Fresh start for AC Cars "The Army saying is that if a commander says 'Jump," you only ask 'How high?," but military frustrations are different. The reality is everything has to be negotiated through ambassadors and governments, with lots of wheeling and dealing. In microcosm, you could say that AC is very similar. The task for us is to put our arms around three quite independent and, in a way, sovereign organisations. Steve Gray at Brooklands Motor Company in the UK is fiercely proud of the heritage side. He produces a handful of superb bespoke cars, built to the last rivet like the original Cobras and costing £150,000. Then we've got the carbon-fibre MkVI, which looks like a Cobra but is built to modern supercar standards in Germany by Jürgen Mohr's company, Gullwing. He can only produce eight to 10 a year at £100,000. So that's two very desirable cars, the problem being manufacturing. We simply can't produce the numbers that dealers want. The latest addition to AC's licensee roster has been brought in to address the volume problem. The South African company Hi-Tech makes glass-fibre replica Cobras for the American market sold under the Superformance brand. It brings significant new manufacturing capacity as well as the opportunity to offer AC's customers a new glass-fibre, four-cylinder entry model based on the classic AC Ace with a sub-£50k price point. "We want to say to people looking at the higher-quality Cobra kits, 'Why not have an original factory car?"" says Sir Jeremy, revealing a strategy that might cause unease among the more exclusive elements of the AC Owners Club. Hi-Tech also developed the new 378 GT Zagato coupé as an in-house product prior to getting into bed with AC. The coupé was to be distributed independently in the United States as the Perana GT but is now being reassessed in the UK to make sure it meets European market expectations for a £90,000 luxury sports model before AC releases it. A sub-£70k V8-powered AC MkII Classic Cobra-style roadster will be built in South Africa too. Ultimately Sir Jeremy thinks Hi-Tech may assemble the more exotic carbon-fibre MkVI cars, leaving Gullwing in Germany responsible only for trimming and performance-tweaking - a sort of AMG division for AC Cars, as Sir Jeremy puts it. The plans also call for all future AC models to be (low-volume) homologated for global markets, and supported by a new dealer network. "The problem for AC in recent years has been an inability to meet the demands of dealers, and any company that can't meet the expectations of its clients is doomed to failure," says Sir Jeremy. Our new manufacturing ability will ensure that things can be different this time. Hot laps in the 378 GT Zagato AC Cars and The Daily Telegraph have history. In a fit of generosity this paper gave the first AC Cobra MkIV Carbon Road Series to a reader following its Earls Court debut in 1998. Can the new 378 GT Zagato bring AC back from the hinterland of classic Cobra reproductions that have kept the name of Britain's oldest surviving car company afloat for decades? A couple of hot passenger laps around the Brooklands circuit in the Geneva show prototype suggest it might. The 378 GT is a muscular and racy-looking coupé. Global economic meltdown meant the project never launched commercially, and now Hi-Tech has agreed to build the model (as well as its highly regarded glass-fibre Cobra replicas) with AC badges instead. With its powerful haunches and low-profile nose, the 378 GT draws unashamedly on styling cues from the Sixties Cobra racing coupés. The theme continues with a 6.2-litre, 434bhp Corvette V8, six-speed manual transmission and running gear from the GM performance parts bin stuffed into a tubular spaceframe chassis. Weight is 1,465kg, which means a predicted 0-60mph acceleration time of under four seconds and a top speed of about 185mph. Any sort of electronic driver aid is notable by its absence. The result is - predictably - a riot of noisy, explosive, tarmac-shredding acceleration. Our own demo driver is AC's UK licensee and classic Sixties Cobra racer Steve Gray, who thunders the car around the twisty infield section in old-school fashion, the nose responding smartly to steering inputs and the rear breaking away progressively when provoked. "It's all Cobra," grins Steve. AC is still finalising details such as interior trim specifications and UK suspension settings, but reckons the 378 GT Zagato should be available to order this year at about £90,000. It could be good.