The history of the AC Cobra is one of the world’s best cars. A Texas farmer (and pilots), Carroll Shelby, he decided to raise the spider quintessentially English AC Ace putting to shoehorn an American V8 engine and create a fire-breathing cobra.

Perhaps, it sounds like fantasy, but it’s true. The engine was the then-new American Ford V8 short block that was initially 2.6 liters and then was joined by another 4.2-liter version. It was the latter that the AC was installed in slightly increasing the weight of AC.

Although success did not come until he built the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, the Cobra was aimed at the competition, light, powerful, with more worthy of an interior Italian barchetta a spider English.

AC was impressed with the performance of the V8 Shelby. The 289 Cobra 250 km / h to 100 km / h in just 5.5 seconds. Discarding the contract he had with Rudd Ked, who provided the original engines of 170 hp. and 2.6 liters of the AC Ace.

After a year of manufacture, the 4.2-liter engine was replaced by a 4.7-liter, resulting in the Cobra 289, and the second most popular models of all-time mark. The wheel arches are not widened, so the V8 Cobra and Ace were almost the same except, of course, their glittering transformation.

Although he is more timid than the 427, do not underestimate since lso reaches 250 km / h and accelerates from 0 to 100 in just over 5 seconds.

The latest Cobra 289 Sport was called and had the wide wheel arches of the 427 model. Despite being the younger brother of the great Cobra, 427, 289 was the many ways the car more usable, even the fans of AC models say so. Its fenders smaller and less glitzy than its potency made it more usable. Shelby continues to produce and in 1962 under the code CSX-7000.