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1984 AC 3000ME
Country of Origin: UK
Design Info: A two-seat, mid-engined sports car with a fiberglass body and steel/fiberglass perimeter frame with a monocoque tub. Unlike many low-volume sports car, the 3000ME predominantly used bespoke, in-house designed and produced components in its construction.
Engine Info: The 3.0 liter Ford Essex V6, which aside from various Ford models found frequent use in other British sporting cars, like the Gilbern Invader, Reliant Scimitar, and various TVRs. In the 3000ME, the Essex made 138 hp and could propel the car to 60mph in 8.5 seconds and a top speed of 125 mph. A significant number of the cars received a turbocharged conversion by Rooster Turbos (operated by Robin Rews) which boosted power to just over 200 hp, but while overtures were made to offer the setup as a factory option, this never transpired. Other attempts to produce a faster version of the car included one powered by a 2.2 liter turbocharged Chrysler engine, and another by a 2.5 liter Alfa Romeo V6, though these did not go beyond the prototype stages.
Type: The AC 3000ME is similar in performance and style to several other contemporary compact, mid-engined sports cars like the Fiat X1/9 or the Pontiac Fiero. However, it’s price put it in competition with more powerful models like the TVR Tasmin and Lotus Esprit.
History: The Weller Brothers built their first car in 1903 as a 20hp touring car. Their financial backer, however, was convinced that a cheaper utility vehicle would sell better, and so the brothers pivoted, and Auto Carriers Ltd. Was born, selling a three-wheeled cycle truck called the Auto-Carrier, and a passenger version called the Sociable.
The brothers hadn’t given up on building more luxurious and sporting models, and by 1913 they had built a production four-wheeled car, the AC 10, an open-bodied sports coupe. By 1922, the company had been renamed AC Cars, and had begun competing in racing events at the direction of governing director Selwyn Edge, who had previously been employed at Napier. Events like the Brighton Speed Trials and Monte Carlo Rally became advertisement for the company after wins with AC models.
In 1927, Edge bought the company outright for £135,000, but after the beginning of the Great Deperession in 1929, the company was failing. Brothers William and Charles Hurlock then bought the company’s assets, intending just to use the old factory as a warehouse, though they allowed the service branch of the company to continue operations. William requested a single car be built for him, which he liked well enough to resume limited production of new cars based on old components.
In 1932, new models were introduced and AC produced these models all the way up to the beginning of World War II. After the war, the first new AC would be produced in 1947, the 2-Litre, under the new direction of Derek Hurlock, son of William. Derek had joined the company in 1939 and worked for three years before then serving four years in the Royal Navy. In the summer of ‘53, while considering a replacement for the 2-Litre, Derek would go for a ride in a prototype sports car with his uncle Charles, which impressed them enough to buy and adapt the design into the most famous AC sports car. Beginning production later that year, the AC Ace was a success in its own right, but when Carroll Shelby approached Derek in 1961 with a proposal to engine the sports car with high-powered Ford V8s, the Cobra was born.
Carroll had joined Ford’s GT40 program by 1965, and unfortunately for AC, the Cobra’s success would be more and more associated with Shelby than the British company, and other models were needed. Derek’s approach was to focus on a more upscale, luxurious model: 428 Frua. By the time of the 1973 Oil Crisis, however, it seemed offering a more economic model would be prudent.
Meanwhile, one of Ford’s GT40 engineers, Peter Bohanna, had also been working on something new. By 1967 he had moved from Ford to Lola, working on the T70 race car. It was at Lola where he met racing mechanic Robin Stables, and by 1968 the two of them had formed a freelance engineering firm called Bohanna-Stables. They received a contract to design an economical, mid-engined sports car to be powered by the new British Motor Corporation E-Series engine.
As the E-Series faced early production difficulties, the car was not completed until 1972. The Bohanna-Stables Diablo, as it was called, was unveiled at the 1972 Racing Show in London to great praise and favorable comparisons to the styling of Italian exotics like the De Tomaso Mangusta and Dino 246GT. Keith Judd, an auto sales manager at AC, spoke with the partners and drove their car to the AC factory at Thames Ditton to present it to Derek Hurlock.
Derek was skeptical at first, unsure if this car would fit the brand ethos and concerned about the amount of design work it would take to turn the car into a production model. Nevertheless, he trusted his team, and perhaps considered the similarity of his previous experience with the Ace. He made a deal with Bohanna and Stables, buying the design to be adapted to production and contracting them as consultants to his own engineers. He hoped to have the design ready for show and production by 1973.
Issues with production arose almost immediately, The spaceframe of the Diablo was considered unsuitable for production, so the entire chassis was redesigned as a perimeter frame with a steel tub and fiberglass caps. Perhaps worse, BMC refused to supply E-Series engines, believing that their production of the engines could barely support the numbers needed for the Austin Maxi. AC looked to Ford, who was still supplying engines for the Frua, and secured the Essex V6. As Bohanna and Stables had designed the Diablo to take advantage of the E-Series in-sump transmission, a bespoke transmission needed to be created to maintain this advantage. That meant even more design time.
Even so, the car was ready for show at the 1973 London Motor Show, where it was unveiled as the AC 3-Litre. Eventually this name would be changed to the 3000ME, meaning simply ‘3000 cc, Mid-Engined’. AC hinted to the press that the car would be available for £3000-4000, and that when production commenced 10-20 cars would be built per week. Customer deliveries were expected to begin in summer of 1974.
In reality, the car was still not ready. External styling was barely completed by 1974, and then certification became a problem. The car failed its crash test, and while this was not uncommon even among larger manufacturers, it took a heavy toll on the small company. While customer orders were coming in fairly strong, redesigns cost the company time and money. Inflation, spurred on by the energy crisis, had also hit the 3000ME hard. When the car was finally available on the market in 1979, the price had practically tripled, up to £11,300.
At that price, it was no longer the affordable, economical sports car that Bohanna and Stables had designed. While the motoring press did praise the car’s practicality, spaciousness, and fuel efficiency (especially for a mid-engined sports car), it was very critical of the car’s performance compared to its apparent rivals, like the Lotus Esprit. Unsurprisingly, this heavily affected production and sales as well. Over five years of production, AC built around 80 3000MEs, far fewer than the 1200 customer orders that had accrued by 1979, and farther still than the estimated 5000 that should have been built in that time period based on early estimates. When AC discontinued the car in 1984, a new company called AC (Scotland) licensed the name and design to build more cars, but only remained in operation for about a year. Between AC and AC (Scotland), just over 100 cars were produced.
Derek Hurlock, who had been in poor health through the early 80s, sold rights to the AC name and eventually the whole company to Brian Angliss of Autokraft, who repaired Cobras as well as building high quality replicas. Though AC has changed hands several times since, it remains a producer of limited volume sports cars with a heritage of performance, though more than anything always chasing the legacy of the Cobra.
Why it’s cool/unique/significant: AC will always be known best for the Ace and Cobra, which is why modern versions continue to be built to this day. Reducing the company to a one-trick pony, however, isn’t fair to its history. The 3000ME is a part of that history, and even though its own story is somewhat one of failure, the car itself had a lot of potential.
In fact, its potential was such that multiple attempts were made to adapt or reintroduce the car, similar in some ways to the Cobra itself. Ford examined the possibility with the AC Ghia, with an Italian-designed body, which was even considered a possible rally contender. Ghia also presented a concept car called the Lincoln Quicksilver, a sort of four-door sedan or shooting brake, though it was unlikely to have ever been intended for production. Even Carroll Shelby got into the game, helping build a Chrysler-powered model for a SEMA show and presented the car to Lee Iacocca for consideration. Ultimately, Iacocca rejected the car, but at one time there was a significant chance for another AC/Shelby collaboration.
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