I remember reading about this car in an interview Brian Angliss gave to an American magazine in the early 1990s. He said that in the 1970s Carroll Shelby had approached him about building some "old" new Mk III/427 Cobras. As many of you might know, at the time Shelby had been saying that he had a stack of original 1965 CSX "427" chassis just waiting to be given bodies. We know that this wasn't true [}:)], as Thames-Ditton never shipped such chassis to America.
In 1964-65 Shelby had intended to homologate 100 Mk IIIs so as to go racing with the new Cobra in 1965, but as that didn't work out, the just over 50 cars that were shipped to him became the fabled "427 SC Semi-Competition". Based on the legend of those 100 homologation cars that only turned out to be half that number, Shelby during the '70s used to talk about one day "completing" the remainder of the run. The legend of that alleged bunch of Mk III chassis just waiting to be brought to life, was necessary so that if those cars were to ever be built, they could be made legal for the street as their chassis had supposedly been built in 1965, thus being exempt of more modern safety laws. In 1978 Brian Angliss built the car that this posting is about, and fully admitted shipping it over to Shelby as a real 1965 car. The American authorities were not duped. It hadn't been possible to somehow bluff the car as a genuine 1965 car. According to Angliss, Shelby now wanted him to alter the original Thames-Ditton records to document and certify that the balance of the 100 envisioned homologation cars' chassis had been shipped to Shelby in 1965. When Angliss refused to do this, Shelby became angry at him, setting the stage during the late 1980s for some vitriolic attacks against Angliss, especially when the Autokraft AC Mk IV emerged. As we know, Shelby didn't give up on his "old, original" chassis scheme, and got an American Cobra restoration company in Arizona to duplicate 1965 AC chassis, down to the smallest welding details, end then exposing them to the elements to make them look old. As we also know, the Los Angeles Times and others exposed Shelby's scheme. He still managed to complete in the U.S.A. the remainder of the 100 homologation cars, but they were not legal for the street, as they were replicas that didn't meet modern safety standards. The 1978 replica this posting is about has the distinction of being the first attempt by Shelby to try and re-write the history of those envisaged 100 homologation "big block" Mk III Cobras.