'Better to play with a £50,000 fake than a priceless original'

No car in history has been flattered by imitation so much as the AC Cobra. At the last count, there were over a dozen different British specialists producing spurious clones of the machine that epitomises the ultimate in muscle cars. In the USA, where the Anglo-American Cobra was created in the 1960s by shoehorning a big V8 engine into the neat, race-bred spaceframe of the AC Ace, there are several more. However, any that use the AC or Cobra names face the threat of litigation by Ford, who own both.

Ford bought AC from Autokraft, the company that acquired the rights to make the Cobra from the original Thames Ditton-based makers, last year. Now they take an aggressive stance against imitators who infringe their copyright, not least because Autokraft (whose owner is also managing director of Ford-controlled AC) still makes the real thing, albeit in very small numbers, mostly for the US market.

The replica makers confuse the issue by giving their cars other names: Brightwell Viper, Dax Tojeiro (in association with John Tojeiro, who designed the chassis of the original AC Ace), Magnum 427 (an evocative number that signifies the capacity in cubic inches of the 7-litre Cobra’s engine), Pilgrim Sumo, Python Roadster, Ram ST, SRV8 Roadster and others besides.

If the proliferation of Cobra lookalikes is rooted in the original’s classic looks and raw performance, it has been bolstered by soaring prices that have put the genuine article beyond the reach of all but wealthy collectors. A damaged AC Cobra sold recently at auction for £90,000.

What price, then, a respectable replica that looks, sounds and goes like the real thing? You see them advertised at anything between £10,000 and £20,000 — even more for outstanding examples — which is a lot of money to pay for a kit car. Oh yes, I forgot to mention: most Cobra clones start as a kit of parts, quite possibly a very incomplete kit that requires a very donor car, usually a Jaguar, from which to scrounge key components like the suspension, steering and brakes.

DIY car construction is not a job for anyone without patience, skill or proper facilities. However, there are now enough ready-made, upper-crust replicas on the market to attract the attention of enthusiasts interested in more than just enjoying the end product than in creating it.

I would not touch a car that had been shoddily built from a poor kit by a corner-cutting amateur. However, a professionally built machine with a decent chassis (like the Ram ST’s, designed by Adrian Raynard, a racing-car constructor of high repute) and refurbished Jaguar suspension (more sophisticated than that of the original leaf-sprung car) should ride and handle better than the real thing. If the glass-fibre body is expertly painted and free from ripples (not all of them are) it is indistinguishable from the original’s aluminium skin.

The best and most authentic Cobra lookalikes have large American V8 engines, preferably from Ford, though Rover’s 3.5 V8 powertrain, complete with five-speed gearbox and a clutch that does not need Herculean strength to work, is an acceptable down-market alternative: it performs with alacrity in the Morgan Plus 8 and TVR 350, so why not in a Cobra replica?

Jaguar’s 5.3-litre V12 has been prized under the bonnet of some cars, sacrificing authenticity (and, probably, handling balance, too) for engineering art. Either way, do not expect the sort of shattering performance (0 to 100mph in under 10sec) that put the original 7-litre Cobra, albeit a tweaked one, into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s fastest-accelerating road car.

Many famous supercars, past and present, now have spurious lookalikes. Those that were hybrids in the first place — the cross-pollinated Cobra, born out of wedlock, is the classic example — seem to work best. They do not offend me in the least, provided they are well made and finished. Others in this category include Transformer Cars’ HF2000, which apes the Ferrari-powered Lancia Stratos rally car, and GT Developments’ GTD 40, authentically reproducing Ford’s Le Mans-winning GT40 sports racer of the 1960s. Tom Keating would have been proud of both.

There are several other categories. Pseudo-off-roaders like the Escort-based Jago Jeep, Rickman Ranger and Eagle RV account for a surprisingly large slice of the burgeoning kit-car market. Then there are the pared-to-the-bone sports cars, low on creature comforts, high on raw driver appeal. Here, Caterham’s expensive Super Seven, its lineage straight from classic Lotus stock, has the best pedigree, Westfield’s respected SE being its strongest rival.

I rather like the open sportsters that imitate nothing in particular but capture the spirit of another era. The Jaguar-based Kougar — another kit that has become a classic — is probably the fastest if not the prettiest.

I can summon little enthusiasm for those impertinent replicas of current aristocrats such as the Lamborghini Countach or Porsche 911. It is a question of breeding, I suppose. Good Cobra clones get away with it because they faithfully reflect the original in spirit and hardware. A Ford-Granada-powered Countach does not. Nor does a poorly finished 911 with a flat-four engine.

Not all the clones originate from kits. The ultimates, like Lynx’s Jaguar D-type replica (also a road-ready car), are so superbly crafted that they are collectors’ items in their own right. Better to play with a £50,000 fake than a priceless original.

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