AC Cobra GT Coupe Readied For Reveal

Despite its long history, the AC Cobra – both the original car built between 1962 and 1967 and the many, many officially licensed continuation cars that have appeared since – has never been available to consumers as a coupe. The closest there’s been is the Shelby Daytona, a racing special with an entirely new body. With the regular Cobra, it’s always been an open-top roadster, and nothing else.

That’s about to change, as AC Cars – the same company founded in 1901, despite many ownership changes – has announced that the first ever Cobra coupe will soon be unveiled. It follows the unveiling of the Cobra GT roadster in 2023 which, while sharing its basic looks with the original car, is entirely new under the skin.

Based around an aluminium spaceframe chassis, it stays true to the original car by using a Ford-sourced V8, this time the 5.0-litre Coyote unit from the modern Mustang, in either 454bhp naturally aspirated or 654bhp supercharged form. Gearbox options are a six-speed manual or 10-speed automatic.

It also has various driver aids and interior mod cons, including an infotainment screen and small digital readout, and is slightly larger than the original to offer more interior space. We’d expect much the same from the coupe – the teaser image supplied by AC shows a gently falling roofline ending in what looks like the flick of a small ducktail spoiler. Together with the Cobra’s signature swollen haunches, it looks like it was always meant to be.

The Cobra GT roadster starts at £240,000, and we’d expect the Coupe to go for similar money. We’ll find out more when it gets properly revealed later in spring.

Elsewhere, AC Cars has newly expanded its headquarters and R&D centre at the Donington Park circuit, and is gearing up for production of the Cobra GT in an as-yet-unnamed location on the south coast of England, all of which hopefully signals a new lease of life for a company that’s undergone a lot of ups and downs in the last 120 years.