AC Petite - The Cobra's Tiny Nephew

"Jonee" (Jonee) 09/04/2014 at 14:33 • Filed to: Shelby Cobra, AC, microcars, three wheels

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Yesterday we learned a little about !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , so today I figured we’d cover another tiny vehicle made by a company better known for their performance machines. Although, if you lived in postwar Britain, that statement wasn’t necessarily true.

AC has been around since the beginning of automobile manufacturing, but they’re most famous for the Ace, the car that was the basis of Shelby’s monster, the Cobra. But, their first car in 1903 was actually a three-wheeler, a single cylinder powered delivery trike.

Right before the outbreak of World War II, AC was struggling, selling only about 100 cars a year, so when manufacturing picked up again after the war, they needed something to reverse their fortunes. They found it in a government contract to build invalid carriages for the Ministry of Pensions. AC was back to building three-wheelers in a factory that was a converted former nightclub.

With so many disabled veterans, demand was high and invalid cars were really AC’s bread and butter into the 1970's. In the 60's, they started making the bodies out of fibreglass, painted them light blue and a legend was born. These little invacars, leased from the government, became ubiquitous.

Their success along with recently released three-wheelers from Reliant and Bond, emboldened AC to produce a microcar for the general public. And, in 1953, the Petite was born.

Powered by a 350cc industrial Villiers motor and chain driven, they were primitive, but cheap and fairly reliable. They had a three on the tree transmission and standard rear axle with differential. Strangely, the first cars had big 18" wire wheels in back, and a tiny 8" wheel in front. The Mark II, shown above, went to 4.00 x 12's all around. The engine and gearbox were fitted in a rubber mounted subframe that helped give it a decent ride. 0 to 40 (yes, 40) was “achieved” in a blistering 23 seconds, but it was said the car could cruise at 35 all day and return 60 m.p.g. although that was probably optimistic. Around 4,000 were built by the time production stopped in 1958, making it a success in the microcar world. Several times that number of invalid cars were built and in ‘62, Shelby put a V8 in an Ace, the Petite was forgotten, and the rest was history.

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ttyymmnn > Jonee 03/23/2016 at 09:02

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Nice quick read on a car I’d never heard of. Thanks!