A Racer Returns

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The Sports Car Club of America was founded in 1944 by a group of car-mad youngsters with a taste for speed. It remained the easiest way into ‘proper’ grass-roots motor sport until 1962, when a rule allowing factory-supported cars to compete radically changed the playing field. The trouble, in those early days, was that few off-the-shelf American cars were appropriate for spirited competition.

European sports cars were the obvious choice, and hundreds of MGs, Alfa Romeos and Porsches were stripped-out and hopped-up by keen amateur racers throughout the States. The car that made perhaps the biggest splash of all was the AC Ace Bristol. By no means a thoroughbred, the Ace was the product of happenstance: John Tojeiro’s clever tubular chassis frame, fitted with an already long-in-the tooth AC six-cylinder engine, was exactly what the failing Thames Ditton firm needed to boost sales. A Bristol-engined version soon followed, and of the 463 built more than half of them went Stateside. Between 1956 and ’62 the Ace dominated SCCA events, and it was only the rule change that truly ended its reign.

The 1958 Ace Bristol seen here spent its whole life in the USA, campaigned enthusiastically in SCCA events by its three careful owners. It has never been restored, just maintained to a high standard, and it still proudly wears battle scars earned in its wild youth. The car has now returned to the UK for the first time in 60 years, and The Automobile magazine was lucky enough to get behind the wheel – you can read the full story in the November issue, which is out now.

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