Historics consign ‘The Klemantaski Car’
An AC Aceca originally owned by the famed photographer Louis Klemantaski has been added to the forthcoming Historics at Brooklands auction on 3rd March, with the British sports coupé recently restored and now FIA ‘competition ready’, and expected to fetch offers in the region of £75,000 - £90,000.
Affectionately known as ‘The Klemantaski Car’, 130 BPB was registered by Louis Klemantaski on 13 June 1956 and is one of 151 closed coupé Aceca’s hand built between 1954 and 1963 by the British manufacturer AC Cars – who would later became better-known for the production of the Anglo-American collaboration on the AC Cobra.
Sharing many of the same characteristics as the open two-seater AC Ace, the lightweight Aceca – thanks to an ash wood and tubular steel frame, aluminium engine block and aluminium body panels – was powered by a 90 hp AC engine, and with a stiff suspension set-up providing excellent road holding, had natural racing potential.
With over £100,000 subsequently spent in a no-expense-spared restoration and upgrade to competition set-up by Nigel Dawes and Roger Dowson at Silverstone, including the insertion of a fresh Greg Margetts Ford Zephyr Ruddspeed 2.6 litre engine, the Aceca is now complete with an FIA Technical Passport and once again primed for competition success.
No stranger to competition himself, Klemantaski sampled single-seater racing at Brooklands in the 1930’s, and later went on to enter three Monte Carlo rallies and five Mille Miglia as a navigator, including the 1953 race for Reg Parnell in an Aston Martin DB3, and then in 1956 with Peter Collins at the wheel of a Ferrari 860 Monza that would go on to finish second overall.
It was as a photographer that Klemantaski ultimately made his name however, beginning at Brooklands in the 1930’s, and although enlisted to document the development of Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb at the outbreak of WWII, he would go on to chart the success of Fangio, Gonzales, Moss, Hawthorn and their contemporaries, effectively establishing the motorsport photography genre in the process.
For more information, and to attend the Historics at Brooklands auction on the afternoon of 3rd March, visit historics.co.uk. Entry by catalogue only, available prior to, or on the day of the auction.
