If you are eccentric or fully loaded with pots of money you may be in the market for a Bristol – a very rare supercar that most people will never have seen! Like many car companies around the world, they came out of aircraft manufacturing – think about my recent history articles on Cord and Duesenberg, they used Lycoming who developed aircraft engines. There would have been a lot of cross-over in technologies during the early years of motoring and flying.
Bristol was originally founded in 1910 but didn’t start to make cars until the late 40s when they needed to soak up some production capacity in southwest England. After the war the allies were busy grabbing war reparations and the Bristol Aircraft Company took some designs from BMW – hence the first model, the 400 was almost a direct copy of a pre-war BMW 327!
The 400 was followed by the 401 and then sequentially through to the 405, each model slowly removing any trace of the BMW design and were offered as convertibles (known as drop-heads) and luxury saloons. The engines were badged as Bristol but were updated BMW designs and were 2 litres with the final ones being 2.2 litres.
In 1956, the car division became a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent company and then in 1960, George White and Tony Crook took it private. White’s family had founded the company that became the Bristol Aeroplane Company and with the enforced merger with other companies to become the British Aircraft Corporation, he saw the other car related companies cease production. He didn’t want that for Bristol so got together with Crook, a very successful British sports car racing driver and Le Mans winner to take over the company, which became Bristol Cars Limited.
They signed a deal with Chrysler for their large V8s and Torqueflite gearboxes (just like Jensen) and the first of the Chrysler models was the 407, an updated 406 – just think of the difference, same body but one has a 2.2 and the other a 5.2 litre motor!
By the early 70s, White had retired and Crook was in full command and the models started to get names from the old planes: Beaufighter, Brigand, Blenheim and Britannia! The 411 was replaced by the 603 in honour of the anniversary of the founding of the city of Bristol.
These cars were all hand-built as they continue to be, and the V8s slowly increased capacity to 5.9 litres. But the real story is what they are building today!
Their latest model is the Fighter, a sleek 2+2 in the finest tradition of hand-built go-faster Grand Tourers. There are three models: the Fighter, the “S” and the “T”. The base model is no slouch powered by an aluminium V10 pumping out 525hp but at high speeds delivers 550 due to the aerodynamics! Maximum speed is over 200mph and still delivers good fuel consumption – you can even buy a long range fuel tank. Torque is rated at over 525 lbs – over half of that at tickover!
The “S” model is uprated to 628 horses – 660 at high speed and 590 lbs of torque. The “T” model is even more nuts – they bolt on twin turbos to give over 1,000hp and over 1,000 lbs torque. And guess what – they’re selling them!
The Bristol is truly one of the world’s rarest and most
technologically advanced cars on the market today. They are made even rarer
because they have no dealer network – you buy from the factory showroom in
London. If you look at www.bristolcars.co.uk
you can see the Fighter but also the used cars the factory sells – some very
reasonably priced. One day when I’ve made my pots of cash I’ll have one! Don’t
wake me, it’s a great dream…