Forgotten Classic: AC Cars and A98, the Other Cobra Coupe

Even if you're a vintage racing fan (or maybe a racing fan of a certain vintage) the car pictured above may not look familiar, and may not remind you at all of the familiar AC Cobra.  But that could be because it only raced once, with a less successful outcome than its more famous sister cars from Shelby American.  It turns out that while the California firm was working long hours to ready Pete Brock's* Daytona coupe design below for the 1964 Le Mans, the AC factory in Thames Ditton, England was working on Alan Turner's design for the A98 coupe pictured above and below it... 

Turner and Brock were both aiming at better aerodynamics with less frontal area and also more downforce at the rear, and both designers achieved that in different ways. On Turner's A98, as with John Willment's* 289 Cobra, the other one-off Cobra racing coupe, the nose is sharper in profile and the roof is lower than on Brock's Daytona, which is all gentle curves from the rounded nose back to the abrupt Kamm-insipired tail chop with that tall spoiler, which Brock wanted to be retractable, a feature Shelby vetoed for cost reasons.  Even the flat, recessed tail outlines the ovoid section of the car. On Turner's A98 design, pictured above the blue Daytona, the rear section is more rectilinear, and the spoiler more angled. There are sharply defined blisters above A98's wheel arches to direct air flow, and these recall the Mercedes 300SL and SLR.  Both designs added rigidity to the chassis, improving handling, and added speed. The Daytona coupe was timed at 191 mph, and AC's A98 became famous (or notorious) even before Le Mans when test driver Jack Sears was timed at 185 mph in a pre-dawn run on a public highway, Britain's M1 Motorway...

In the photo above, the A98's tubular steel framework waits for the aluminum body panels that would be fabricated by AC.  For the Daytona Cobra, Shelby American formed the first alloy body over a wooden buck in Los Angeles; subsequent "production" cars (all 5 of them) were built by Carrozzeria Gran Sport in Italy.  Shelby had funding for only 6 coupes, so the British teams fielded by the AC factory and by Ford dealer John Willment* had to make their own.  Shelby and AC took advantage of the race organizing body FIA's Appendix J rules to fit their production Cobra roadsters with non-standard aerodynamic coupe bodies. Enzo Ferrari had used the same rule to get his GTO approved, and was upset that AC and Shelby had made far fewer of their cars than the 3 dozen 250 GTOs he presented as mere variations on the 250GT.  He was even more upset when the Daytona helped Shelby American's AC Cobra team to win the Manufacturer's Championship, beating Ferrari in 1965...

In fairness to Shelby and AC, though, we'd point out that the alloy bodies on the Daytona and A98 really were mounted on standard AC Cobra chassis, while the Ferrari GTO featured a dry-sump engine never available in the production 250GT.  In the photos above and below, the lone A98 Le Mans Cobra emerges from the AC factory at Thames Ditton.  Note the sharp crease above the air intake, and the low profile...A98 was just 41 inches high, 5.5 inches lower than the Daytona.  AC's test driver Jack Sears was the only one to have raced all three types of Cobra coupes along with the roadster. In comparing them, he noted that the more rigid Daytona handled better than the "bucking bronco" roadster, but was hot and "deafening" in long-distance races.  He thought the Willment coupe felt almost the same as the Daytona, but noted the lower profile.  Finally, he thought that AC's A98 might have been "the best of the lot", with great speed in a straight line, as well as predictable handling and stability...

At Le Mans in 1964, early indications were that Sears was right.  A98 matched the speed of the Daytonas, even with less power than the Shelby-tuned coupes. The car Sears shared with Peter Bolton ran well after the mechanics sorted out a mess caused by someone sabotaging the fuel tank with shredded newspaper.  Then, in the 7th hour, A98 blew a tire with Bolton driving, was hit by Giancarlo Baghetti's Ferrari, and jumped the guardrail.  Tragically, three teenagers who'd ignored restricted area warnings were in the path of the wrecks, and died.  Bolton was taken to the hospital with amazingly minor injuries, and Baghetti escaped unhurt.  Years later, Barrie Baird bought the wreck of A98 and restored the car.  The process took a dozen years... 

It's one of those tantalizing "what ifs" to ponder what might have happened without the sabotaged fuel tank, the blown tire, and the deadly accident at Le Mans. Those who remember A98 at Le Mans, along with many who have seen the restored original, have noted that it may have provided a template for an AC production car when the aging Cobra roadster had run its course*.  It may have been difficult, though, to adapt this A98 design, or that of the Daytona, to the coming US safety standards, and the bumper standards that would follow those.  For AC and for Shelby, the Cobra was a hard act to follow, but that's a story we've covered in another episode*.

*Footnote:  We compared the Cobra Daytona coupe with the less well-known (okay, mostly forgotten) Willment Cobra competition coupe and Willment 427 Ghia coupe in our previous post, Forgotten Classic: Willment Cars---Climax, BRM, and Those One-Off Cobras, posted Feb. 11, 2023.  We surveyed a selection of AC Cobras in the Shelby American Collection in Roadside Attraction: The Shelby American Collection Part 1, on Dec. 28, 2017.  For more on the original Cobra Daytona along with other designs by Pete Brock, you might visit Unsung Genius: Pete Brock, Car Designer, posted here on Jan. 16, 2017. A survey of proposed successors to the Shelby AC Cobra roadster appears in AC Part 4: Shelby's Cobra Was a Hard Act to Follow, posted on Aug. 20, 2017.

Photo credits:

Top:  pinterest.co.uk

2nd:  the author

3rd thru 5th:  AC Cars Ltd. on primotipo.com

Bottom:  AC Owners Club