shape and proportions that suggests the form Tojeiro gave to the AC Ace. The Ferrari had an independent front suspension with a transverse leaf spring. Rear suspension consisted of a live axle. The chassis consisted of two parallel round tubes, approximately tree inches in diameter.

These design methods were common in their day and I'm not comfortable saying Tojeiro 'copied' the Ferrari 225S simply because he began with the best thinking of his time and sought, with success, to improve on it. His Ace used independent suspension all around, again with a transverse leaf spring to dampen vertical travel. The front end of the Ace differs substantially from the Ferrari. This feature contributes more obviously than others to making the design his, but all the likenesses and differences come into our consderation of "Whose idea is this, anyway?"

The continuing changes in the shapes of the 289 Cobra racing cars owe their origin more to evolving tire technology than any effort at design. Initially the V8 cars raced on stock car tires. As these proved less adequate when turning left and right, and braking, the tires retained their bias ply but gained considerably more width than height. Aluminum fenders were first flared, then made to bulge to cover increasingly wide racing tires while minimizing affects on air flow.

To repeat the question: "Whose idea was that?" My answer is: "No one's. It was done to take advantage of wider tires while meeting the requirement that the tire be covered by body work." On this reasoning, the final form of the 427 car was far less a matter of design than was the shape and proportioning of the orginal Ace. The 427 simply repeated the shapes that had evolved on the competition small-block cars.