Rumours are circulating this morning that AC Cars has been thrown into crisis with staff being laid off. The factory isn't answering its phones and the suggestion is that legal issues over the rights to build Cobras may have halted production.
Last year Carroll Shelby pursued a US Cobra manufacturer through the courts arguing that the shape and design of the car was his intellectual property and was not open for copying.
An out of court settlement was finally reached with Factory Five Racing that let them continue production but they agreed not to describe them as Cobra replicas.
The intellectual property is the subject of much wheeling and dealing and in June this year Shelby sold "Carroll Shelby Licensing Inc." and "Shelby Automobiles Inc" to a company by the name of Ginseng Forest who subsequently renamed themselves as "Carroll Shelby International Inc."
With the AC Cobra originally being based on the AC Ace the bloodline of the Cobra certainly belongs with AC. It would be a perverse piece of justice if production was indeed halted by an argument over ownership. It could also have far reaching implications for the many UK manufacturers of Cobra replicas.
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