The AC 428 Frua is the Anglo-Italian-American GT AC built to bridge the raw AC Cobra 427 MkIII and the Continental grand-tourer market. Underneath sits a Cobra 427 MkIII ladder chassis stretched by six inches; over it, a hand-built steel body designed and constructed by Pietro Frua in Turin. Chassis were assembled at AC's Thames Ditton works, shipped to Italy for bodying and trimming, then returned to England for their Ford FE big-block V8, Ford Toploader four-speed manual or Ford C6 three-speed automatic, and final assembly.
The launch price of £5,573 was roughly twice that of a 4.2-litre Jaguar E-Type. Production ended in 1973 after Frua labour disputes, the 1973 oil crisis, US emissions regulations and Ford engine supply constraints together made continued production untenable.
The 428 Frua is the missing chapter in the AC / Shelby / Ford story: what the Cobra 427 might have become if AC had chased Bristol, Aston Martin and Iso rather than the SCCA. The Cobra chassis underneath gives it real mechanical significance; the Frua bodywork gives it Italian coachbuilt scarcity; the Anglo-Italian-American production route gives it a story no other 1960s GT can match. It has remained undervalued precisely because it doesn't fit cleanly into any single collector narrative — and that is exactly why serious collectors have started to notice.
