Messages

Hello Andy - lovely to hear from you!

Thanks for the quick response - much appreciated. It sounds like you've had a busy few months bringing it back from the brink.

I'm in the process of selling my Aurelia, which is going to Holland, all things crossed.

I won't darken your doors until that's actually happened, as we all know these things aren't done, until they're done. Let's stay in touch.

Kindest regards

hello all - it's been a while...

I see CF66 is back up from sale, on Car and Classic, for £84500.  I recall it sold last year with Bonhams, for just a tad under £60k; requiring recommissioning.  The seats look like they've been retrimmed or repaired, but outside of that, it looks outwardly similar to how it was sold last year.

I am potentially in the market for a reasonable priced, but usable 428 - does anyone know this car? I can see from it's past auction history that's it's travelled around a fair bit over the last 20 years.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Lee

Do we know who's selling it?

Is it still in Toni's ownership, or has someone else acquired it?

I'd be genuinely interested to learn more.

Best regards

Lee

I see that Tony's 'semi lightweight' 428 has now come up for sale at £135k with a trade seller in Wallingford.  It would present a good opportunity to gently return it back to something approaching a more standard specification.

With an adjustment to the price, I might well be interested in this...

Lee

Dear all,  I'm sorry for my lateness in coming to the table to share an external perspective on forum anonymity; I am currently a non member, who occasionally contributes to the forum when I have something of worth to share, as a long term 428 and Cobra enthusiast and newly joined Club member.

Outside of the ACOC I'm a member of The 289 Register and indeed a founding member of The Cobra Register too. Over the years, I have witnessed some highly disappointing conduct from non members (but forum contributors), of which many have chosen to hide behind a nickname, or indeed no name at all.  When embarking on the new forum for another club of which I am a member, our board took the decision to ask for people to use their given names , in the hope that this will drive more gentlemanly behaviour, underpinned by a policy of etiquette where any inappropriate conduct will result in forum threads being removed, or worse still, forum access taken away to those individuals in the belief that this will hopefully drive a happier online community.     

It is a great source of sadness to me that anonymous members criticise such an august body as the ACOC; it is such a well respected club in automotive circles with a genuinely incredible legacy of curating truly significant cars.  Driving and indeed maintaining momentum of any club is a constant challenge given the ratio of active to inactive members and I wish you well for the future, as you are custodians of real greatness that warrants respect.  As an aside, I thought the NEC stand looked great, by the way.

With my best regards,

Lee Marshall

Fantastic Kelly - well done.
   
   One question, has it remained in the same ownership since 2003?  Did it find a new owner at that time?
   
   Lee

Well done Kelly, that's absolutely brilliant progress; I sincerely hope I play a part in its' discovery, second time around, so do keep us posted on progress.
   
   The name of the owner of Mustangs Online temporarily escapes me (and it's driving me absolutely mad!)
   
   Interesting to note that between the dates of April 1970 when the car was first advertised for sale in Motorsport magazine and February 2003, when I stumbled upon the car, it had only covered an additional 11000 miles, so it was clearly little used during its new life stateside.
   
   It also retained its original UK tyres at this point and the two of three photo's I was sent back in 2003 showing the car in the Mustangsonline workshop suggested it remained highly original and intact, with its original Bluemels Pyramoid number plates still fitted, clearly displaying the registration number LPH800D and the unique hood cover in place. I can only apologise that I didn't have the foresight to retain these photo's, but life became a little crowded soon after and LPH faded from the forefront of my mind for a time.
   
   Good luck in your search Kelly; hopefully CF1 won't slip through the net again!
   
   Lee

Kelly, I think it's still in its original paint, which is a metallic dark red with black trim.
   
   The key to finding the car will be to trace the proprietor of mustangsonline, which I think may now be defunct, as there are no signs of it trading on the web.  I'm sure those in the Mustang community would be able to provide a lead, as it was a well known purveyor of all things 'stang.
   
   They bought the car in or around 1973 and I've seen no evidence that it has changed hands in the intervening 15 years since I first located the car via their website.  Of course, it could have changed hands discretely...
   
   regards
   
   Lee

Tim,
   
   Thanks for that - much appreciated.
   
   I saw the Octane piece and was beguiled by the colour.  I'm looking for a similar hue for my car, not an Ace sadly.
   
   I will make contact with Steve Gray.
   
   Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction.
   
   Best regards
   
   Lee

I don't know the owner, hence me asking on the forum.

This car was also seen to good effect in the 1970 produced, but 1971 released ITC 'B' movie, The Firechasers, starring Chad Everett, an American actor who also owned a Cobra in real life, CSX2515; originally finished in Rouge Iris, but later repainted by Everett in a dark silver, carrying the California registration number PGE667.

Ordered new by Everett from Hi-Performance Motors Inc in January 1965, he kept that car until 1975 and it was later purchased by Lynn Park in 1985.
   
I believe 6018 also made an appearance in the 1973 Twentieth Century Fox production 'Digby, the biggest dog in the world', once a stalwart of childhood Christmas day mornings on ITV in the late 1970's and starring Jim Dale.

Hi Classicus,
   
   Thank you - the car has been something of a labour of love to be honest and every once in a while I edit the piece, which I suspect doesn't show me in a good light, but it seems to be the only tangible piece out there that relates specifically to the car. The most recent edit has a little more content than the post above; see below...
   
   Back in the early 2000's, on the off chance, I searched the registration number out on the web - it may even have been in the days before Google, if there is such a thing; it was something I'd done any number of times, without success, but this time I got a positive match from Mustangsonline.  I then contacted them by email as to enquire about the car and the owner at the time was kind enough to share some recent photo's in the workshops of Mustangsonline, now sadly lost in the mists of time.  LPH appeared to be in very good health, looking for all intents and purposes to be no different from when it graced Saturday night TV, with it's original British cast aluminium number plates and its metal tonneau cover still in place.
   
   The owner suggested it was completely unmolested and was even still sitting on its original Avon tyres, which I guess dated from its time with first private owner Brenda Messenger.  The car was certainly up for sale then, at $120,000, though I suspect that it wasn't being actively marketed, as it didn't appear anywhere visible as being for sale; I'd have certainly spotted it.
   
   I do find it surprising that it hasn't resurfaced in recent times as the wider world of car enthusiasts have finally recognised the appeal of 428's, after so long in the shadows.
   
   Marsh
   
   This particular car was the sole prototype built by Pietro Frua in Turin and then became the factory demonstrator for AC Cars. Carrying the chassis number CF1 (CF for Carosserie Frua), it made its debut at the 1965 Motor Show at Earl's Court, London and was registered shortly thereafter with the Surrey number LPH800D. It saw very active service in a variety of roles including brochure photography car, test mule and (as the then only available) road test car, with an excellent review in the December 1966 edition of 'Car' magazine, including a particularly moody front cover shot.
   
   Very early on, the car was initially marketed as an AC 427 and the earliest AC produced press material did refer to the car as exactly that, but subsequent cars after CF7 were referred to as 428's, after the capacity of the Ford engine then fitted as standard to all sporting AC's. The 427 'side oiler' was significantly more expensive to source from Dearborn, and AC (or more accurately, Carroll Shelby Automotive) were notorious for occasionally fitting these cheaper 428 'Police Interceptor' units into Cobras unbeknownst to unsuspecting owners; and ultimately all subsequent Frua bodied ACs had this cheaper engine fitted.
   
   On delivery from Frua, the chassis was initially fitted with a manual 'box, though an auto was substituted very early in its life when the car was still in the ownership of AC. In truth the definitive specification of this and indeed any other 428 was very much subject to ongoing tweaks as is so often the case in limited volume production cars. It is rumoured to have been bodied in alloy, rather than the steel for all subsequent production cars, and when the car was advertised for sale in 1970 (see below), the accompanying description did suggest this was indeed the case.
   
   It isn't clear exactly why the 428 was chosen for use in the TV series, though it is well documented that the writing and production team of Brian Clemens and Gordon LT Scott were genuine 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 in the series was anything more than a combination of good timing and a friendly chat with Derek Hurlock and Keith Judd of AC down in Thames Ditton.
   
   Mind you, there were few other more exciting British built high performance sports cars newly launched to the market in 1967, excepting perhaps the Interceptor or FF; Jensen had a well established relationship with Lew Grades' rival production company ITC who produced The Baron, which was also on air at the time of the ABC produced Avengers (though by 1967 it was a couple of years old and featured a rather (by then) old fashioned Jensen C-V8, falsely registered BAR1). The more contemporary factory supplied Interceptors regularly appeared in ITC's 'The Champions', notable for their Sandwell district 'EA' registration numbers. That said, you can quite see John Steed tooling around the Hertfordshire countryside in HEA4D, the first production FF!
   
   Although still relatively new, LPH800D was in fact quite battle scarred by the time it featured in The Avengers - the passenger side front bumper had a nice ding and you can also spot a big dent in the driver's side door from some camera angles. Following filming in the summer/autumn of '67 it was presumably refreshed and then sold by AC to its first private owner who had actually wanted a Cobra as a birthday present for his wife, but as production of the home market coil sprung AC 289 Sports by that time had all but ended, they bought this instead, directly from AC Sales Manager Keith Judd and allegedly with no prior knowledge of its small screen fame, which is surprising given The Avengers was at the time the most popular show on British television with regular audience figures of 8 million plus from its peak time Saturday night slot.
   
   In April 1970, the car was advertised in Motor Sport magazine and by that time this owner was well aware of it's former TV role, mentioning somewhat snootily in the ad (complete with a photograph of the car)'for those who care for such things'. The asking price was £3250 and the car had by this time covered 29000 miles and significantly was described as having aluminium bodywork. The owner at that time was a Brenda Messenger, who lived in Ledborough Lane in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire and she claimed that her husband was growing a little too attached to the car for her liking, so she was seeking something 'a little more feminine, such as a Mercedes SL'. I'm not sure how long the car took to sell, but it eventually appeared Stateside in or around 1973. In the long period since the car left the UK, 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 (or 'air car', as they're referred to by the Shelby American Automobile Club), like a number of other unfortunate 428's (unbelievably this practice continues to this day as the value of genuine Thames Ditton constructed Cobras climb ever higher, with at least 5 428's of the total 81 built known to have suffered this fate).
   
   I fell in love with this car (and more to the point, with Linda Thorson) as a teenage schoolboy back in the early 1980's following Channel 4 re-runs of The Avengers and a subsequent profile of the 428 over two editions of Classic Cars magazine in 1983. I spent the next 20 years desperately trying to trace it to confirm that it had survived. Against all the odds not only had it survived, but it exists completely intact in the USA and remains exactly as it left the factory, with less than 40k miles on the clock, still on its original Avon tyres and sporting its unique metal hood cover, which was not adopted for general production on subsequent 428's. In 2003 it was advertised by long term owner mustangsonline for $125 000.  The car sold onto a new owner at that time and survives to this day in safe and appreciative hands in the US.
   
   With the passing of time, what seemed like an impossible amount of money then now seems like a positive steal - how much is it worth today, should it come to market? Quite possibly $400-500,000 I would venture to suggest given its historical significance...
   
   I find it quite incredible that it actually survives, so perhaps 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 Carosserie Frua, Turin during the summer of 1965.
   
   It is true that Steed originally drove the car and it was then quickly passed onto Tara. Actress 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 more likely that AC just wanted it back, with it being one of a very few 428's in existence at the time and filming being done in distinct slots, rather than in one go presenting a logistical headache), so she moved on initially to a very early Lotus Elan +2 registered NPW999F, followed by a series 1 export only (but right hand drive) Europa, PPW999F, both finished in bright red with black trim and judging by the consecutive registrations, both cars were probably registered at the same time for the express purpose of being Lotus press or customer demonstration cars.
   
   The 428 convertible was officially known as a Drophead Coupe, rather than a spider and yes, Keith Moon did own a white Fixed Head Coupe, registered EMX431J though he's rumoured also to have had a Drophead too, though that remains unsubstantiated and no photographs have yet surfaced. There is a suggestion that Led Zep drummer and utter petrol head John Bonham owned one too, though there may be some confusion here as he certainly owned a 427 Cobra in the mid 1970's that carried the famous 'COB1' registration number. This car was apparently bought from dealer and former Le Mans winner Duncan Hamilton, though the car photographed in Bonzo's biography, written by his brother Mick is a standard bodied 427, rather than the long wheelbase twin turbocharged special that 70's Cobra 'restorer' Brian Angliss subsequently built; and it was this car that was later owned by Cobra specialist Rod Leach of Nostalgia. The Bonham Cobra merely carried the COB1 plate for a time and that number then passed onto the Angliss special at a later point in time.

Hi Classicus
   
   It's good to see my IMCDB posting on CF1 appearing on the hallowed pages of this site - I genuinely take the compliment :-)
   
   I'd also love to hear where the car is now - it took me ages to find it back in the early 2000's and with the benefit of  hindsight, I should have bought it when I had the opportunity, had I been in a financial position to do so (and I sadly wasn't...)
   
   Oh the regret...
   
   Marsh

Hello everyone,
   
   I'm very keen to identify the precise colour of AE40 as I'm trying to settle on just the right shade of Maroon and this does appear to be it.  Could anyone point me in the right direction please?
   
   Much appreciated
   
   Lee Marshall