One-of-12 AC Brooklands Ace for sale
A colourful backstory is part and parcel of the British sports car - but this one takes the biscuit
The 1990s were awash with reboots of motoring icons. MG returned to its sports car roots with the RV8 on the back of the Mazda MX-5’s immense popularity, Lotus revived the Elan name as a front-wheel drive roadster, while De Tomaso tried to regain its street cred with the Qvale-produced Mangusta.
Add to the list this very car: the AC Brooklands Ace. Like the aforementioned marques, AC Cars enter the ‘90s after a particularly turbulent couple of decades. Despite its status as a performance powerhouse in the '60s, the sports car maker had gone off the boil with the visually challenging ME3000 a decade later and was subsequently sold to a Cobra restoration firm in the '80s. True, there’s always a market for Cobra continuation cars and the AC name added a level of authenticity - but for the outfit to return back to its former glory it needed an all-new model.
Loosely based on the hilariously named Ace of Spades concept from 1986, the Brooklands Ace was a front-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car built around a Reynard-developed stainless-steel chassis with handmade aluminium body panels. It wouldn’t be a British sports car without glass fibre, which is solely used for the front and rear bumpers, but even then the Brooklands Ace didn’t seem as though it’d been thrown together on a shoestring. The interior perhaps didn’t receive quite the same level of attention, with buttons apparently thrown at a wooden panel on the dashboard haphazardly, yet it still offered a similar level of luxury to, say, a Bristol of the same era.
Styling, meanwhile, was handled by International Automotive Design (IAD) after Ford, a majority shareholder in AC Cars at the time, allegedly botched the original attempt. Ford was naturally cheesed off that its interpretation wasn’t chosen for the production model and ultimately sold its share to AC Cars owner Brian Angliss, leaving him the sole owner of the firm. The Blue Oval did, however, supply a Mustang-derived 4.9-litre V8 and a four-speed automatic, though AC was able to source a five-speed manual from Born-Warner. Early models developed a meagre 228hp, though outputs of up to 324hp were available on later supercharged models. (Although let's bear in mind that this is an old, hand-made British sports car - so consider those numbers more of a rough guide than the rule.)
That explains why this particular Brooklands Ace is said to produce ‘circa 300hp’, because its Mustang V8 was sourced in 2005 and is probably slightly newer. In fact, the car didn’t leave the factory until 2003 – three years after production had allegedly ceased – and even then it was sold in a disassembled state. The car was presumably pieced together bit-by-bit throughout the noughties, before eventually being registered in 2009 (hence the 09 plate). Despite its very unconventional origins, this Brooklands Ace has clearly been cherished over the years, with just 3,000 miles on the dash.
It's time it found a new home and hopefully the next owner won’t be shy about adding a few miles onto the clock. True, these are exceptionally rare with just 46 original examples being produced, with the ad claiming that this is a one of 12 run-out ‘Series 3’ car. But it could be yours for just £19,995, which is a chunk of change cheaper than other V8 British brutes such as the MG RV8 and TVR Griffith. A darn sight rarer, too, and when someone inevitably asks ‘what on Earth is that’, you’ll have one heck of a story to tell.
SPECIFICATION | AC BROOKLANDS ACE
Engine: 4,942cc V8 (stock)
Transmission: five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 228@4,000rpm (stock)
Torque (lb ft): 300@3,500rpm (stock)
MPG: N/A
CO2: N/A
Year registered: 2009
Recorded mileage: 3,000
Price new: £49,995
Yours for: £19,995
In a darker metallic I like the idea of one of these, super rare, V8 woofle and not much money. Edited to add here’s another- the car featured is definitely an oddball, even for one of these?
If you're in the market for something like this it's a bargain. I would expect that there aren't many bits that a good Ford spares man couldn't identify and supply.
And it's red, so that's a good thing.
In a darker metallic I like the idea of one of these, super rare, V8 woofle and not much money. Edited to add here’s another- the car featured is definitely an oddball, even for one of these?
But if you showed me a photo of either and told me it was a 90's Chrysler Sebring my inner sceptic wouldn't raise an eyebrow. And that can't be a good thing.
Neither I'm not sure what the "judged by the standards of the period" comment was about; the R129, 8 Series, X100 XK, 456 and DB7 were all contemporaries, and entirely handsome things...
It's not horrible looking either .Good colour .
https://www.brightwells.com/timed-sale/5372/lot/63...
At £20k I'd say it's an absolute bargain compared with the money people throw at other cars.
Certainly, this particular car is not one of the best I have seen of the marque, the headlights and wheels are all wrong however, a well sorted one is a nice drive. Spares wise the most difficult things to source are the motors and other parts of the electric roof mechanism ( which have Peugeot parts and other suppliers' bits) also glass for the doors which came in two different glass thickness sizes depending on the year of the car, these were specially manufactured for the car and so replacement would be expensive. There was also a prototype fixed head coupe version which at one time was in the Cambridge area but still required a certain amount of engineering and completion, this unfortunately has now slipped off my radar.
Latest non-mover was the AC 378 GT Zagato, a design inherited from the Perana Z-one project in South Africa. I looked long and hard at the Z-one but couldn't bring myself to buy a supposedly modern car with no ABS when fully fettled modern sports cars were available for the same money,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_378_GT_Zagato
On a different theme some may remember the mid-engine AC 3000 ME which had supposedly reliable Ford mechanicals but was totally eclipsed by the similarly priced Lotus Esprit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_3000ME
See I DO get how Caterham looked at the 21 and thought that - to be fair the 21 looked brilliant, and it’s only with the benefit of looking back you understand that that car just didn’t add a lot of usability to the 7, and so it didn’t work despite the pretty face. But this car? Not so much!
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