The story of the AC Shelby Cobra sports car is both the stuff of automotive legend and a general story of how two worlds collided to seemingly come together and create something wonderful: a nimble British roadster with a big, hulking Ford V8 heart.
On the one hand, we have UK-based AC Cars, which in the early 1960s was in a conundrum over the next engine for its two-seat AC Ace roadster, as the outdated Bristol six inline cylinders were being phased out by the engine. company. Meanwhile, the one and only Carroll Shelby was looking for a nimble little car that could gobble up a big American V8.
So after AC agreed to build him such a ‘monster’, he went in search of a suitable engine and found Blue Oval’s then-new 221ci (3.6 liter) Windsor V8 after Chevrolet rejected it for fear of competition from the Corvette.
Production of the MkI (CSX/CS) AC Shelby Cobra began in 1962 and the idea of a very small two-seat sports car with a bold front-mounted V8 quickly took flight to make automotive history. In recent times, no less than 100 years after the birth of Carroll Shelby, the legend continues to thrive.
And AC Cars, now Britain’s oldest vehicle manufacturer, founded 122 years ago in 1901, is about to open a new chapter with the 654-horsepower Cobra GT roadster currently in the works and officially unveiled. expected this spring. But what if the Cobra wanted to become something more in the near future?
Well, most fans probably hope that the Shelby Cobra will forever remain an agile sports car, even if the electric vehicle revolution means it has to adopt a zero-emissions lifestyle, at least in the real world. But in the imaginative realm of digital automotive content creators, almost anything else is possible, including transforming the AC Shelby Cobra into a massive SUV from an AI-enabled dystopian retrofuture.
Don’t worry, the machines haven’t taken over (yet) and instead we’re presented with the vision of the AI artist/pixel master hiding behind the social media moniker flybyartist.
The AI CGI expert seems to have a passion for dreaming of the times when the retro-futuristically designed AC Shelby Cobra SUVs will roam both the city streets and the surrounding desert dunes, as it is not the first time that Imagine the small two-seat sports car. The car transforms into a much larger SUV.
As always, these AI-assisted designs aren’t exactly 100% accurate nor do they feel like something well thought out. Still, some of the ideas are cooler than others, and chief among them is the heroic photo of a teal and gold two-door Shelby Cobra SUV lurking in the historic front of a CGI city, closely followed by the four dark blue doors. all terrain!.
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