An RAC Van in the current livery used throughout the UK

RAC Limited is a private limited company based in the United Kingdom supplying products and services for motorists. Divisions include RAC Motoring Services Ltd, RAC Financial Services Ltd and RAC Insurance Limited. The parent company of these entities is (Carlyle Group).

Founded as the "Associate Section" of the Royal Automobile Club, it was incorporated as R.A.C. Motoring Services Ltd. in 1978. It was then sold by the members of the Royal Automobile Club to Lex Service Plc in 1999, which subsequently renamed itself RAC Plc. In 2005, RAC Plc was bought by Aviva and delisted.

History[link]

The Royal Automobile Club was formed in 1897 which set up an "associate section" to assist members with roadside assistance and to provide motoring services. The club incorporated the associate section as R.A.C. Motoring Services Ltd. in 1978.

In 1987, the organisation introduced an "Advanced Computer Aided Rescue System".^[1]

In 1991, it established the RAC Foundation as its research arm. The RAC Foundation was later turned into a charity and received a legacy from Royal Automobile Club members when R.A.C. Motoring Services Ltd. was later sold.^[1]

British School of Motoring (BSM) was purchased by R.A.C. Motoring Services Ltd. in 1998.^[2]

In September 1999, Lex Service Plc purchased R.A.C. Motoring Services from members of the Royal Automobile Club and renamed themselves as RAC Plc in 2002. In March 2005, Aviva Plc acquired RAC Plc for around £1.1 billion.^{[3][dead link]} The main competitors to the RAC are The AA and Green Flag.

The company sold RAC Auto Windscreens in 2008.

Aviva Plc ceased providing loans under the RAC brand name in January 2008 and dissolved its partnership with the Co-operative Bank Plc.

The RAC's parent company, Aviva sold BSM to a German company in January 2009. BSM is the UK’s largest driving school with around 2,700 driving instructors; it is also one of the largest driving instructor training providers.^[4] BSM has since been sold to Acromas Holdings which owns the AA.

Aviva Plc sold the RAC to Carlyle Group in June 2011.^[5]

Products and services[link]

RAC Rescue[link]

United Kingdom[link]

An RAC roadside assistance van in 2004

The RAC has around 2,000 patrols that attend 2.8 million breakdowns each year, this includes overseas breakdowns with RAC Europe. The RAC cover 7 million roadside assistance customers with 2.2 million individual members and 4.5 million corporate customers. Their breakdown assistance centres operate 24/7 and deal with approximately 4 millions calls a year. They have introduced, for trial, two hybrid vehicles, to cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions.^[6] The RAC has won the JD power award for the last four years for the best roadside patrols in the UK.^{[citation needed]}

Europe[link]

RAC Europe is breakdown cover for U.K. customers that travel to Europe. RAC Europe covers 47 European countries and provides English-speaking Incident Managers available 24 hours a day to assist. The office is based near Lyon in Villeurbanne, France.

RAC Direct Insurance[link]

RAC Direct Insurance provides car, motorcycle, van, home and travel insurance.

RAC Legal Services[link]

RAC legal services provides advice and representation to customers involved in personal injury claims.

RAC Vehicle Checks and Examinations[link]

RAC Vehicle Checks and Examinations conduct vehicle checks that show if a car has been stolen, written-off, has outstanding finance or previous plates, is at risk of being sold illegally, and that its number plate and chassis number correspond. RAC Vehicle Checks are conducted by HPI.

HPI provides a check on a car's status - assessing whether a car has been stolen, written-off, clocked, has outstanding finance or previous plates, is at risk of being sold illegally, and that its number plate and chassis number correspond. It will also check whether the car's documents are genuine.

RAC Examinations Inspectors make physical checks on the car to make sure it is mechanically and structurally sound.

The RAC tower Bradley Stoke, Bristol.

Travel and traffic information[link]

RAC provides travel and traffic services including online route planners, in-car navigation and help with travel documents.^{[7][dead link]}

Awards[link]

J.D.Power and Associates ranked the RAC the best in satisfying emergency roadside assistance customers in 2008, this is the fourth consecutive year the RAC has held this title. They also have a Greenfleet Breakdown/Recovery Company of the Year 2006 award for the most environmentally friendly roadside patrols.^{[8][dead link]}

Team RAC[link]

Colin Turkington driving the Team RAC BMW at Snetterton.

In 2006, RAC teamed up with WSR (West Surrey Racing) to form Team RAC and to race in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) with two MG ZS cars and from 2007 onwards, two (and sometimes three) BMW E90 320si cars. The racing cars were liveried in RAC's corporate orange and have achieved a number of wins, including winning the BTCC Independent Drivers Championship with Colin Turkington in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Turkington was also able to clinch the outright win in the 2009 BTCC Drivers Championship for Team RAC.

For 2010 RAC have reduced their level of sponsorship with the team.

See also[link]

• The AA
• Green Flag
• Vehicle recovery

References[link]

External links[link]

• RAC vehicle breakdown cover
• RAC European breakdown
• RAC vehicle checks

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Look up RAC, rac, or rac- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

RAC or Rac may refer to:

Organizations[link]

• RAC (company), a British company supplying products and services for motorists
• RAC Research, a research chemical supplier
• Rent-A-Center, an American public furniture and electronics rent to own company
• Radio Amateurs of Canada or Radio Amateurs du Canada, an association of Canadian amateur radio operators
• Refugee Action Collective (Victoria), a grassroots refugee advocacy group in Melbourne, Australia
• Religious Action Center, the political outreach body of Reform Judaism in the United States
• Riverside Arts Council, an art council in California, USA
• Royal African Company, a slave-trade company
• Royal Automobile Club (disambiguation), several motoring organisations
  • Royal Automobile Club, a British private club of automobile enthusiasts
  • Royal Automobile Club Foundation, a British motoring advocacy group
• Ryukyu Air Commuter, an affiliate of Japan Airlines
• Rwanda Automobile Club, a member of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile

Government[link]

• Regional Advisory Council, an localized office of FEMA, a U.S. government disaster planning group.

Military[link]

• Rhodesian Armoured Corps, a regiment of the Rhodesian Army
• Royal Armoured Corps, a corps of the British Army

Sport[link]

• Retriever Activities Center, the arena at UMBC in Catonsville, Maryland
• RAC or Romeo Crennel (born 1947), former head coach in the National Football League for the Cleveland Browns
• Rutgers Athletic Center, the basketball arena at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey

Music[link]

• RAC 1, a radio station in Catalonia, Spain
• Recording Artists' Coalition, an American music industry organization that represents recording artists
• Remix Artist Collective, a rock/electronica remixing agency for musical artists
• Rock Against Communism, a series of concerts featuring white power music, as well as a term for white power music in general
• (RAC), an original reggae/surf/punk band from Glendale, AZ racdub.com

Entertainment[link]

• Ratchet & Clank (series), video game series
• Ratchet & Clank, the first video game in the above series

Computing[link]

• Oracle RAC, a computer cluster database sold by the Oracle corporation
• Remote access card, for out-of-band communication with a computer

People[link]

• Rác (surname), a family name (including a list of persons with the name)
• Rác (ethnonym) or Rascians, a name used to designate Serbs, Bunjevci, and Šokci in Middle Ages and the early modern times
• Rac Slider (born 1933), retired baseball player and baseball manager

Other uses[link]

• RAC, the IATA airport identifier for John H. Batten Airport in Racine, Wisconsin, USA
• Rac (GTPase), a subfamily of the Rho family of GTPases, a family of enzymes
• Royal Agricultural College, an educational institution located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, UK
• Recovery Audit Contractor, a program in the United States of America to identify and recover improper medicare payments paid to healthcare providers
• Reservation against Cancellation, a booking option of the Indian Railways
• Responsibility assignment matrix, a model for understanding the roles of those involved in any endeavour (e.g. a project)
• Retirement Annuity Contract, a type of UK pension plan

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Look up PLC or plc in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

PLC or plc may refer to:

Business[link]

• Public limited company, a type of limited company whose shares may be sold to the public
• Program length commercial, or infomercial
• Product life cycle, the succession of stages a product goes through
• Personal Line of Credit, credit extended by a financial institution to a customer
• Preferential Location Charges, PLC Charges for house plots which are 2/3 sides open/ Facing North/ wide Road etc.

Education[link]

• Performance Learning Centre, one element of the Communities In Schools education network
• Presidents Leadership Class, a leadership institution for undergraduates at the University of Colorado at Boulder
• Platoon Leaders Class, a summer training program for college students given by the Officer Candidates School of the United States Marine Corps
• Presbyterian Ladies' College (disambiguation), the name or former name of several independent girls' schools in Australia, affiliated with either the Presbyterian Church of Australia or the Uniting Church in Australia
• Professional learning community, a movement in the education field of teachers sharing with teachers to improve learning among their students
• Pymble Ladies' College, an independent, non-selective, day and boarding school for girls, located in Pymble, a suburb in the North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Post Leaving Certificate, is an informal term describing a large range of courses and qualifications run in Ireland for students who have finished their secondary education

Medicine and psychology[link]

• Peter Lougheed Centre, a hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Pityriasis lichenoides chronica, the chronic version of the immune system disease Pityriasis lichenoides et varioliformis acuta
• Phospholipase C, an enzyme which cleaves PI(4,5)P2 to form IP3 and diacylglycerol
• Pathological Laughing and Crying, a disorder of emotional expression due to brain conditions, distinct from normal emotional cause and effect
• Posterolateral Corner, a region of the human knee

Politics[link]

Science and technology[link]

• Packet Loss Concealment, a technique to mask the effects of missing packets in VoIP communications
• Polymorphic Lambda Calculus, a typed lambda calculus with parametric polymorphism, also known as System F
• Portevin–Le Chatelier effect, the serrated portion of a stress strain curve
• Power line communication, including broadband PLC modes
• Programmable logic controller, a digital computer used for automation of industrial processes, such as machinery control in factories

Other uses[link]

• Pigmy Love Circus, a Los Angeles-based rock band
• Pine Lake Camp, a Salvation Army camp in Alberta, Canada
• Plastic
• Psycho le Cému, a Japanese visual kei rock band
• Pet Lovers Club
• Plafond Limité de Classement, the maximum allowed yield for wine producer that French wine regulating body (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine) establishes

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.