AC Cars, originally incorporated as Auto Carriers Ltd., is a British specialist automobile manufacturer and one of the oldest independent car makers founded in Britain. As a result of bad financial conditions over the years, the company was renamed or liquidated many times until its latest form. In 2022, the new corporate structure began the production of new AC Cobra models, with a slightly modified structure to adapt it to modern safety and technology requirements and obtain the European road homologation certificate.[2]
History
The Weller brothers prototype
The first car from the company that eventually became AC was presented at the Crystal Palace motor show in 1903; it was a 20 HP touring car and was displayed under the Weller name. The Weller brothers of West Norwood, London, planned to produce an advanced 20 hp car.
However, their financial backer and business manager John Portwine, a butcher, thought the car would be too expensive to produce and encouraged Weller to design and produce a little delivery three-wheeler.
Autocars and Accessories
In 1904, a new company was founded and named Autocars and Accessories; production started with the Auto-Carrier. The vehicle caught on quickly and was a financial success. Three years later, a passenger version appeared, called the A.C. Sociable. It had a seat in place of the cargo box.
The A.C. Sociable was described in a review of the 1912 Motor Cycle and Cycle Car Show as "one of the most popular cycle cars on the road, both for pleasure and business", and A.C. displayed eight vehicles on their stand, six for pleasure and two for business.[3] The single rear wheel contained a two-speed hub, and the single-cylinder engine was mounted just in front of it, with rear chain drive.
Auto Carriers Ltd.
The company became Auto Carriers Ltd. in 1911 and moved to Ferry Works, Thames Ditton, Surrey — at this time, they also began using the famed "AC" roundel logo. They continued to produce the commercial 3-wheeler tricars and the A.C. Sociable now frequently referred to in their adverts as the Mighty Atom. Their first four-wheeled car was produced in 1913; it was a sporty two-seater with a gearbox on the rear axle. Only a few were built before production was interrupted by the First World War. During the First World War, the Ferry Works factory produced shells and fuses for the war effort, although at least one vehicle was designed and built for the War Office.
At the end of the war, Auto Carriers started making motor vehicles again, designing and building many successful cars at Ferry Works, as well as expanding into an old balloon factory on Thames Ditton High Street. Shortly thereafter, John Weller started on the design of a new overhead-cam six-cylinder engine. The first versions of this design were running by 1919. The Weller engine would be produced until 1963.
In 1921, Selwyn Edge (who had previously been with Napier) bought shares in the company, and was subsequently appointed governing director. He did not get along with Weller or Portwine, who resigned less than a year later. In customary fashion, Edge sought publicity for the company through motoring competition.
In 1921 Sammy Davis joined A.C. as a driver,[4]
AC Cars Ltd.
In 1922, the name changed again to AC Cars Ltd. In 1923[5] and 1924,[6] J.A. Joyce won the Brighton Speed Trials driving an AC.[7] In May 1924, at Montlhéry near Paris, T.G. Gillett broke the continuous 24-hour record in a 2-litre AC, fitted with special streamlined bodywork, covering a distance of 1,949.3 miles.[8] In 1926, the Honourable Victor Bruce, an AC employee, won the Monte Carlo Rally in his 2-litre AC.[9] In 1927, Victor Bruce, with his wife Mildred (Mrs Victor Bruce), assisted by J.A. Joyce, set a 10-day endurance record at Montlhéry, driving an AC Six.[10] Nevertheless, the sales started to fall.
AC (Acedes) Ltd.
Selwyn Edge bought the company outright for £135,000 in 1927 and re-registered it as AC (Acedes) Ltd., but sales, which had been falling, continued to decline. The company was caught by the crash of 1929 and went into voluntary liquidation.
Production ceased for a time, and the company was sold to the Hurlock family who ran a successful haulage business. They wanted the High Street factory only as a warehouse (Ferry Works was not acquired), but allowed the service side of AC to continue.
A single car was made for William Hurlock in 1930. He liked it and agreed to restart very limited production using components left over from previous models.
An agreement was reached with Standard to supply new chassis, the ancient three-speed transaxle was replaced by a modern four-speed gearbox (built in unit with the engine), and by 1932 a new range of cars was launched. Production continued on a small scale, averaging less than 100 vehicles per year, until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The final pre-war car was delivered in June 1940, after which the factory was fully involved with war production.
After the war, AC secured a large contract with the government to produce the fibreglass-bodied, single seat, Thundersley Invacar Type 57 invalid carriages with Villiers 2-stroke engines. The invalid carriages continued to be built until 1976 and were an important source of revenue for the company. Production restarted in 1947 with the
1964 Le Mans
In 1964 the company decided that in addition to supplying Shelby's chassis orders they would enter a works Cobra (which had the chassis number A98) in that year's Le Mans 24 Hours race. They contracted Jack Sears to be one of the drivers. To test its stability and gearing at the speeds the car was expected to reach in the race's three mile Mulsanne Straight they decided to test it beforehand along the only available place that was long enough to reach its potential top speed.[13] This was the northern end of the first section of the six lane M1 motorway which had no barriered central reservation and no speed limit. The use of the motorway for high speed testing was not unusual as Aston Martin, Jaguar and the Rootes Group had also used it.[14]
After Sears had some food at the Blue Boar service station and waited beside it for no traffic to pass for several minutes, he set off at about 4:15 am on 11 June 1964.[14] In top gear the car reached 6,500 rpm on its rev-counter (it had no speedometer) until the needle moved no more. Sears then slowed down and returned to the engineers.[14]
Development of a new chassis
At the end of the 1964 racing season, the Cobra was being outclassed in sports car racing by Ferrari. Carroll Shelby decided he needed a bigger engine. A big block Ford FE series 390 V8 was installed in a Cobra but it was over-powered and the car was now almost undrivable. It was decided that a completely new chassis was needed. With the combined help of Ford's computers and the experience of the AC engineers, the new MKIII was born with 4 in main tubes instead of 3 in ones for the chassis, adding huge cross-braced shock towers and coil springs all around. In 1965 a competition version with a stripped interior, no glove box, different instrument layout and revised suspension was introduced. The competition version also had a more powerful motor with only one carburettor, side exhausts, a roll bar and wider fenders to accommodate racing tires. The engine that was installed in the car was Ford's famed 427 FE NASCAR "Side-Oiler" V8, a power-house engine developing 425 bhp in its mildest street version.
Unfortunately, the car missed homologation for the 1965 season and was not raced by the Shelby team. However, it was raced successfully by many privateers and went on to win races all the way into the 1970s. At the end of 1966, Shelby was left with 31 unsold competition cars; it was decided by Shelby American to sell them to the general public under the name of Cobra 427 S/C or Semi-Competition. These S/C cars have become the most sought after models and can sell in excess of 1.5 million dollars.
In 1966, a street model of the 427 S/C was made available. It came with a tamer motor, optional dual carburetors, a glove box, and exhaust running under the car. Meanwhile, AC went on producing a milder version of the 427 MK III Cobra for the European market fitted with the small block Ford motor. The car was called the AC 289 and 27 were produced. Carroll Shelby sold the Cobra name to Ford in 1965 and went on to help develop the famed racing
Dissolution of the company
After selling the historic High Street works for redevelopment, AC themselves soldiered on as a service operation in the "21st Century" works on Summer Road until the Hurlock family finally sold their holdings in 1986 to William West.
After some complex machinations, the company was split between property interests and the car brand; the former was renamed and the latter was acquired by C.P.Autokraft's owner, Brian Angliss.
Autokraft name acquisition
In 1982, Brian Angliss was running Autokraft, a Cobra restoration shop, parts supplier and replica manufacturer. To further such pursuits, he acquired some of the tooling from Thames Ditton and created the MKIV; the car had US-spec 5 mi/h bumpers, a US-regulations compliant motor, and a larger interior with modern switchgear. About 480 cars were produced in his factory at Brooklands. He also produced a lightweight model which was more in tune with the original Cobra spirit, though it could not be exported to the US owing to federal regulations.
Early cars were sold as the Autokraft MKIV, but eventually Angliss acquired the rights to use the AC name. Derek Hurlock had been strongly protective of the name, but Angliss' high standards of craftsmanship won him over. When the Hurlock family finally sold up in 1986 Angliss fully acquired the AC trademark rights and set up a new AC company as a joint venture with Ford, who had also recently bought Aston Martin. A big conflict followed over the future direction for AC, but Angliss eventually won his independence as well as Ford's continuing and essential cooperation as an engine and parts supplier.
Also interested in aircraft, Angliss restored a Hawker Hurricane XIIB at Brooklands as well as acquiring two ex–Indian Air Force Hawker Tempest IIs as future projects. The Hurricane was registered as G-HURR and was destroyed in a fatal accident at the Shoreham air show in 2007.
Angliss looked for a new car to complement and perhaps replace the MKIV. At the 1993 London Motor Show, he introduced a new vehicle that he named the AC Ace. It was a modern automobile with a stainless steel chassis and an aluminium body, but was expensive to develop and build.
AC Car Group Ltd.
In March 1996, largely due to the cost of developing the new Ace, Angliss' company went into receivership and was eventually sold to South African businessman Alan Lubinsky in December 1996, who continued car production in Weybridge, Surrey, under the name of AC Car Group Ltd.
Both the Cobra Mk IV and the Ace were made, and soon a 'CRS' version of the Mk IV was announced with a carbon fibre body shell, a 212 S/C version with Lotus twin-turbo V8 power, as well as the AC Superblower with a supercharger Ford V8. Two Aceca coupes (enclosed version of the Ace) were also made.
AC Motor Holdings Ltd.
In August 2002, AC Motor Holdings Ltd. was incorporated in Malta.
In 2003, Carroll Shelby International and AC Motor Holdings Ltd. announced the production of an authentic Shelby/AC Cobra, with the production vehicle arriving at dealers in July 2004. Initial models included Shelby AC 427 S/C Cobra and Shelby AC 289 FIA Cobra, which were branded as the CSX 1000 and CSX 7500 Series, respectively. In February 2004, the first handcrafted aluminium body shell was built at Frimley works.
In 2004, a new manufacturing plant was opened in Malta and production of the carbon-fibre-bodied AC MkV began. Due to problems with the factory building, production ceased in 2007.
Acedes Holdings LLC
In August 2008, Acedes Holdings LLC was incorporated in St Kitts.
In 2008, AC announced a joint venture with Brooklands Motor Company (the spiritual successor of Autokraft) in Weybridge, Surrey, and confirmed plans for the continuation of the traditional AC designed tubular chassis and aluminium-bodied models.[18]
In April 2009, a joint venture in Germany was announced to manufacture the new AC MKVI.
AC Automotive
AC Automotive, based in Straubenhardt, Germany, built AC cars under the original name from 2010 to mid-2023. Cars were sold in Germany, France and England, with sales in Luxembourg, Holland, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and Belgium slated for the future. Pricing for the standard ACGT model starts at £104,400 before options. The AC Automotive company went into liquidation on 24 July 2023.[19]
Following a supply deal with GM, the AC MKVI had a novel spaceframe chassis, 6.2-litre V8 engine and 6-speed manual transmission, and new Corvette brakes, retaining the original shape in lightweight composite material with the moulds taken from an original AC MKIII body. The car went into series production in July 2012 after two years of intense prototyping and development.
In 2010, AC announced a joint venture with the USA-based company Iconic which resulted in the design of the ultimate "Cobra": the "Iconic AC Roadster".
At the Geneva Motor Show in 2012, AC Cars showed three different models: the AC MK VI, AC MK II Classic, and AC 378 GT Zagato.
In 2020, AC Cars announced that they would be building a zero-emission version of the Cobra called the Series 1 Electric. Fifty-eight of these electric sports cars will be built alongside a 2.3-litre petrol version called the AC Cobra 140 Charter Edition.[20]
Car models
After the Second World War
AC Autokraft models
AC Car Group models
Superformance export models
AC Motor Holdings models
ACEDES Holdings models
Trains and railbuses
In 1949, AC Cars produced four trains, each consisting three power cars and four coaches, for the Southend Pier Railway in Essex.[28] These remained in use until 1976. The company also ventured briefly into the railway rolling stock business, building five four-wheel railbuses for British Rail in 1958.[29]
See also
- British motor industry
- List of car manufacturers of the United Kingdom
External links
References
- AC Cars announces David Conza as new CEO and investor in Acedes Holdings, LLC - Automobile Magazine - UK 20 May 2022, retrieved 4 June 2022^
- New boss for Britain's oldest car-maker GoAutoNews Premium, 2022-05-23, retrieved 2022-06-04^
- "The Motor Cycle and Cycle Car Show at Olympia", The Auto Motor Journal, 30 Nov 1912, p1448^