A little piece of me died

**chris** · 27th August 2007, 13:41

Originally Posted by marty

anyone who knows anything about muscle cars know that the AC was a gutless piece of british engineering that needed some serious horsepower to become a classic.

...and you obviously don't know much. The AC Ace was never built as a muscle car in the first place. Shelby stopped making them in the mid 60's as they were financial failure. The 289 was built by AC in the UK from then on.

**xwhatsit** · 27th August 2007, 14:53

Originally Posted by McJim

It's a testamaent to the superb handling of american vehicles

Originally Posted by limbimtimwim

The AC Ace is British.

Mr Shelby shoved a massive engine in it in typical American dunderhead style and called it a Cobra.

Correct. Although I have a soft spot for those mid-60s sports-cars, I've always had problems falling for the Shelby. It always seemed a great shame to me that you had these beautiful Ferrari 250GTOs and Jaguar E-Types and Maserati Tipo 61s roaring around the GT circuits in the 60s, gorgeous, wonderful handling vehicles with elegant 3-litre V12s and the like.

Then Carroll Shelby (an oversized Texan who liked to shoot his mouth off) ruins a lovely balanced-handling two-litre straight six British sports-car by stuffing an overweight V8 lump in it, and begins to win the GT series by virtue of sheer horsepower. It's like what Sketchy Racer was talking about with the supposed introduction of 4-stroke thumpers into the 125 GP class -- an elegant class and style of racing ruined by brute force.

To be sure the Shelby Cobra is an exciting car -- to look at, and certainly to drive. But you don't have to look too far to see why its arrival was lamented by the European racing fraternity -- one of his famous quotes was something along the lines of when racing, `all we really do is drag between the corners'. There's a nice philosophy for you. One contemporary GT driver of the Cobra referred to it as `a turd' in terms of handling.

I don't know if the modern replicas (like what is featured in this video) have improved on the handling somewhat, but I doubt it. You can only push a shit design so far. A big heavy V8 sitting on top of the front wheels is never going to handle very well.

**marty** · 27th August 2007, 15:18

ah yes, but i don't think the 429ci was sourced from the US. As was the 289, which as introduced in the early 60's.

The SHELBY cobra is the classic, and everyone knows, mr shelby is from merka.

check this out from wikipedia:

Shelby's original model, CSX 3015, was kept by Carroll Shelby himself over the years as a personal car, sometimes entering it into local races like the Turismos Visitadores Cannonball-Run like race in Nevada, where he was "waking [up] whole towns, blowing out windows, throwing belts and catching fire a couple of times, but finishing." Shelby later sold CSX 3015 to Jimmy Webb for $10,500. During the collector car bubble of 1989–90, Webb was said to have turned down $1.2 million for the car, but the car was seized by the IRS, after owing millions in back taxes and was auctioned off in 1995 for $375,000.[3] CSX 3015 was auctioned off on January 22, 2007 at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Event in Scottsdale, Arizona for $ 5,5 Million USD + commission (a record for Cobras, and a record for a Barrett-Jackson sold price)

**avgas** · 27th August 2007, 17:08

Wasn't it fastest production car for a few years in the 60's? Faster than the 50's Kompressor?

**NordieBoy** · 12th May 2012, 17:01

A little piece of me died today too

Originally Posted by Stuff

Carroll Shelby, designer of the Shelby Cobra and other sports cars that placed him in the pantheon of auto industry legends, has died at age 89, his company said today.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/mo...ll-Shelby-dies

**scumdog** · 12th May 2012, 17:40

Originally Posted by NordieBoy

A little piece of me died today

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/mo...ll-Shelby-dies

He sure lasted a long time for somebody in that career - and was quite good at throwing money into heart research/surgery etc (As he had some kind of massive heart surgery quite a few years ago)