AC Aceca Production Figures

Production totals

Per-variant notes

• Aceca (AE)

  The original Aceca on AC's own overhead-cam six with triple SU carburettors.

• Aceca-Bristol (BE)

  The Bristol-engined car with triple Solex 32 BI downdraught carburettors, the highest-performance production Aceca until the 2.6.

• Aceca 2.6 (RS)

  The final and rarest Aceca, on the Ruddspeed-tuned Ford Zephyr six with triple carburettors.

Rarity and survivors

Rarity does not track value on the Aceca. The Bristol-engined car, at 169 built, is the most numerous of the three, yet it is the most sought-after and most valuable. The AC-engined Aceca, at 151, is the rarer of the two mainstream cars. And the Ford-engined Aceca 2.6 is rarer than both: just eight were made, and only around six are believed to survive.

The Bristol car was also the most exported. Published figures for how many of the 169 Bristol cars were built to export (BEX) specification vary between sources, roughly 64 to 81, with the balance home market cars. Records for a hand-built 1950s car are rarely perfectly consistent, so these splits are best read as close approximations.

The most reliable survivor record is a living one. Rather than a fixed figure, this archive maintains a public chassis registry that grows as owners add their cars, the closest thing to an up-to-date census of surviving Acecas by chassis number, variant and country. Search the registry and view the map if your car is not yet listed, adding it improves the record for everyone.

Chassis prefixes at a glance

Where these figures come from

This archive states 328 cars: 151 with AC's Light Six, 169 with the Bristol engine and 8 with the Ford unit. That is the figure in widest use, and it is the one this archive uses. It is not, however, a figure anyone appears to have published as a total, and it is worth being honest about that.

328 is a sum rather than a stated total. The only attributed statement of the 151, 169 and 8 split that this archive has been able to trace is the English Wikipedia article, which footnotes Sedgwick and Gillies, A to Z of Cars 1945 to 1970, Bay View Books, 1986. Other sites that give 328 do so without citation and in wording close to Wikipedia's. No marque club, registrar or factory record that this archive could reach states it.

Nor does any source say what is being counted. Chassis numbers allocated, cars completed and surviving build records are three different quantities, and for a hand built car they need not agree.

The figures in circulation

Only the 320 can be accounted for. The rest are not reconciled by anything published, and this archive is not going to pretend otherwise.

The chassis numbers do not quite add up either

Chassis prefixes identify the engine, not the body, and they are shared with the AC Ace. Only one range is published in full. The Aceca 2.6 runs RS 5500 to RSX 5507, which is eight numbers for eight cars, and reconciles exactly.

No published range exists for AE, AEX, BE or BEX. Assembling the chassis numbers of cars this archive has observed gives a span from AE 505 to AE 821, which is 317 numbers against 320 claimed cars. The block must therefore extend beyond the observed extremes, by at least three. That is a gap in the evidence rather than a contradiction, but it is a gap.

Two documented cars sit outside the six prefix scheme altogether. AEC 56 is the 1954 Earls Court prototype, registered VPL 441, later sold to Donald Campbell, who fitted a Bristol engine to it. TAE 618 is the one off factory car fitted with a Triumph engine. Neither has a prefix that appears in the AE, AEX, BE, BEX, RS and RSX scheme.

Production dates are less settled than they look

The overall span of 1954 to 1963 is not disputed. The per variant dates are.

For the AC engined car, this archive's registry holds cars recorded to 1963, with three in 1961, two in 1962 and one in 1963. Against that, Wikipedia gives AC Light Six production as ending in 1961, and Vasek's year by year list shows the last AE Aceca in 1961. This archive currently states 1954 to 1963 on the strength of its own registry data, and records the disagreement here rather than presenting the question as closed.

For the Aceca-Bristol, the constraint is when Bristol stopped supplying engines, and there are four incompatible published answers: 1961, the end of 1962, 1963 and 1964. Only the 1963 reading supports an Aceca-Bristol end date of 1963.

A caution about Ace figures

The Aceca is the closed version of the AC Ace, and published sources conflate their production figures often enough that it is worth naming. This archive has found the Aceca-Bristol figure applied to AC engined cars, an Ace page headed with an Ace-Bristol figure, and Ace figures presented on an Aceca page. Ace totals themselves range from 723 to 735 depending on the source. If a figure looks wrong, check first whether it belongs to the other car.

What is not established

• The documentary origin of 328. It is widely repeated and this archive could not trace it to a primary source.
• Whether 328 counts chassis numbers allocated, cars completed, or build records.
• The published chassis ranges for AE, AEX, BE and BEX.
• The end date of AC engined production, where this archive's own data and the published sources disagree.
• The date Bristol ceased supplying engines, where four published answers exist.
• The AC Owners Club's own production figure, which this archive has not been able to obtain and which should not be assumed to be 328.

If you hold a factory record, a club register extract or a copy of Rinsey Mills, AC Six-Cylinder Sports Cars In Detail, that would settle several of these, and this archive would be glad to hear from you and will credit the source.

Sources

• Wikipedia's AC Aceca article and its citation of Sedgwick and Gillies, A to Z of Cars 1945 to 1970, Bay View Books, 1986.
• Vasek's AC Home Page, chassis numbering and year by year listing.
• Conceptcarz, AC Aceca pages, August 2009.
• Supercars.net, AC Aceca overview.
• Hagerty, AC Aceca valuation and overview.
• John Matras, AutoWeek, 15 November 1982.
• The AC Owners Club website could not be reached during research; the club's own production figure has not been obtained.

Attribution & caveat

The figures above are drawn from AC Owners' Club records and long-established published references on AC Cars production. Some published totals differ by a small margin, records for a hand-built car of the 1950s are not always perfectly consistent. Where a variance exists, this archive follows the AC Owners' Club registrar.

For deeper context on individual cars, see the Chassis Guide. For the wider historical picture, see the History page.