I personally thought the new website was just a tarting up of the original. There was not the level of investment that would begin to pit Bristol against a brand like Aston, for instance. There is a charming blog, which you would have thought Bristol particularly suitable for,
Once Was England, and he won't post a story about them, citing a lack of any decent photography. It's true, I think, that no-one has ever taken a beautiful studio shot of a Bristol, and that speaks volumes. Not even the manufacturer has invested in a hero shot of their cars.
Putting the website into the hands of a
PR company would not normally be the route you would take if you expected a stunning result. Some
PR companies work really well with designers, but I don't think in this case a great job was done.
PR people are wordsmiths, they don't usually excel in pictures. A case in point is the photo of the Fighter on the website. Why would you put it in front of an ugly old Victorian warehouse? This, to me, demonstrates a total lack of care, not understatement.
Another interesting blog,
Made by Hand- the great Sartorial Debate, aimed mostly at tailors, makes an interesting point (somewhere in one of his articles) about technology vs bespoke. If you go and have a suit made at a Savile Row tailor, you are paying for something made largely by hand. Yes, they do have machines, and they do use them. But a Savile Row tailor, who makes so few suits a year, cannot afford some of the high tech sewing equipment that a big manufacturer like Canali can, making thousands of suits a year. So the process is not only slower, it's also flawed. The new machines are more precise and more 'perfect' in their results than any hand-stitched buttonhole or lapel can ever be. The Savile Row tailor, even the very best of them, can easily be criticised for bad sewing, taking shortcuts, or adopting new ideas in suit-making that don't work. This blog takes apart suits worth thousands of dollars, from very famous tailors, and often finds them wanting.
The artisans who make persian rugs often put a deliberate mistake in the weave. Because "only Allah is perfect".
That is the difference between bespoke and technology. So long as a Bristol is safe to drive, and so long as the manufacturer is prepared to iron out the bugs when an owner requests it, and so long as there are not too many faults with a new car (that the quality is evident), I can't see why you can't promote handmade with natural flaws over machine-made, perfect and without a soul.