Well, A-Snake, I'm not sure if that video is supposed to counter what I said above, or vindicate it! Mr. Shelby says he gor "AC to build a couple of chassis" for him. How about AC build COMPLETE CARS for him, minus engine and gearbox? Also, how about the fact that AC built the original prototype CSX 2000 for him, including testing it at Silverstone? What about Shelby's agreement with AC of February 5, 1962, where he agreed in writing that the cars would be AC-badged? He wasted no time in removing the AC badges from CSX 2000. When the first magazine coverage ever of the Cobra came out, Charles Hurlock was furious to see that his badges had been removed, only to have "Shelby" painted overtop. As Shelby was getting his Cobras ON CREDIT FROM AC, he quickly came up with an excuse when talking to an angry Charles Hurlock on the phone: that a worker had got carried away by painting "Shelby" where the AC badge had once stood, and that he was commissioning a new badge that did include the AC logo, per their agreement. Shelby thus rushed with the AC badges to a badge manufacturing company, and instructed them on what sort of badge he wanted. What resulted was a badge with a large red "SHELBY" towering over the word "COBRA" down below in half the size of his own name. In the middle was a tiny AC logo, HALF the size of that of a key fob! Even this badge went away by very early 1963. Mr. Shelby's first employee, Pete Brock, had thought that that badge with the tiny AC logo "came from England" (and Shelby never set him straight about having commissioned it himself)...and Brock told Shelby that he could design a cool snake badge...so as to get rid of that "English" badge with the AC logo. By now Shelby had sold a few Cobras, with which to start paying AC for the cars he had bought on credit from AC so far, so he now had no big problem with breaking his agreement with AC about the cars being AC-badged. Back in England, Hurlock had received a bunch of those Shelby AC Cobra badges from Shelby. The AC logo was so tiny that on that first handful of Mk II Cobras for the British market, he had those cars double-badged in the back, with both Shelby's badge and a large chrome AC logo, of the type that was to be placed on non-Shelby COB and COX Cobras, right up to the AC 289, and the Frua beyond that. By then, though, Shelby was no longer living up to his agreement with his snake badges...so so much for being this magnanimous gentleman when it came to sharing credit and whose word was his bond, and all that blarney...
In the late 1980s, when doing battle with Brian Angliss over who had been the true manufacturer of the Cobra, Mr. Shelby accused AC of having sold him cars whose bodies had been built by drunkards under bridges (on Taggs Island), that had headlamp alignments off by several inches, and that all that AC had ever done was just sell him "a few parts". Now that's what I call being a gentleman who lives up to agreements, and who gives credit where credit is due.
