Provided there will be no hiccups, I'm hoping to present to the world the last RS car produced at the Concourse d'Elegance at the Kohler International Challenge at Road America, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
The car is getting it's final coat of paint now and will be in final assembly during the next few weeks.
The car in question was the butt of jokes on this forum in 2008. It did, however, provoke my curiosity and I decided to contact the seller after the auction ended with no bids.
As it turned out, the car in question was indeed the last RS car produced by AC. In 2004 two cars were produced on original tooling by AC at Frimley: RS 5037 and RS 5038. 5037 was, as I understand it, completed by Steve Grey at AC Heritage for a client. 5038 came to the US to be built as a demonstrator for the start up AC heritage USA division, which was to be headed by Mitch Lampert. He, at that time, owned a restoration facility for vintage WACO aircraft and figured he had the craftsmen in house to build AC's.
For one reason or another, this did not end up happening and RS 5038 sat in a hangar for some time, until I picked it up there in January of 2009.
Mitch Lampert put me in touch with Alan Lubinski, whom I had some nice and informative conversations with about the car and he went on to send me official certification of the car and chassis number and sent me a scan of the Ac registry with the number entered. Steve Grey later also confirmed the car's authenticity.
The Cars were to be finished with Triumph 6 cylinder engines for Ac Heritage. This I did not want to do. As 2.6 Zephyr Fords are not as easy to come by on this side of the pond, I decided to take some creative liberty and finish the drive train as the original Cobra prototype, with a Ford 260 V8 with Cross-Ram intake and Weber side drafts, coupled to a 4 speed top loader. The car is therefore similar to the "cutaway" image produced for the first road test of the 260 Cobra as published by Sportscar Graphic, in 1962.(published in Rinsey Mills' book "Original AC Ace and Cobra"
Over the past year I have sourced parts to complete the work, both in the UK as state side. Ron Mack, from RP Mack motorsports in Spring Lake, MI did all of the fabrication, built the engine and assembled the car. It's in it's final stages now, and, as I mentioned earlier, I'm hoping it will be completed very soon.
The car will be finished in a single stage urethane Red from Dupont. A nicely sophisticated darker red. It will have wire wheels with 5 inch rims, painted in body color. Interior will be black carpeting and leather with tan seats. It will have a wrap around perspex windscreen.
Photos will be forthcoming. I would like to write a story about the process with photos for the ACtion magazine as well.
Gus
