[browning l]

The early stories about Bristol products one has seen seem to have been directed simply at the product. For whatever reasons, in those days, writers apparently found little need to address management style or long-term goals.
In today’s more self-indulgent world, with those of an age who seem to fill most of the journalistic openings for publications interested in automobiles, such authors seem to assume rights that are actually not theirs, not too unexpectedly one feels, given their perceived vintage.
As I looked over the various magazine articles written about Tony Crook, who was still involved in Bristol when I bought my car in March of ‘08, but with whom I unfortunately never had the privilege of becoming acquainted, and his Bristol Cars firm, three themes seem to be close to universally present about the authors and their efforts…at least in those I have read:
Theme 1. The reluctance or disinclination or aversion to accept that Bristol was not, in almost every way it was possible not to be, the same sort of organization as other motor car manufacturers. Or, to put it another way, if the aims and necessities of Bristol were acknowledged, they seem to have been unheeded, disregarded, or worse, simply ignored.
The result? Usually, the entire thrust of the article is based on incorrect principles and/or expectations.

Theme 2. The insistence on ignoring the privileges of privacy inherent in private ownership. Actually, not just to ignore privacy, but demand, literally, that such ownership forfeit all such privileges. I have had some experience in private ownership of a manufacturing firm privately-held between 1886 and 1969, over four generations of one family; hence believe I can appropriately speak to this aspect of privately-held businesses.
It is certainly possible for publishers, editors, and writers to make such demands on privacy, but it always remains the prerogative of the owner(s) no matter how they are importuned, to ignore the demands.
The result? Whimpering writers complaining about not being treated as they feel they should have been. Just like children, whose immaturity they reflect.

Theme 2, No/little experience in manufacturing – the inability to understand the strengths required to balance and counteract all the forces imposing themselves upon management, much less the demands and expense inherent in making major design changes, whether mechanical or stylistic.
The result? No competent background on which to draw as the author attempts to tell the manufacturer what he needs to do to be more successful – successful not from the maker’s viewpoint, but from the writer’s.

With the coming of Mr. Chairman, Toby Silverton, private owner, or private owner representative, whose goals, needs, and resources seem to vary to some extent from those of Mr. Crook, we see, in more recent articles and in the reaction of some, though plainly not all, of long-term BOC members, a slowly awakening acceptance of the virtues of the principles on which Mr. Crook attempted to run his business, as they are present in Mr. S’s current management philosophy for Bristol Cars.

I again urge those who have not read Mr. Balfour’s book to do so, as John Keighley reports below he has done. Balfour investigated with the confidence of the living principals, and his writing shows very well the results of having done so. I think any modern day car magazine writer who does not read this book before beginning his other research does a great disservice to himself and whatever readers he may be lucky enough to have.