Gee, everyone seems surprised that Cobras had leaf springs in the
front. Yes it's true, at least for the Mark Is and Mark IIs (260cid and
289cid, respectively). In fact, all ACs up to 1965 had leaf springs all
around as far as I know. The chassis was completely redesigned in 1965
for the 427 and did incorporate coil springs.
Probably AC innovativeness was responsible for such an anachronism in a
car of this class. AC was in the best tradition of the small specialty
builder Scott (#1) so eloquently described a while back, using mostly
off the shelf components to achieve superior handling at a cost within
the means of the average bloak. In the early 50's AC came up with a
very successful chassis design for the AC Ace and Acecas. This chassis
had transverse leaf-springs front and rear and fully independent
suspension with unequal A-arms. This designed was carried over to the
early Cobras, albeit beefed up a bit. If the designed hadn't worked so
well, I suspect AC would have abandon it early on.
Roland Dudley
cobra@hpcdcsn.cdc.hp.com
CSX2282
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