Mathewsons Live 2026: the Aceca-Bristol at the Great Yorkshire Showground
A day exhibiting UBR 135, our 1958 Aceca-Bristol, at Mathewsons Live: 500-plus classics, a rally stage and a steady crowd around a rare AC under big Yorkshire skies.
On Saturday I took the Aceca across to the Great Yorkshire Showground at Harrogate for the first day of Mathewsons Live 2026, the big two-day show put on by the family behind Bangers & Cash. It is a proper Yorkshire day out: more than five hundred classic cars, trucks and motorbikes, a live rally stage, the auction the family are known for, live music and food, all under the sort of enormous, fast-moving sky you only seem to get up here.
Why we took the Aceca
UBR 135 went along as an individual exhibit. The Aceca-Bristol is a rare thing (one of 169 built, and one of only 89 right-hand-drive cars that stayed in Britain), so part of the point of bringing it out is simply to let people see one in the metal, with a display card on the screen for anyone who wanted the details.
It is a 1958 car, chassis BE 700, with the Bristol two-litre six rebuilt by Steve Stanton to a fast-road specification, matching numbers throughout, on wire wheels. Handsome in a quiet way rather than a shouty one, which is exactly how I like it.
A crowd all day
What always strikes me at these shows is how many people have never seen an Aceca before. There was a steady stream around the car from the moment we parked up: questions about the Bristol engine, about the hand-built ash frame under the aluminium, and the inevitable, welcome one about how it relates to the Ace and the Cobra that came after it.
More than one visitor had it down as an Aston DB2, and a few were sure it was a Ferrari of some kind, though none could quite say which. It is a fair mistake, and it tells you how few people have ever seen an Aceca.
That is the real pleasure of exhibiting: not standing back and admiring your own car, but talking to people who genuinely care about it, and sending a few of them away having learned something about a marque they might not have known much about.
Good company
The Aceca was in fine company all day, tucked in among some lovely cars, with the Mathewson family up on the stage running the auction across the weekend. I also had a good chat with David Simister, the editor of Classic Car Weekly, who stopped to photograph UBR 135 for a forthcoming issue. More on that when it appears.
God's own country
The drive home, back across towards the moors, is half the reason for going. Events like Mathewsons Live matter for keeping these cars where they belong, out on the road and in front of people, rather than shut away. That, in a sentence, is what this archive is for too. God's own country, and a good day to be out in it.
Gallery
Big Yorkshire skies over the Great Yorkshire Showground. 
The main avenue: trade stands, food and several thousand visitors. 
Beside UBR 135 at the end of a long, good day.
About the author
A lifelong classic-car enthusiast in North Yorkshire, near Thornton-le-Dale, who owns and maintains an AC Aceca, writing the single-model reference he always wished existed. Read the full bio.