AC Cobra Coupe 1964

Just something about the cars from this era, full of curves yet menacing looking. This is the one of a kind AC Cobra Coupe. AC Cars, which build the Ace on which the Shelby Cobra was based, built this to take on the Shelby Daytona Coupes at the 1964 24 hours of Le Mans.

Courtesy of Just a Car Guy, via  Primotipo;

Visibly lower than the Pete Brock designed Daytona coupe (41 inches compared with 48 inches- its height a function of uncertainty over Le Mans windscreen height regs) both designers sat the drivers lower in the car. Turner had also raked the windscreen, created a lower nose section and a longer flowing roof as well as designing the ‘eyebrows’ over the tops of the wheel arches he claimed help clean up airflow. During Le Mans Sears and Bolton were timed at 180.2mph @ 6300rpm, matching the Daytona Cobras despite giving away 30bhp to the Shelby entries- AC cars chassis #A98 had a 289cid/4.7 litre ‘Windsor’ engine which developed circa 355bhp, the Shelby cars had around 385bhp.

The car qualified conservatively second in class behind the Gurney/Bondurant Shelby entry and ran in that race position, at one point leading the class early in the race averaging 20mph for the first 3.5 hours. The big coupe began to have fuel feed problems which were found after the race to be caused by newspaper in the fuel tank- sabotage- which blocked the fuel filter. Much time was lost as the filter blockage was diagnosed and remedied.

A tire blew out late in the race, and the wreck of Coupe A98 was brought back to the AC headquarters in Thames Ditton and never rebuilt and or raced further ‘in period’. The very significant car was restored by Barrie Baird who negotiated its purchase in 1972. The work took over 12 years

https://primotipo.com/2018/03/08/ac-cobra-coupe/