Hi Marsh good to hear from you, was the car for sale at the time and did you get to see the car ? I often read your detailed history and information on CF 1 which really fills in all the gaps left over from the period articles in the entry.
I've also often thought as it was Derek Hurlock's favourite car it would be fantastic to see as many 428s as possible all gathered together one day at an annual AC meeting in the UK. So hopefully Kelly will have some luck as possibly the first step towards this unique and once in a lifetime goal....[
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http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=13910&PHPSESSID=d5ee2491a4e895ec9430c1e0427b4278 Ref. last Forum posting at bottom on 4/1/07 (with grateful acknowledgements)
__________________________ "This particular car was the sole original prototype built by Frua in Turin and then became the factory demonstrator. Carrying the chassis number CF1, the car made its debut at the 1965 Motor Show in London and registered shortly thereafter with the Surrey registration number LPH800D and saw active service as brochure photography car, test mule and (the then only available) road test car, with an excellent review in the December 1966 edition of Car magazine, including the cover shot.
Very early on, the car was initially marketed as an AC 427, but subsequent cars became 428's, named after the Ford engine then fitted as standard to sporting AC's - as the 427 'side oiler' was significantly more expensive to source, AC were notorious for occasionally fitting these cheaper units into some Cobras to unsuspecting owners.
On delivery from Frua in Turin, the car was fitted with a manual box, but an auto was substituted very early in its life when in the ownership of AC and in truth the definitive specification of this and indeed any 428 was very much subject to ongoing tweaks. There are rumours that it was bodied in alloy, rather than the steel for all subsequent production cars, though this is unsubstantiated.
It isn't clear exactly why the 428 was chosen for use in the UK TV series "The Avengers", though it is well documented that the writing and production team of Brian Clemens and Gordon LT Scott were true petrol heads and as a result it's possible they were aware of this new exotic offering from AC, though it would be surprising if the use of the car was anything more than a combination of good timing and a friendly chat with Derek Hurlock/Jock Henderson of AC. A Jensen Interceptor would have been a possible rival to be featured in the show, but was receiving its fair share of celluloid time in ITC's The Baron.
Following filming in the summer/autumn of '67 it was then sold by AC to its first private owner who had actually wanted a Cobra as a birthday present for his wife, but as Mk 111/AC289 Cobra production by that time was running down, they bought this instead, directly from AC Sales Manager Jock Henderson and allegedly with no knowledge it had been featured in the show.
Five years later it was advertised in Motor Sport magazine and sold to the US in or around 1973 and against all the odds it survives completely intact in the USA, with less than 40k miles on the clock from new and still on its original Avon tyres and sporting its unique metal hood cover, which was not adopted for general production on other 428's. In 2006 it was advertised by its long term owner mustangsonline for $120 000, but I'm not sure if it sold though. I fell in love with this car as a schoolboy back in the early 1980's following Channel 4 re-runs of the Avengers and spent the next 20 years trying to trace it.
Linda Thorson in "The Avengers" Since the car left the UK in the early 70's, the trail had gone cold and it was widely rumoured to have been broken up to surrender its chassis identity to form the basis of a Cobra clone, like a number of other unfortunate 428's (and unbelieveably the threat of this continues to this day as the value of genuine Cobra's climbs ever higher). I find it quite incredible that it actually survives, so maybe one day I'll finally get to own it! There are a number of excellent photographs of the car on the Frua.de web site including shots of the car being constructed at Carrosserie Frua in Turin during the summer of 1965, right up to the present day with its current American owners.
It is true that Steed originally drove the car and it was then passed onto Tara. Linda Thorson couldn't actually drive at the time of filming (though she was having lessons I think). For whatever reason, she didn't take to the car (or maybe AC just wanted the car back, with it being one of a very few 428's in existence at the time), so she moved on initially to a very early Lotus Elan +2 registered NPW999F, followed by a series 1 export only Europa, PPW999F, both finished in red.
The 428 convertible was officially known as a drophead coupe, not a spider and yes, Keith Moon owned a white fixed head coupe, registered EMX431J though he is rumoured also to have had a drophead too."
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