The vendor, who is very well-known to us and has probably forgotten more about classic cars than we ever knew in the first place, bought the car a few months ago and spent over £9,000 having it expertly fettled by the Project Workshop team at Bicester.

He has owned two Ace Bristols, one LHD and one RHD (as one does), but having decided that one was probably sufficient he sold the LHD car and took the Aceca in part exchange.

Built in 1955 the car was one of the earliest off the production line and, according to the AC Register, it was probably the 34th car built.

It was exported new to the Netherlands (the original Dutch registration was TD-63-47), hence the LHD configuration and an odometer calibrated in kilometres.

We found a photograph of this very car online and, after engaging Google translate to help us with the Dutch language, we learned that the then pale blue car was a familiar sight in Amsterdam in the 1970s, when it belonged to English businessman Leslie Hurle Bath , who ...