And in 1982, British Cobra specialist Autokraft sought to capitalise on this by getting permission from AC to restart production with the MkIV, and Brian Angliss’s team did such a fine job that in 1986, AC’s owners, exhausted by the bungled launch of the attractively modern but deeply flawed 3000ME coupé, were happy to sell up to him, and Ford lent him the right to use the Cobra name.
Things turned sour not long after, though, as Shelby restarted Cobra production himself over in the US – leading to a public war of words.
“All Cobras were made by AC in [the UK],” we reported Angliss saying in June 1993. “Every chassis was logged in AC’s factory records. [They] were painted and trimmed and dispatched to Shelby American minus the engine and gearbox.”
“AC was never anything but a sub-contractor to Shelby American,” countered Shelby. “Some were made in Italy and the US. We had a contract to buy so many chassis from AC, but a lot of the time those chassis would get damaged in shipping, and when they were, we would build the cars here.”
Angliss also claimed that AC had enacted “a massive programme to improve the 427 [the most iconic Cobra variant] and make it more sophisticated” – to Shelby’s ire.
“AC merely put the cars together and set up the chassis and body. We did all the development work in the States,” he said. “[Angliss] was not around for any of this. He knows nothing about it. That’s just about the time he was getting hair on his legs.”
He continued: “People want cars built by Carroll Shelby and they don’t give a hoot about anything produced by Brian Angliss as far as original Cobras are concerned.”
