Kirkham in Shelby Registry

[Jim Maxwell]

I had never really pondered the fact that AC Cars LTD made the body and chassis and interior and assembled all the other "outsourced" parts by Lucas and Smith and Stewart Warner, and Ceandess (fuel caps), and AMCO (windwings, visors, luggage racks), Wilmot-Breeden, Beclawat, Shelley jacks, BDS pliers and screwdrivers, Dunlop and Hallibrand wheels, Goodyear tires... etc. The whole darned thing is nothing but a bunch of "outsourced" parts.

The 289's I've seen don't have a single Shelby label anywhere, but most have a nifty little footbox tag that reads, "AC Cars" and fender emblems that read "Powered by Ford".
Shelby "opted" to have AC build the bodies and chassis? Instead of what? Building them in-house? They had absolutely no way of doing any of that, ever. It wasn't a matter of opting to let AC build them. There was no other choice. "Allowed" AC to build the rollers? Again, no other choice, I think. Did Shelby and/or Ford ever even consider building the cars in-house?
The majority of the components of almost every Cobra were assembled in England at AC , with most Cobras receiving the engines and transmissions and a few other bits at the Shelby plant at LAX.
Of course, Shelby and his crew created and designed the Cobras and contracted with AC to build the new cars (which were very closely based on the AC Ace for the 260/289 series), so... I guess you are absolutely correct. Shelby outsourced his design to AC for fabrication. Carroll Shelby can therefore be credited with being ahead of his time in one more area. He led the way for off-shoring the construction of "American" automobiles. He beat NAFTA by decades! Still doing it in some recent years with Polish made aluminum bodies, via Kirkham. I guess the point is that if a unique part comes through Shelby in some way, it validates it as genuine Shelby, and that makes sense. If you can buy exactly the same part from the outsourcing manufacturer through another vendor , then that isn't necessarily a Shelby part.