[What'saCobra?]

It is certainly true that the AC Bristol was already a "world class" competitor long before CS came to the Hurlocks to buy the AC's ultra-lightweight chassis, completely finished with the world's finest equipment and materials, on credit.

Fortunately for us all, the Hurlocks did not request a simple credit check on CS or they would have demurred; since he had declared bancrupcy from the chicken ranch not so long before. They liked the guy's pushy attitude, his driving history, his claims of FORD credit (did he have this in hand yet?) and the idea (since they needed an engine.)

They were not at that moment happy with Ken Rudd, an AC dealer, who turned out to be less difficult to deal with than CS, which they were later to learn. It was Ken that first put the World-class Bristol engine in an ACE in 1956 and which helped AC achieve greatness with the ACE Bristol.

The AC won the SCCA National Championship in E Production in 1957, 1958 and 1959 before the SCCA bumped it up into D Production (where it won the Championship in 1960) and then up into C Production (where it won the 1961 Championship.) The car was unbeatable when prepped and driven correctly and CS knew all this.

And Le Mans.

In fact, his pitch to FORD for the free engines he needed particularly included emphasis on the marvelous "world class" performance of the AC Bristol through the recent years and the cars' high reliability and superb build quality (which was on a par with Aston Martin with hand formed alloy body, Connelly leather, Smiths gauges, Wilton wool carpets, superleggera construction, etc.)

CS also knew about the success of many lightweight California "specials" that ran european chassis, for instance Aston Martins, with chevy V-8's in SCCA and other races with great success. That is why he tried to get Chevy to give him some engines first, before FORD. Duntov was very successful in chopping CS's Balzacks off on this subject, since it was a threat to Zora's precious Corvette; which was much heavier, since it wasn't superleggera construction (tube frame, alloy body), had a large old design chassis, production parts, live axle, drum brakes and thick fiberglass bits.

CS wanted to copy that success and although his driving career was finished, to him the formula for racing success was very apparent.

By the way, the same Ken Rudd put a 2.6 liter FORD 6 cylinder (Zephyr) in the AC chassis, called it the RuddSpeed and was very quick indeed. AC was then building the ACE 2.6 and already buying from FORD. But, sales were not exciting. AC tried to get the GM alloy V-8, but Rover got that. AC tried to get the Daimler V-8, but missed that because Daimler was putting it in the Dart and in-house competition was rejected for the same reasons Duntov kept the Chevy V-8 from Shelby.

So, AC needed something, rather quickly and they took a chance on CS. Good thing they did.

None of this rich history takes anything away from CS the men at SA that REALLY made the Cobra happen.

Now, if you really want to get torqued, where do you think the Cobra name came from? A Dream? Perhaps.

But, it is worth recalling that in 1955 Chris Craft manufactured 106 limited production 2 seat exclusive sports boats with a really big stabilizing vertical fin called the COBRA. It had available a Cadillac V-8 engine, among others, and was capable of well over 50 MPH on water. For a production boat this was spectacular. Once seen, never to be forgotton, particularly at the time. They are still show stoppers. They were sold in California particularly well. Very beautiful and very expensive. Hard to find, but very quick.

Do you think CS saw one of these and liked the moniker? I do. And it was a good idea, wasn't it?

Much more surprising, why doesn't anyone ever talk about this name on a super-high-performance boat cum-superleggera racer?

One man's opinion, of course, doesn't make a horse race.