AC Cars AC Ace

In short

• Built at Thames Ditton, Surrey, from 1953 to 1963; about 220 AC-engined cars, 466 Ace-Bristols and 37 Ace 2.6s.
• Chassis by John Tojeiro: large-diameter steel tubes, all-independent suspension with transverse leaf springs, hand-formed aluminium body.
• Engines: AC 2.0-litre six with about 75 kW (100 bhp), Bristol 2.0-litre six with 78–95 kW (105–128 bhp), Ford Zephyr 2.6 "Ruddspeed" with 67–127 kW (90–170 bhp).
• An Ace Bristol finished 7th overall and won its class at Le Mans in 1959.

AC Ace at a glance

AC between the wars

Auto-Carrier production was followed in 1907 by a passenger version, the A.C. Sociable, and in 1913 by the first four-wheeled AC, of which only a few were made before the First World War. Selwyn Edge bought shares in 1921 and became governing director, Weller and Portwine left within a year, and in 1922 the firm became AC Cars Ltd. Edge bought it outright for £135,000 in 1927, but sales kept falling, and the company went into voluntary liquidation in 1929.

The Hurlock family, who ran a haulage business, bought AC in 1930. Limited production restarted, and a new range with Standard chassis and a four-speed gearbox arrived in 1932. The last pre-war car was delivered in June 1940. After the war a government contract for glass-fibre Invacar Type 57 invalid carriages with Villiers engines became an important source of revenue, and they were built until 1976. The 2-Litre was built from 1947 to 1958. Its six-cylinder engine went straight into the new sports car.

John Tojeiro's chassis

Production began in 1953 with a chassis designed by John Tojeiro and AC's 2-Litre engine. English Wikipedia says its shape was possibly inspired by the Ferrari 166 MM barchetta. The frame is a light ladder of large-diameter round steel tubes with a tubular steel hoop at the scuttle, and all four wheels are independently sprung with transverse leaf springs. The two-seat body was hand-formed and welded from aluminium over a tubular steel support frame.

AC built more models on the same base. The Aceca, unveiled at the Earls Court show in 1954, was a fixed-head coupé with a timber-framed alloy body and an early form of hatchback rear door. The four-seat Greyhound of 1959 used a stretched version of the chassis.

Three engines: AC, Bristol and Ruddspeed

The first engine was AC's own overhead-camshaft straight-six, a design whose first versions were running in 1919. In The Motor's 1954 road test it gave 103 mph (166 km/h), 0–60 mph in 11.4 seconds and 25.2 miles per imperial gallon (11.2 litres per 100 km). The Bristol six raised power, and the Ace-Bristol became the most numerous version.

The last engine was the 2.6-litre six from the Ford Zephyr, tuned by Ken Rudd and sold as the "Ruddspeed". It was offered in four stages from 67 kW (90 bhp) to 127 kW (170 bhp). Only 37 were built, because the Cobra soon drew buyers away. With 75 kW and about 780 kg, an AC-engined car has about 96 kW per tonne; the power-to-weight calculator compares that with modern roadsters.

Racing at Le Mans

The car raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1957 and 1958; for 1958 AC built an Ace LM prototype and tested it at Brooklands. The best result came in 1959. Ted Whiteaway and John Turner drove the Ace Bristol registered 650 BPK to 7th place overall and a win in the 2,000 cc GT class, beaten only by six 3-litre cars. In 1960 the Ace-Aigle was not classified because it had not covered enough distance. In 1962 the car registered BEX 1192 became the last Ace at Le Mans before the Cobra took over.

The road to the Cobra

In September 1961 Carroll Shelby approached AC with the idea of fitting a Ford V8 into the Ace. AC built the Ace 3.6 prototype, chassis CSX2000, and in the United States it received a 4.3-litre (260 cu in) Ford V8. English Wikipedia regards this car as the first Cobra. The Cobra appeared in 1962, first with the 260 V8 and then with the 289, and production of the six-cylinder car ended about a year later.

The lower bonnet and smaller grille of the Ace 2.6 are often credited to Shelby, but English Wikipedia says AC made those changes itself. The Cobra's own story is told in the Shelby Cobra article, and its creator has a page among the people of the car industry.

AC after 1963

Brian Angliss and his company Autokraft built Cobra Mk IV and Ace-based models from 1982 until receivership in March 1996. AC Automotive in Straubenhardt, Germany, built AC cars from 2010 until its liquidation on 24 July 2023. Replicas exist, such as the Hawk Ace, but they are rare. AC models are listed in the AC Cars catalogue, and more cars of the period are in the 1950s classics section.

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