AC often seemed doomed to being left in the lurch by events not of its own making, yet each time the Hurlock family’s company demonstrated a resilience largely unprecedented in automobile history.

Several of these “snatched from the jaws of defeat” moments are reflected in the collection of Jim Feldman, including this 1968 AC 428 Spider with coachwork by Frua.

The emergence of big block 7-litre engines in the Chevy Corvette rendered the original leaf spring, small-block Cobra obsolescent.

Designing a successor robust enough to cope with Ford’s 427-cubic-inch “side-oiler” V-8 was beyond the artisanal techniques of Thames Ditton.

It was not, however, much more than an exercise for the engineers at Ford in Dearborn.

So, AC took the resulting 427 Cobra’s robust coil spring-and-wishbone independent suspension chassis, added six inches to its wheelbase, and sent it to Pietro Frua in Italy to be clothed with a luxury coupe body; a Spider followed shortly.

Power came from the same Ford 4...