I thought we weren't allowed to research?!
A brief dig came up with: 1997 AC Brooklands Ace Prototype. Is this not cheating though as i wasn't aware of the existence of this exact car until i just did a search for late 90's Ace's?
That's the right answer!
Researching the answers is the name of the game, otherwise we'd get nowhere! We all find cars we never knew existed until we started searching to match the picture in the puzzle; there are very few puzzles that we know the answers to without Googling eternally until we hit on the one we're looking for! It's only the Search by Image function which is a no-no, as that just gives you the answer immediately with no skill or knowledge at all required and takes the fun right out of it as well as ruining what can be a very obscure and difficult puzzle. One puzzler was banished for using it all the time and solving practically impossible puzzles instantly with no questions asked.. It does take quite a lot of knowledge to look for and find some of the obscure cars here, and there's no alternative to Googling (other search engines are available!) as relatively few of the pictures come from books. Some do, however, but unless you happen to know which book and exactly where to look you'd need an awful lot of spare time to find those! Georgano's complete encyclopedia is very useful to have by your side..
Anyway, you've earned your very first point as the car pictured is indeed the one and only Ace Brooklands prototype with detachable hardtop; it was meant as an update of the earlier Brooklands Ace, which never sold in any numbers.
Well done.
This is from the Brooklands Cars Ltd website:
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This was the 1997 Motor Show prototype car. The revised interior and body was to give the previous Brooklands Ace a facelift. Built at the Vickers Drive AC Cars factory at Brooklands in Surrey.
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