AC Cars returns to UK

By Tim Pollard

Motor Industry

23 April 2008 14:28

AC Cars is coming back to Britain to build its sports car range at Brooklands. It follows an unsuccessful foray to manufacture cars in Malta – which has ended in a legal dispute over the island factory.

The company will make the original AC Ace, the AC MK11, the AC MK11 FIA and the AC MK111 at an AC specialist based in Surrey, England, employing artisans to make the aluminium chassis. A new facility in Michigan is also planned to make cars for the US market.

Volumes will be low, however – we’re talking around ten cars a year priced at £150,000 each – but it will also restore and service cars.

AC Cars boss Alan Lubinsky had planned to switch production overseas to save cash -  but the Maltese adventure has ended up in court, after a dispute over the factory in Malta.

Now Acedes Holdings LLC, the owner of the AC brand, has struck the new deal with AC specialist Brooklands Motor Company to build sports cars in the UK again.

It has been based in Jack Brabham’s former workshops in Weybridge, Surrey for the past two decades.

By Tim Pollard