UPG428F, Factory press car

[runt]

Hi all, I remember buying the Autocar in '68 (at age thirteen..!)
   Still have the mag featuring UPG428F on road test, re-reading it now I wonder whether that car survives, it along with the Cobra was instumental in firing my fascination with AC cars which has never waned.I would love to hear any recent info re this car, thanks in advance,
   
   Paul/runt.[:)]

[Rheinubung]

Hello Runt
   
   If the car you remember was blue, it was CF 8 which I attempted to buy in London from an advertising executive in 1976. The car was featured in a number of Brit car mag road tests in 1968. It was snatched out from under me by an eclectic American investor from a Chicago suburb called St. Charles, Illinois. I regret that I do not have his name at hand, but I managed to visit him some years later (late '80's, I think) when I was in his area. He was a contractor who built golf courses. One of his other cars was an original F-code '57 T-Bird which I examined in close detail. CF 8 was alive and well at that time.
   
   Best Regards,
   Mike Reed/Rheinubung

[Classicus]

Dug out a few b/w period Road Test pics of UPG 428F which I think was the only 428 with such a great UK registration number to begin with ? [:)]
   
   From Autosport. John Bolster Road Test October 4 1968. Not sure why the top lines of text are a bit squashed ! [:I]
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   From Autocar. 4 July 1968
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   From Motor. Road Test 28 September 1968.
   
   
   

[runt]

Mike, that is amazing, so pleased to know that the car has survived,its the same with the John Woolfe 427 Cobs, when your'e in your formative years these influences steer you down a certain road and I'm as obsessed as ever all these years later!The 428 sounded to me at the time like the best driving automatic on the market, and though I know the FE is a heavy engine, the Autocar shot of the AC428 cornering looks pretty impressive.
   The factory press AC289, KPD150C, was another of my 'sixties icons', I think Trevor Legate mentioned it having been converted to 427 spec at some stage, does this car survive I wonder?
   
   Regards, Paul.

[runt]

Classicus, thank you also for posting these, I have never seen Bolster's test before, fabulous stuff!
   The 'Motor' test of Sept. '68 I have been after for ages, scouring Evilbay to no avail, if anyone on here has one and wishes to sell, I'll pay well!
   
   Thanks again,
   Paul.[:)]

[Classicus]

Hi Paul,
   
   Would some fairly reasonable photocopies do instead of the full Motor article ? It'll take a day or two and the resolution will be about the same as the John Bolster images, but you can easily copy/ paste over to Word and enlarge it up to about 150% plus so it's readable.
   
   Don't know if you're interested but there's also a few other period bits and pieces I've collected over the years as well ? Some I think on the long thread forum "How many Frua left ?", starting 7/3/07, a third of the way down page 2 and my first post. The rest on page 2 of the forum itself - "Some 428 History"....[:)]

[runt]

Hi Classicus, that's very kind,yes anything is much appreciated, a copy of the test 'Two seater tearaway' would be brilliant,and any other stuff, at your convenience of course,in many ways I prefer the prose used in these old tests to today's writers..or am I getting old(YES..!)Still amazed that these big FE motors seem to need so much more assistance to keep cool than the small block motors, I have a 396 Windsor in a 'fake snake'(runs for cover), can't believe how cool it runs but of course there is plenty of room round it.
   
   Thanks once again,
   Paul.[:)]

[Classicus]

Pleasure, will scan the 6 Motor copies in a day or so [:)]

[Classicus]

Hi Paul
   
   Had a bit of time this morning to scan them, hope the really small print comes out ! [:)]
   
   In Page order 1 - 6....
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

[runt]

Classicus, that is so very kind of you,a fascinating read for me, starting right from the title 'Two Seater Tearaway'; these were always amusing at the that time, the AC 289 test headed 'The Power Game'; the Aston DB6, 'A Very Grand Tourer'..!
   As you have gathered, I have only just discovered these forums, very inspiring to find that many 428 Frua are being maintained in good health, the  chassis restoration pics from Emmanueld showing that these cars are  basically tough, not having seen one 'in the flesh' for years I had no idea whether many had survived.
   
   Thanks again for doing that,
   Paul.[:)]

[cmaddox3]

quote:Originally posted by Rheinubung
   
Hello Runt
   
   If the car you remember was blue, it was CF 8 which I attempted to buy in London from an advertising executive in 1976. The car was featured in a number of Brit car mag road tests in 1968. It was snatched out from under me by an eclectic American investor from a Chicago suburb called St. Charles, Illinois. I regret that I do not have his name at hand, but I managed to visit him some years later (late '80's, I think) when I was in his area. He was a contractor who built golf courses. One of his other cars was an original F-code '57 T-Bird which I examined in close detail. CF 8 was alive and well at that time.
   
   Best Regards,
   Mike Reed/Rheinubung
   

   
   Hello Mike,
   
   I'm not sure if you'll remember me, but I'm Chuck "Number 3" the son of the fellow [Chuck Jr.] who bought the AC coupe in question...  Your memory is pretty good, but you are a bit off on some of the fine details.
   
   If I remember correctly...  The fellow in London who was selling the car was named Whitlam who lived on Baker Street London (with a number very close to Sherlock Holmes's flat...  121 or 122 Baker if I remember right).  For some reason I thought he was a doctor, but maybe it was Mr. Whitlam who had bought it from a doctor.  It's been over 30 years and I was like 14 at the time.
   
   Anyway, The car, CF7 by the way:
   
   , was listed in a US auto magazine's want ad's in late 1975 or early 1976.  I saw the ad and showed it to my father who pursued it's purchase/importation.
   
   As I remember, Mr. Whitlam had interest not only for my father but a fellow from Seattle Washington (You, I presume, Mike) and he decided that whomever got him a down-payment first would get the car.  Remember that this was a time before FedEx, email and the internet, so buying a car from overseas makes today's eBay look like Tiffany's.  The fellow from Seattle mailed a cashiers cheque via 1st Class Airmail, my father Wired $1,000 down-payment via Western Union and my father's payment beat the fellow from Seattle by a day, maybe two at most.  So we won the right to buy the car.
   
   So it wasn't so much that my father "snatched" the car out from under the other fellow, but rather he sent money via a quicker method.  It could have easily worked out the other way.
   
   Incidentally, the fellow from Seattle later flew over to England and enlisted the assistance of Mr. Whitlam to find him an AC coupe to import.  The car the fellow from Seattle bought was Silver if I remember correctly as we had contact with him later in the 1970's...  It turned out that he had grown up, and his parents still lived, in a town a dozen or so miles north of us.  Later on, in the late 1970's or early 1980's we had the pleasure of a visit from  the fellow from Seattle who wanted to  "see the one which got away".  If I remember correctly he arrived on a black Kawasaki  KZ 1000 (or similar) with some very nifty black chrome on it which we hadn't seen the likes of before.  Perhaps you'll confirm or correct my memory.  ;-)
   
   Anyway, we had Mr. Whitlam take the car to the AC Factory and prepare it for life in America, and he sent it off and we sent off funds for the car (and halfsies on the AC servicing) and because both parties were scrupulously honest, the deal went through without a hitch.
   
   The car was originally a very pale-green metalic color as painted by the factory.  Not even British Racing Green, but rather the sort of pale green metallic color you might imagine on a faded AMC Hornet.  Not very attractive at all.  Either the first owner of the AC [besides the factory] or Mr. Whitlam, choose to paint the car a beautiful medium Blue color from an Aston Martin paint chip set.
   
   There are some areas on the tubing around the inside of the bottom of the hood where one can still see the original color.  But the car remains the same AM blue color with black leather interior currently as shown.
   
   So the car originally was pale green [metallic], not blue.  I wouldn't call my father an investor but really more of a collector...  He was a "cut me and I bleed Dearborn Blue" Ford guy who really wanted an Cobra 427 but started looking about 1 year too late as the values jumped from about $8k through $16k to about $33k in the space of a year.  The values of the 427's always seemed to jump ahead of his ability to land one.
   
   The T-Bird you remember was not an F-Code T-Bird, but you could be forgiven for thinking/remembering so...  It actually is the earlier D-Code Twin-Belt Supercharged 1957 T-Bird, built in January 1957 [instead of the later F-Bird's which were built in May] which he had to race it on the beach at Daytona to get it.
   
   
   Anyway, my father passed away a number of years ago and when he died he had about 12-13 cars squirreled away at various places.  His first love was the early V-8 Fords, in particular the '32's and he had a small business he ran on the side [of Golf Course building] making, straightening and customizing 1930's era Ford frames ranging from simple setup to complete boxing and adaption of Jaguar or Corvette suspensions...  Of the cars my father had, I managed to convince her to keep four of them [and believe me, I had to lobby long and hard for those four] and among the ones we kept are the D-Supercharged Bird and the AC.  So as I say, he was more of a collector than a "buy this because it'll be a good investment" sort of guy.
   
   They are kept in a secured, heated garage and are in pretty good shape, but they haven't run in a number of years as my sister and I have been sending the funds necessary to get them back to driving trim to the U.S. Government in order to settle the Estate taxes from our parents.  As a result we have had to take the restorations much slower than we would like.
   
   The D-Bird and the AC are among the more problematic to restore because each one is so bloody rare.  The AC production figures I could quote but they are probably well known here, the D-Bird...  They only made either 12 or 14 of the D-Code Supercharged T-Birds, one of which is in the Museum in Dearborn, the other was sold in Georgia in the early 1980's and no one knows if any others survive.  I am very good friends [as my father was too] with the editor of the Chicagoland T-Bird Club newsletter and he knows of no other D-Code Supercharged Birds which survive to this day.  So we want to take any efforts to get these fellows streetable very cautiously.
   
   Anyway, On a lark this morning I did a search on AC 428 and happened across this forum and later this query and I thought I'd post a "shout-out" for you all.
   
   Incidentally, one of the ways we know the car we have was the car used for testing [aside from the folks at AC telling us so] was the wrinkles in the leather driver's seat on page 3 top of the Motor Test 30/68 article:
   
   [Yeah, that one!]
   
   ... is exact as the wrinkles on the drivers seat in CF7.  The factory told us that this was the factory loaner/test car for several years until one of the folks on the waiting list got antsy and was offered CF7, which he took them up on.  While it was owned by AC it was frequently used for testing variations in the interior and other items.  One thing you'll note that currently CF7 is sans the AC nose badge.  This is the way we received it, and later examples had a small vent located within this badge.  CF7 also is sans the small "Logo vents" behind the fuel filler and sans the Frua badge behind the side panel vents behind the front wheel.  All of the vintage articles show the same configuration (save for the first picture on the Motor Road Test article for some reason...).
   
   I'll note that a number of years ago, Brookland books had a compilation of articles on the AC 428 (as well as some AC 289 and AC 427 filler articles) offered for sale in book form.  I'm not sure where my copy is, but if I should run across it, I'll scan them and make them available for the peanut gallery.
   
   In the meantime, I do have a [rather HUGE] PDF article I can share on my webspace:
   
   http://home.xnet.com/~cmaddox/motorin/AC_Article_AQ_v29-n4.pdf
   
   Which is a 6 megabyte PDF document of a very nice writeup on the AC 428 by Automobile Quarterly.  It'll take some time to download even with high-0speed internet, save it and open it with a PDF reader.  [at least that's my adice]
   
   Mike, I would love to get back in contact with you if for no other reason to catch up with you (irregardless of if your the fellow from Seattle or not] and perhaps to swap some old stories...  Please email me!  We'll talk!
   
   Whew, this turned out to be a long post too!
   
   I'll sum up.  We were told by the factory that UPF 428F was CF 7.  CF 7 is resting currently secure and awaiting the funds that will allow it's reawakening.
   
   Hope this is greeted as good news.
   
   Cheers and I look forward to learning more from you all in the future!
   
   Chuck [Number 3]...
   
   P.S. Pre-emptive thought/statement, not for sale.  Don't bother asking...

[cmaddox3]

Here is a screen snap thumbnail [10% of it's actual size] of that 6meg PDF I linked to previously...
   
   
   
   http://home.xnet.com/~cmaddox/motorin/AC_Article_AQ_v29-n4.pdf
   
   I also ran across these scans which may be interesting to you all...
   
   
   
   
   
   Interestingly tnought this timeline mistakenly has the AC version of the "Cobra Coupe" pictured whith the description of the Shelby/Peter Brock built example on the third page under "Racers 1964"...  The "Brows" over the wheel wells are the biggest givaway on that.    I'd love to know what happened to that one!   I'd expect there would be other errors to be found as well.
   
   Cheers!
   
   Chuck

[TLegate]

Lots of errors - like claiming that 39PH is a '427' (good grief!!) and the car on the first page, AOR692A, did not start life as a Cobra (unless I'm much mistaken). As for calling the AC Ace 'feeble', I would suggest that the so-called author stays well away from Thames Ditton!

[runt]

Hi Chuck, this is very good news,as CF 7 is certainly a piece of history, being color blind I never could figure out what shade her paint was from the very dark cover pic on Autocar of 4 July '68!
   I see that 'Motor' mention a later model featuring the inverted 'u'shape transmission shifter, the last 428 I saw on the road years ago had that, I wonder how many had one like CF 7.
   Thanks for sharing this with us, very happy to know CF 7 is in the hands of a caring keeper.
   
   Paul/runt.[:)]

[cmaddox3]

quote:Originally posted by runt
   
Hi Chuck, this is very good news,as CF 7 is certainly a piece of history, being color blind I never could figure out what shade her paint was from the very dark cover pic on Autocar of 4 July '68!

   
   Hiya Paul,
   
   Pleased to make your acquaintance...
   
   As I said, the parts of the hood frame that weren't covered or oversprayed still show the original color.  It's the sort of bland plain color that one might expect to see on a low-ball U.S. Governement "lowest" bidder car.  Our reaction to it was "Bleech", If I hadn't seen the color, I'd be in the camp that save for Pig-snout Pink there isn't a color that an AC 428 wouldn't look good in.  But I think it'd be hard for even a AC 428 to overcome that shade of green.   We were glad it was painted a far better color.
   
   

quote:Originally posted by runt
   
I see that 'Motor' mention a later model featuring the inverted 'u'shape transmission shifter, the last 428 I saw on the road years ago had that, I wonder how many had one like CF 7.

   
   I don't know but I suspect...  Since CF 7 was a fairly early production example, I'd dare say that this was the pattern at least up through CF 7 on the Automatic equipped cars.  Interestingly enough, the "T" shaped Automatic gear selection shifter is nigh identical with mid-to-late 1960's Ford US production shifters of the Mustang/Cougar/Torino/Cyclone mold.  In fact the "safety lock out" remains on the :"left wing" of the "T" just as it was on US LHD models, to activate it, one has to use their left "pinky" finger or press in with their left palm on the left side of the "T" instead of using their right thumb as it was originally designed for.  Another charming "quirk" of the cross-bred nature of the beast.  I would imagine that the adoption of the "Inverted U" shaped shifter was meant to address this quirk for what was a hand-built luxury vehicle.
   
   

quote:Originally posted by runt
   
Thanks for sharing this with us, very happy to know CF 7 is in the hands of a caring keeper.
   
   Paul/runt.[:)]
   

   When I was a kid growing up, my favorite Hot Wheel was a Brown Maserati Minstral.  Sort of like this one (but more of a metallic Brown:
   
   
   Of course the AC is better!
   
   =)
   
   Cheers!
   
   --  Chuck