Lore: ACA Partnerships and the start of the “Chevron Alliance”
ACA would change their logo in 1975 to the current design.
Backstory
In 1966, ACA CEO Kingston Conway would retire, leaving a power vacuum within ACA. The role of CEO would eventually fall into Denver Andrews, one of ACA’s major shareholders. It would be Andrews who would eventually sign the ACA-Merciel partnership in '74.
But in 1966, ACA was already partnered with a European marque, Caliban.
The ACA-Caliban Partnership
In 1946, ACA reached out to help a relatively small manufacturer, Caliban. Initially, ACA CEO Kingston Conway thought it as a joke, however, he would later realise that a partnership with Caliban could come in handy to support ACA’s motorsport division. Thus in 1948, a deal was signed, allowing ACA to help manufacture Caliban’s in the US, and in return, Caliban engineers would help ACA’s motorsport division.
This all proved to be very successful. ACA were consistently finishing high in the NASCAR Grand National Series, and with the help of Caliban, managed to make a successful Grand Tourer, the Apache 350 GT. However, by 1961, tensions between the two companies were growing. ACA wanted a bit more control over Caliban, namely, the motorsport division. This was also the time ACA was began thinking about exporting to Europe, and by having a successful team racing in European racing series, would be helpful as a staging point to enter the new market.
At the same time, quality control at Caliban’s US factory had gone down, resulting in poor handling cars. While initially it was blamed on poor machining, it would later be found that some severe cost cutting measures were taking place to help improve the sale of the Apache GT. Once this was uncovered in 1967, animosity between the two companies grew with tensions reaching an all time high, when a secret clause written in the small print of a new contract was discovered, effectively giving full control of Caliban’s motorsport division to ACA. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and in 1968, the ACA-Caliban partnership was finished.
The Creation of the “Chevron Alliance”
Around the same time as the collapse of the ACA-Caliban Partnership, ACA was already looking for a suitable candidate to help support their expansion into Europe. They looked at many potential companies, but eventually stuck with Merciel. It would be down to Samuel Salazar to negotiate the terms of the partnership with Merciel.
Initially, the negotiations went back and forth with neither company budging. It was even considered to negotiate with other companies to see if they were interested. However ACA was running out of time. By 1964, ACA’s sales figures had been stagnating. To keep the company afloat, upper management decided to pursue extreme cost cutting measures. These included laying off thousands of workers, reducing the amount of spending on development of new cars and most importantly, limiting the budget of Caliban US to help drive up sales of the Apache. However, it was never enough. ACA was running out of money and the 1973 energy crisis made the situation even worse.
With their hands effectively tied, ACA were forced to take the contract laid out by Merciel. It was a disaster. ACA failed to acquire a European foothold and were now forced into a contract that favoured Merciel. ACA CEO at the time, Denver Andrews stated "It was the worst deal [he had] ever made, basically selling the company to the French"
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom…
