Why an AK Cobra

Where did it all begin?

I first saw a 'Cobra' as a kid when Mark Evans was building his cobra replica in his 'A Car is Born' TV show.  From this moment I have always found Cobra's to be some of the best looking cars on the road. Since then I have spent many hours reading about their history. My favorite source of this is Haynes AC Cobra Owners Workshop Manual , which was a present a few Christmas's ago.

Since then I have always wanted to one day build my own Cobra. Having finally got to a point in my life where I am able to do this, now is the time!

Which Kit?

Not wishing to start a contentious argument (for that there's the cobra forum) there are a range of Cobra replica kits available in the UK. Whilst I had initially seen the Pilgrim Sumo on 'A Car is Born', I wanted to see how this compared to the other options, AK, DAX and Gardner Douglas to name a few.

Whilst there is a lot of information about these kits online, for me the best way to compare them was at the Stoneleigh kit car show. At this show all the Cobra manufactures have their stands and cars next to each other. This is a great eye opener as you can easily see that whilst they are all Cobra replicas, there are clear differences in design/quality between them. Speaking to the staff members on these stands is a great way to ask those first questions and get more information on pricing.

 As well as visiting the company stands, there are a large number of personal Cobra kit cars in the field outside from the Cobra club. This gave me lots of ideas of what I would like to build and how average people's kit cars come out.

Lastly, having visited the kit car show and thought about the options (and prices), I went up to AK's factory for an open day. This was a great opportunity to see both the factory and meet their very friendly team. During this day we had a tour of the factory, where Jon explained their build process (chassis, body and completion of customer cars) as well as answered all the questions that I had.  Lastly and definitely not the less memorable was the test drive Dave took me on with their latest show car Apple... all I have to say about that is WOW!

So what's next?

The plan is to build a second generation AK 427 Cobra with an LS3 engine over the next three years. At each step, I will be posting progress updates as well as tips and tricks I have learnt along the way.

I hope you find this blog as useful, as I have found the numerous previous blog post by other Cobra builders.