As the 1950s became the '60s, a new automotive phenomenon was emerging: The sports car. In 1960 Chevrolet broke the 10,000-unit production milestone for their Corvette, the first time that automotive niche had reached five figures. Up until that point, automobiles in America were predominantly objects used to move families around. Now there was a mass-market alternative in a fun, powerful two-seater with no backseat for pesky kids. The Corvette later went on to be associated with astronauts, further cementing its "cool" status. Around the same time, Ferrari began dominating the international racing scene with their 250 GTO. In 1962 the 250 took first, second and third place at the grueling 24-hour LeMans race. Carroll Shelby, an American race car driver turned car designer and entrepreneur, wanted to knock both cars off of their pedestals. He envisioned a powerful, lightweight car that would smoke the Corvette at stoplights and best the Ferrari at Le Mans.Shelby talked to Ford, who was eager to compete with the Corvette. Ford made powerful engines, but had no Corvette-like chassis. Then Shelby talked to AC Cars, a British company that made the AC Ace, a lightweight, early English sports car. The AC Ace had the suitably lightweight chassis, but no engine; their supplier, Bristol, had discontinued them.Shelby talked AC into shipping their chassis to California, where he could retrofit them with powerful V8 motors that Ford was happy to supply. Shelby strengthened the chassis, steering, suspension and differential to handle the extra power, and the AC Cobra was born.Image: Jaydec, CC BY-SA 3.0 The Cobra started racking up race wins, and by 1965, it beat the Ferrari at the World Sportscar Championship.Image: JacoTen, CC BY-SA 2.0 However, production realities prevented the AC Cobra from becoming a mass-market Corvette killer. Shipping car bodies from a small manufacturer in England to California, where a team hand-modified each to accommodate Ford engines, was not a scalable business model. Shelby shifted his attention to helping Ford with the Mustang, and together they produced the Shelby Mustang GT350 and later the GT500. As both began racking up race wins (see the movie Ford v. Ferrari), the AC Cobra project fell by the wayside.The AC Cobra was discontinued in 1968. Only about 1,000 were ever produced, and as you'd expect from their target market, a lot of them wound up being wrapped around trees. The few AC Cobras that have survived to present day are extremely valuable. Meanwhile, the Mustang became Ford's legitimate Corvette challenger, and the model exists to this day.A bit of surprising news: Here in the 2020s, the AC Cobra is making a comebackby way of Sweden and China. AC Cars has somehow survived to this day and company CEO David Conza, a Swede, is bringing back the Cobra in both Coupe and Roadster forms. The cars will be built in both England and Sweden, the latter country being home to T-Engineering, an outfit of ex-Saab engineers backed by Chinese carmaker Dongfeng. And the engines are still by Ford. How's that for globalization. The resurrected Cobras will be the domain of the rich. The Roadster and Coupe will run around $245,000 and $280,000, respectively.