GETTING BACK IN THE SADDLE AFTER 44 YEARS
I just wanted to add to the history of the AC 289 Sports featured on the cover of the February issue of C&SC. My father, Rudolph Egeler, bought the car secondhand in the late ’60s and sold it in 1978 for £7000 via well-known AC dealer Rod Leach. He had bought it from Bunty Scott-moncrieff, ‘purveyor of horseless carriages to the nobility and gentry,’ who mostly specialised in Rolls-royce and Bentley. When we got the car it had wire wheels and was painted metallic pale green, but he had it resprayed Rosso Red by the Thames Ditton factory to match our Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona.
My father said this: “PPD 467E – I will never forget that number. It looks in fabulous condition, and it’s lovely to know we had the privilege of owning it. Great memories. It’s been so well looked after, and now we know at last how much it is worth.
“It had a hardtop, and when that was not in use I would keep it in the hallway of our house in Goldstone Road. The car never had a radio, but I had a secret hidden switch installed so you could disable the ignition to make it theft-proof. My son was 10 or 12 at the time, and he used to listen out for when I dipped the clutch and change the gears – he was my automatic gearbox!
“Back in 1967 when I bought it for £1800 it wouldn’t have won a race – it was tuned to be reliable and that made it a great road car. I used to drive it to London to pick up stock for our boutique, Topaz, and parked it in the double garage side by side with my Daytona – those were the days!”
After your story, I got in touch with the Classic Motor Hub and arranged to go and see the car, to reunite my father with his beloved Cobra after 44 years. We had a great day, and Dad went out for a spin in the car and couldn’t believe how much better it was. “It’s gone from being a bit of a tractor to being a bit of a Ferrari,” he said. “It’s fabulous and 100% worth the money.”
Rudolph Egeler Jnr
Brighton, East Sussex