Carrol Shelby was renowned throughout the world for the conversion and design of sports cars. He planned to build cars that would beat the best vehicles in the world on the race track. He therefore looked for a big powerful engine and found it in the new Ford 260 V8 which he put into a small, light-weight sports car by the firm AC Ace Sports Car. From 1965 onwards Shelby relied on the hugely powerful 427 V8 (7.0 litre) engine. Thanks to its advantageous weight distribution the light Cobra offered better handling than any of the other muscle cars of its time. In the Semi-Competition version, the 427 Cobra offered a great capacity of 425 hp. This concentrated power gave it acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in just 4 seconds and a top speed of a good 260 km/h.