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Louis Klemantaski’s AC Aceca to Go Under the Hammer

The forthcoming Historics at Brooklands auction (March 3) will feature an AC Aceca originally owned by the famed photographer Louis Klemantaski, the British house announced today. The British sports coupe is said to be FIA ‘competition ready’ and is expected to fetch between £75,000 - £90,000.

Also known as ‘The Klemantaski Car,’ the vehicle in question was registered by Louis Klemantaski on 13 June 1956 and is one of 151 closed coupe Aceca’s hand built between 1954 and 1963.

Powered by a 90 hp AC engine, the Aceca was characterized by its light weight, thanks to an ash wood and tubular steel frame, aluminium engine block and aluminium body panels.

The restoration and upgrade to competition set-up was performed by Nigel Dawes and Roger Dowson at Silverstone for £100,000, and included the insertion of a Greg Margetts Ford Zephyr Ruddspeed 2.6 litre engine.

“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,” a statement from Historics reads.

“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,”
the statement concluded.
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