Shelby little involvement in creating the Cobra

[Trevor Legate]

All very true Buzz! When I first started on a Cobra book project circa 1979, I went to visit the handful of people in the UK who sold and owned Cobras and everyone said the same thing - it was the shape. The performance and noise was pretty darn good as well (of course) but the first thing that grabbed them was the look of the thing. It's is the perfect sports car shape even it was 'designed' more by accident (although Alan Turner at AC deserves huge credit for smoothing out the lines of the Tojeiro/Barchetta that AC purchased from John Tojeiro)

Having read the Shelby biography, and believed some of it, he always intended using the Cobra name because to him, it sounded right. It could have also been applied to the Austin Healey 3000 had Donald Healey liked the idea, or a Jensen or an Aston Martin. It just happened to be an AC. Fortunately.....