​1964 AC Cobra 289

              
 
              
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• 1964 AC Cobra 289

  One of just 44 RHD examples built

  One lady owner from new until 1989

  Captivating, fully documented history

  Unprecedented AC factory maintenance

  A total of only 4 previous owners

• Arguably the greatest product of the Anglo-American special relationship, the Cobra has achieved a generation-spanning eminence that few other cars can match. Yet, while every original Cobra is special, this one is perhaps more so than any other.

  With Cobras being a regular sight on the grids of today’s array of international historic racing events, it could be easy to forget that this potent two-seater was a road car too and offered for sale to the public. No racing license or helmet required. And what a road car it was. When you consider that in 1964, the year this car was built, most people’s daily driver might have been a Mini or Ford Cortina, the Cobra’s 289ci (4.7-litre) Ford V8 and lack of any superfluous weight made for staggering performance.

It’s still exceptionally fast by modern standards and you rather had the impression that the Cobra could be enormous fun, but should be taken seriously. But, then again, you’d say the same about this Cobra’s fascinating first owner.

Although a great-granddaughter of King William IV and born into a very comfortable family, Miss Elizabeth Moyra Goff was not your usual heiress and, quite ahead of her time, refused to be dependant on a husband or even her inheritance. Independently wealthy via her portfolio of stocks and shares, Ms Goff – Moyra, to her friends – had a fondness for ACs and had owned a succession of them from the earliest days of the company. She would no doubt have been aware of the Cobra’s racing victories and pleased to see the cars from Thames Ditton flying the flag for Great Britain.

So when one became available through John Willment, whose Ford main dealer sold Cobras and whose eponymous race team collected trophies with them on weekends, Moyra seized the opportunity and secured herself this very car. Invoiced on 10th Dec 1964 and registered KHX 345B, the Cobra was perhaps Ms Goff’s early Christmas present to herself. She was 67 years old.

A common misconception with AC Cobras is that quite a few were built, but an AC should not be confused with the American Shelbys. While it’s true that several hundred Shelby Cobras were built for the US market, what Moyra had bought was the 11th of just 44 right-hand drive AC Cobra 289s.

As per John Willment’s famous competition Cobras, which this car could easily have become, chassis COB6021 was delivered in his team’s colour of red. Moyra however had her own livery and wasted no time in commissioning London coachbuilders C.A. Tanner & Son to fully re-cellulose the brand new Cobra in her favourite “Pearlvalentine Black”, and was duly invoiced on 25th February 1965. Both this and the original John Willment sales invoice remain in the Cobra’s history, and are the start of an unprecedented and fastidious paper trail that Moyra dutifully kept.

The stack of original invoices on file are predominantly from the strictly-regimented services at the AC factory and include Moyra’s repeated hand-written requests for the mileage to be logged on the paperwork, as “it is essential if the car is to be maintained that I have the mileages between services.” Fully detailed is the fresh engine installed in at the factory 1973 and the AC documentation lasts right up until the factory’s closure. A friendly mechanic even wrote to Moyra on the day he was made redundant in May 1986, offering continued servicing for the Cobra.

The last documents to bear Moyra’s name are the consignment form to Christie’s December auction at Beaulieu, which she signed on 6th April 1989, and a handwritten letter from the following September instructing the Cobra’s collection from its garage near her London home on Brompton Square.

On 11th December 1989, 25-years and one day after she bought it, Moyra’s Cobra was hammered sold for a world record price. Moyra was 92 years old and passed away just a month after the sale.

Alongside the significant folder of maintenance invoices, Moyra’s quarter century with the Cobra is also brought to life in fascinating detail by accounts from those who knew her. We recently received a letter and pictures from Moyra’s close friend and former lodger and in it he remembers accompanying her one of her weekly drives from Brompton Square to the family home in Wiltshire:

“Not afraid to use the cars speed and power when required, I recall a journey to Holt when the windscreen wipers failed; not to be beaten by rain we went from Heston services to Junction 17 (some 85 miles) on the M4 in 55 minutes ‘beating the rain cloud’ on the north side of us. Moyra was probably in her late eighties then but there was still a good level of competency in her driving skills.”

Former Top Gear presenter Chris Goffey filmed a piece for TV with Moyra and her Cobra, and in an email to us remembers “the great old lady” fondly and urging her to drive closer to the camera car for tracking shots, “which she did without turning a hair.”

Post-auction the car was registered to renowned collector Jeremy Agace, who transferred his distinctive ‘JJA 3’ private number plate onto it before selling to a Dr Manfred Klein in 1997. The previous owner acquired the Cobra in 2000 via the Porsche racer and car dealer Nick Faure, and it was assigned the registration number FPJ 106B. The previous owner would keep the Cobra for 14 years, before we were fortunate to add it to our collection in 2014. Reunited with its original ‘KHX’ registration number, the Cobra is just as Moyra would have remembered it.

“A really great old lady - they don’t make them like her anymore”, said Chris Goffey in remembering Moyra and the same can be said of her exceptionally rare AC Cobra. And there can surely be no example better documented or with such a captivating story.