This page exists for two reasons: so that anyone arriving here with the wrong car in mind knows immediately, and because the way the 1998 car came about repeats 1954 so precisely that it is difficult to believe it was unintentional.
The same idea, forty-four years later
The original Aceca was not conceived from nothing. AC had the Ace, a two-seat roadster, and in 1954 it put a fastback coupe roof on that chassis and called the result the Aceca.
The 1998 car is the same move made twice. The rights to the AC name were acquired by Autokraft in 1986, and a new Ace roadster was shown that October, though production was held up until 1993 by a buy-back of Ford's ten million pound interest in Autokraft. That car was hand built at AC's new Brooklands factory, aimed squarely at the Mercedes-Benz SL market and priced accordingly, starting at over fifty thousand pounds. It had a stainless-steel chassis, an aluminium-alloy body, and the Ford Mustang 4.6-litre V8.
Autokraft failed in 1996. The company was bought by Pride Automotive Group Inc and reconstituted as AC Car Group Ltd, and it was that company which announced a closed coupe version of the Ace and gave it the old name.
Roadster first, coupe second, Aceca on the badge. Precisely what happened at Thames Ditton in 1954, and precisely what happened at Brooklands in 1998.
What was actually built
The car displayed at the NEC in October 1998, registered T801 ATP, chassis SA9AC2800VA038001, was a prototype, and Bonhams described it as unique when the car came to auction. Only a few more were made before AC production ceased.
That is as precise as the record gets, and it is worth being straight about the fact. Various sources give a total, most often four, but no figure can be confirmed from a source of any authority. What can be said is that this was a prototype plus a handful, not a production run.
The engine is similarly worth stating carefully. The Ace on which the Aceca was based used the Ford Mustang 4.6-litre V8, and the show car carried an aceca V8 badge on the tail. Some published accounts describe a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged unit or a Lotus V8 instead. This archive follows the auction catalogue and the car itself.
An index of what happened to AC
The prototype's later life says as much about the company as the car does. It passed to its first private owner through Duncan Hamilton, direct from AC Car Group Ltd, with a letter of provenance from AC Cars and the sales brochure. It had covered around thirteen thousand miles. When Bonhams offered it, the estimate was fifteen to twenty thousand pounds, against an Ace that had listed at over fifty thousand when new.
Bonhams closed its account of the company with a line worth repeating, that as had so often been the case with AC, this would turn out not to be quite the end of the story. The name has outlived every company that owned it, which is the one genuine thread running from 1954 to 1998 and beyond.
So which car is which
If you are looking at a low, curved, dark blue coupe on split-rim alloy wheels with a V8, that is the 1998 car and this is not the archive for it.
The car documented here is the AC Aceca built at Thames Ditton between 1954 and 1963: an aluminium body over an ash frame on a tubular steel chassis, with the AC Light Six, the Bristol six or, at the end, the Ford Zephyr unit tuned by Ruddspeed. Three hundred and twenty-odd cars, and a rear-opening tailgate that has a decent claim to being the first hatchback.
They share a name and a manufacturer's badge. Nothing else.
Sources: Bonhams, lot 618, sale 12174, catalogue entry for the ex-NEC Birmingham Motor Show 1998 AC Aceca Coupe, registration T801 ATP. Secondary accounts differ on engine specification and on the number built, and where they differ this page follows the auction catalogue.
