Ecosse Signature Former racing driver and Ford technical sales specialist John Parsons and Ecosse Technical Director Aubrey Woods purchased the assets of AC (Scotland) with plans to resume production of the 3000ME. By this time the name and intellectual property of the original AC Cars had been bought by Brian Angliss of
Autokraft, so Parsons and Woods incorporated their company as the Ecosse Car Company Ltd., and renamed the car the Ecosse Signature. The company was based in
Knebworth, Hertfordshire. The exterior of the Ecosse Signature was restyled by Peter Stevens. Working from the AC (Scotland) Mark II prototype, the Alfa V6 powertrain was removed and a turbocharged
Fiat Twin Cam engine and transmission from the
Fiat Croma were substituted. The revised Ecosse Signature was shown at the 1988 Birmingham Motor Show. While it garnered some interest, the company was unable to secure the £350,000 in financing needed to restart production, and the project went no further. The prototype was rediscovered in an abandoned industrial storage unit in 2017. In unrestored condition it was offered for sale for £8000.
AC Ghia In July 1980 Ford of Europe chairman
Bob Lutz and vice president
Karl Ludvigsen were in Turin at
Carrozzeria Ghia checking on some ongoing projects. Ghia's chief designer at the time was Filippo Sapino. Sapino mentioned that Ghia was looking for a mid-engined Ford platform as a base for some future studies, and the Ford-powered 3000ME came up. Ludvigsen, whose responsibilities included overseeing Ford's European motorsports programs, saw this as a possible replacement for the recently retired Mark II Escort rally car. Ludvigsen involved both Ford's directory of rallying Peter Ashcroft and Ford's chief designer
Uwe Bahnsen and on 22 September circulated a memo indicating that the revised car would conform to the new 1982 Group B rules. AC provided Ghia with two cars, one completely assembled and one rolling chassis, on the condition that they would be able to display the car at the 1981
Geneva Motor Show. The complete 3000ME left Thames Ditton on 16 October and arrived in Turin 4 days later, leaving 4 months for the work to be completed. At long and under wide the resulting car, named the
AC Ghia, was both shorter and narrower than the original 3000ME. At high it was one inch taller. The car featured exterior door handles hidden in the edge of the engine intake ducts. Small quarter lights were added. Deep-offset alloy wheels from
Speedline mounted 225/50 VR15 Pirelli P6 tyres. When it appeared at Geneva, it garnered favourable reviews. By this time Ford's rally efforts had moved on to a turbocharged, rear-wheel drive Mk. III Escort, so the AC Ghia was no longer being considered for that role. Still, both Ford and AC were looking for ways to get the car into production. Ford's interest in the car may have been informed by the progress
General Motors was making on their nascent
P-car project. Internal discussions at Ford over July and August 1981 determined that AC's production capacity was not sufficient for them to supply Ford's North American sportscar project. AC was told that Ghia would sell them the prototype and the tooling for it at a "nominal price". A new engine would have to be found, as Ford was phasing out the Essex V6, although the
Ford Cologne V6 in fuel-injected form would be a natural replacement. Ultimately neither Ford nor AC were able to muster sufficient resources to put the car into production. The prototype was auctioned off in 2002.
Lincoln Quicksilver In 1983 Ghia released another show car built on the second, rolling 3000ME chassis supplied by AC. This car was called the
Lincoln Quicksilver, and instead of being shorter than the 3000ME, the Quicksilver chassis was extended by over that of the original. The extra length allowed the car, which kept the 3000ME's mid-engine layout, to be a full four-door sedan, but one with a roofline that extended rearward over the engine compartment and ended abruptly. The aerodynamic shape of the car allowed it to record a drag coefficient (c_\mathrm d) of just 0.30. Some references report that the original Essex V6 was replaced by a Cologne V6, but was still mated to a 5-speed manual transaxle. The car remained on the show car circuit until 1986. It appears to have been sold at auction by Ford in 2002 for a price of $45,825 and remained in private collections after that. It was sold again at auction in January 2014.
AC-Chrysler 2.2 Turbo A plan was mooted to sell a modified version of the AC 3000ME in the United States as a Shelby. In 1980 American partners Steve Hitter and Barry Gale started bringing De Tomaso Panteras into the US from the Belgian distributor though their company, Panteramerica. That same year Gale was in Belgium on a parts buying trip when Claude DuBois, the Pantera distributor who was also the AC distributor, gave him a ride in an AC 3000ME. Gale flew to England and negotiated an agreement for the US rights to the car with Derek Hurlock and ordered one car, less engine and transaxle. This car, chassis #161, arrived in the States in February 1981. After a failed overture to Chevrolet for a supply of the V6 and transaxle from the new
Chevrolet Citation, the car was sent to the US workshops of Arkay Incorporated in Hawthorne California. Arkay was run by
Kas Kastner, the
Triumph Motor Company's former Competition Director for North America. Arkay did general automotive development work, and specialized in turbocharger conversions. Arkay did a full assessment of the Chevrolet V6 and discovered that the AC would need a new subframe to fit it. Ford offered a 1.6 L inline-four powertrain, but this was rejected as underpowered. Eventually a Buick V6 was installed, but after Arkay adapted the Buick engine to the Chevrolet transaxle, Buick pulled out of the project. While Panteramerica was looking for a suitable engine, the car was restyled by Bob Marianich. At this point the car was seen by Ray Geddes. Geddes had sold his Pantera parts company to Hitter and Gale, who had renamed it Panteramerica. Geddes was now working for
Carroll Shelby, and when he saw the car in Kastner's shop he got Shelby involved. At this time Shelby was working with Chrysler, for whom Kastner had already done a turbocharger kit for their 2.2 L engine that was available through Chrysler's Direct Connection performance arm. Shelby met the partners at the
SEMA show in Las Vegas and agreed to take on the project. Work continued at Arkay until Shelby's new Chrysler-Shelby High Performance Center in Santa Fe Springs on the eastern edge of Los Angeles was complete, after which the car was transferred there. Under the direction of project administrator and chief mechanic Steve Hope, development engineer Neil Hanneman and engineer Scott Harvey, first a naturally-aspirated 2.2 L
Chrysler engine was installed, replaced later by a turbocharged G-24 engine and 5-speed transaxle. The car was renamed the Shelby ME 2.2 Turbo. The prototype went to Metalcrafters to have bodywork and paint completed, after which it was presented to Chrysler president
Lee Iacocca. The company decided not to put the car into production, so the prototype became a test mule for Shelby until the Los Angeles facility was closed, after which Hitter and Gale picked the car up and put it into storage. The prototype survives. ==Motorsports==