01
Origins
The AC 428 of 1965 answered an obvious question: what happens if the Cobra 427's brutal chassis is stretched slightly and dressed as a grand tourer? AC sent coil-sprung Cobra frames to Frua in Turin, where they were clothed in elegant steel coupé and convertible bodies with more than a passing resemblance to Frua's Maserati Mistral, then shipped back to England to receive Ford's 7-litre and later 7.2-litre V8s. The result combined near-Cobra acceleration with leather-lined civility, at a price above an Aston Martin DB6. The transcontinental logistics made every car costly and slow to build, and strikes and the fuel crisis finished the sums: just 81 were completed by 1973. The 428 remains the connoisseur's AC — all of the Cobra's violence, wearing a suit.
AC-429 · Matthias v.d. Elbe · CC BY 4.0
