Bristols I Have Owned

[Barrie]

I agree with Bryn about the state of the Forum which he has posted elsewhere:
http://www.bristolcars.info/forums/8....html#post6789

Unless some effort is put into the Forum it will wither and die. I've stopped viewing it because of lack of activity and it was only an email notification that drew me back today. The Forum should be like a club where most things are talked about with the common thread being our interest in Bristol cars. As an example of a lively forum just look at the Jensen site where there are many postings every day.
The Jensen Owners' Club • Index page
Not everyone on there has a Jensen but everyone is encouraged to contribute about Jensens and classic cars and life in general, much as one would do when meeting with friends.

I, for some inexplicable reason, find myself temporarily without a Bristol at the moment and want to contribute to the Forum so I'm starting this thread to see if we can't generate some more interest and maybe some spin-off threads?

I have called it 'Bristols I Have Owned' and this is part one.
Hopefully others will contribute with their own storey.

My first Bristol was in 1975, a two owner 1967 409 Mk II with power steering and had done about 38,000 miles I think. It was bright blue with a black painted roof with black interior and white piping. It sounds very garish in print but on the road it looked distinctive, elegant, and discrete. I bought and sold it from the through the late lamented Dick Fuggle in Bushey, Herts. Last time I looked the premises were a Majestic Wine store. I think I paid about £1850 for it and sold it after a year c.£1750.
I wonder where XUF 888F is now? I saw it at Andrew Blow's garage a few years ago and it was painted red and, the registration number being hidden, I only recognized it by the remnants of the white piping on the rear armrests. More latterly I saw it at Coys auction in Vincent Sq SW1
I was only 25 when I had the car and enjoyed that it was one of the few cars that could exceed the speed of the XJ6 which was king of the road at the time. Despite, (or because of?) 16 x 670 Avon cross-ply tyres I put up some great journey times both on motorways and cross-country which would be frowned on today. Great fun. Oddly, I followed it with a Rover 2000TC which I think was an attempt at economy after I was shocked that a weekend trip from London to Wales cost me £25 in petrol on the return leg.
This foolishness didn't last long before I bought my next Bristol.....................

[Claude]

My interest in Bristols was different, more left brain. We decided to move to New Zealand, and at the time RHD cars in NZ were 2.5x the price of the same LHD car in the USA. I was into classic Alfa 2-seaters, but with a young child, saw we needed a back seat. The only British classic car that had a reasonable mechanical reputation was the Bristol.

So I located a 405 drophead whose owner, Peter Moes lived about ten miles from me. He was into Arnolt Bristols, but due to some disagreement with Mike DiCola was not able to buy an Arnholt transmission directly. He said that if I bought the transmission, he would swap his 405DH (with a transmission!) along with a 405 parts car. We did the deal and I ended up with a true barn find. I took it to a Connecticut car restorer and began to pour money into it.

I joined the BOC (club) and was sent the registry list. I began to notify the club of cars in the USA that were not on the list, and after the 3rd notification, Bob Charleton, the BOC registrar, sent me a fancy plaque naming me the North American Registrar. I made up a checklist that asked the usual questions about the car, its history and its market value, including when it was last sold and if it was for sale. Dangerous.

So when I asked about a Virginia 409 in perfect original and well-maintained shape, whose value was about $15,000 at the time, and the owner said he would sell for $7,000, I wrote it down. An hour up the freeway, it clicked and I rang back to make sure I got the number right. Yes, he would sell for that price. So I turned around, wrote him a cheque and asked him to have it ready for collection in a month. In the US at the time, one could register a classic car in the state of Rhode Island without the car being present or any proof other than a bill of sale, so a month later I flew down with registration plates, collected the car and drove it home. I finally sold that car about five years later in New Zealand, having reupholstered the leather seats, but otherwise needing to do very little.

Next, I got word of a LHD 405 that was about to be chopped into a hot rod in Detroit. I had a meeting out there, so I drove (about 1,000 miles) instead of taking a plane. Showed up at the meeting with a Chevy Suburban and a 20 foot car trailer. Since I was their most successful and profitable contractor, they raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The car had no paint, the power-train was gone, and the floor had been cut out and installed in an Arnolt Bristol. The seller had retired from Chrysler where his account was to keep Tony Crook happy (I confirmed this with Tony). When he bought the car the motor had already been removed by the previous owner in Texas. I paid $1,200 for it and towed it to my grandfather's farm. I took the floor from the 405 parts car (that had been wrecked), but never found a power train. When I moved to New Zealand, the farm was vandalised so I rang the closest collector and offered it free if he would collect it in 24 hours. Last I heard it was sold to a collector in Paris (France).

That summer, we decided to take a vacation in Washington State, so I looked on the registry and found a LHD 410. I offered the same $7,000 that I had paid for the 409, and the seller accepted. Bought the car sight unseen. I did not tell my wife, but arrived a week before she was to arrive with our daughter. Collected the car and took the seller's advice to only run it on avgas. By that time the US had blended petrol and the alcohol dissolves a lifetime of gunk that it deposits into the carb. In one week I put on new tyres, new exhaust, lots of other new bits, and (only in America), took it to Earl Scheib, famous for the $100 paint job. The guys in the shop loved the car, so instead of the quick wipe, tape and paint, they kept working after quitting time. I kept buying them pizza, and they kept sanding, filling, taping and prepping. By 11 p.m. I had a newly painted car for $120. They painted it a metallic blue and it looked surprisingly good. Filling the tank was always a mission, as it is not entirely legal for an airport to fill the tank of a car. I would give them my pilot license to record, and they would record the car, err. plane, as a Bristol with the wing number taken off the ID plate N7310V or something like that. Finally, the day came to collect the family at SeaTac. Driving down the freeway from Bellingham WA without thinking I pulled into a petrol station to fill the tank. Five miles from the airport, the car died. The carb was completely full of gunk. I had to hitch a ride and rent a car. Next day, I showed my bemused wife the "surprise", having bought a ten gallon plastic racing fuel cell that I installed in the boot. Cleaned out the carb and got her running. I never got it quite right though, and during that trip the occasional popping of the carb and wiping down with q-tips became the roadside drill (including once in a three-mile tailback waiting for the ferry to the Olympic peninsula). The car performed brilliantly other than this minor glitch, and we took it above the timberline, out in the eastern desert and all sorts of interesting places. After the family left I had the tank boiled out and the car was set for running on normal fuel. Sold it to a banker who had it restored properly by the factory (replacing my $120 paint job with a proper Bristol one) and last I heard it was back in New York City, not far from where its first owner, Elliot Gant of Gant shirt fame first drove it.

We moved to New Zealand with three cars. The 405DH, the 409 and a 411-S1. The buyer of the LHD 410 contacted me in NZ, having got the Bristol bug, and he bought the drophead in as-is condition as well as the 40' container that it was stored in (and had been shipped in from the USA). Given my location on an island, it made more sense for me to prepare the car to be shipped in the container (tying everything down) than to send the car and baskets of parts to Auckland for packing in a 20 footer. The drophead went back to the Bristol factory and was restored for an astonishing sum. The banker kept this as his England car, in effect getting a new 1955 car.

The 409 (the Duchess, the first 409 made according to Tony Crook) continued giving good service and I kept it in a lock up in Auckland as our town car. She even joined the BOC on their down under trek. However, at one point the garage rang to say that someone had written "wash me" in the dust on the paint, so I was on the next ferry, brought it back to the island and put it up for sale. In a bidding war, it sold for $35,000 to a buyer whose hobby was making guitars. He redid the woodwork, repainted it the original blue and eventually sold it. I believe it is still in NZ.

So that left me with the 411. While living in the states and still registrar, I was told of a Bristol 408 that supposedly in a car restoration shop all of ten miles up the road I lived in (but on the other side of a state line). It took a year for me to get the time to drive up, only to discover in the weeds a 411-S1. No idea how it came in legally (at the time there was a 25-year minimum on imports), but there it was in very sad shape. Abandoned during a divorce case, the owner had signed the title over to the shop in liue of the storage charges. The shop said that if I paid the $1,200 in storage, it was mine. So I towed it directly to my restoration place to sit beside the 405 DH, where the money flow intensified. The chassis was more rust than steel and it required major work. The rear boot had to be completely rebuilt. He took out and beautifully painted the engine, although it never ran right and in NZ I turned out to need a NZ$7,000 rebuild. He had the transmission rebuilt, but it was done wrong as well, and I now have a replacement collected but not installed. The car had a new Webasto electric sunroof installed, but when the car arrived in NZ, the oafs put a huge booster on the battery to start it and fried the electronics. Of course Webasto had changed the design, so the roof does not open and I cannot get the right replacement. The aluminium body was walnut-shell blasted, the panels properly rebuilt by a shop using an English wheel to shape the aluminium, and the body was properly repainted by one of the best shops in New England. However, we ran out of time, so we stopped when it still needed two weeks of long-block sanding. Instead I had them put a top coat of good paint in an unsellable colour (from a 1974 Ford van, sort of a metallic brown) to ready it for the NZ transport. Once in NZ I came across one of the top upholsterers in NZ who had decided to go back to university for an art degree, who needed cash. He reupholstered the car in the most beautiful multi-toned leather. Since this was to be a keeper rather than a factory new look, I then bought real Persian carpet that I used to replace the sad baby blue Wilton carpet that had been home to smelly mice. Finally, the car went to get its first-time-registered licensing inspection. The replaced steel failed the required VIN inspection because it did "not look factory", and the shop wanted $20,000 to cut apart a perfectly good chassis to pass. While in the shop a customer lost control of her car and bashed in the front guard I gave up. Another shop was able to pull out the damage and get it ready for repainting, but in doing so the beautifully newly chromed bumpers were damaged and will need to be redone. So, fed up, I hauled it home and parked it in the garage where it sits today, taking the occasional unregistered spin on the back roads when police are not around. I wonder if it will ever get on the road in NZ, or if I would be smarter to take it back to the USA where they have less draconian standards for old cars.

And that's my Bristol story.

[Barrie]

Thank you for a most fulsome contribution Claude!
That's quite a tale you tell.

I'm curious about the 'most beautiful multi-toned leather' and can't imagine what it looked like. Are there any references to it on the internet or pictures that you have?
Regards, Barrie

[Barrie]

Part two.
After the 409 and Rover 2000TC I bought a 1972 Daimler XJ6 in a special order Aston Martin olive green with a tan interior.
Looked and went fabulously when it wasn’t in the garage! The final straw was when one of the petrol tanks on this 4 year old car rusted through from the outside. Hopeless!
I paid £2500 for it and spent £1100 on repairs in 13 months of ownership. Double hopeless!! A BMW 2002 followed
Then Dick Fuggle introduced me to Neville Thompson’s 410. Dick took a small donation for the intro along with a case of his favourite Bell’s Whisky.
The ‘G’ registered car 410 was probably the best Bristol I’d owned and probably the best car I’ve owned too! It was black with an elephant grey interior and was distinguished from other 410s by having very smart single stainless steel strips along the sides rather than the alternating curved design which is standard. I think it was from a 407 and served to make the car seem longer. 185x15 radial tyres were a revelation to the handling and it was much brisker than the 409. I remember a serious dice with an Austin-Healey 3000 which I was surprised to lose at high speed. (I never realised they were that fast although I recently came across this video of one driving at Spa. It’s long but well worth watching as an example of skill. Forward to 14:05 until 16:25 when the red mist overcomes an E-type driver. More fun! spa on board footage in austin healey 3000 - YouTube )
I looked after the 410 like a baby and despite using it as a daily driver managed to win the Levine trophy in competition with Neville Thompson’s latest 410 amongst others.
As I say, probably my favourite car and I sold it through Dick Fuggle to a delightful attorney named Joe Dickerson from Santa Barbara in California. He had a small collection of cars there including a rare Hooper bodied Daimler Century. As far as I know the 410 is still in the USA although I did see it and the Daimler up for sale maybe 10 years ago.
The Bristol was then followed by a 1961 4 door James Young bodied S2 Bentley Continental.

[GREG]

Now that's a post worth reading ! :-) thank you

I think the 410 to 411 S3's must have taken a lot of beating -- and they really don't need much to make them competitive in today's world

I think most people use the forum to solve problems, so as time goes on the forum traffic will be less due to the answers to questions being in the archives

As for the forum being dead !!

Moaning about the forum or the bloke that runs it is a tad rude ! If you think you can raise interesting questions or problems,I'm sure the forum will spark to life and any questions will be answered.

If anyone wants to chat to people they don't know -- I believe other forums are around for that ... :-)

[Geoff Dowdle]

Here I'm sitting in steamy Bangkok Thailand on holidays and not a Bristol in sight .
Plenty of Ferrari, Lambo , Aston , Maserati, BMW and Benz

I thought I should reply to a few other Forum members with a run down on the Bristol & Bristol powered cars I've owned over nearly 40 years.

My old car obsession started in the mid 60's with a friends AH 100/4 and I was hooked. My first two cars were AH 100/6 then progressed to E Type and two AC Cobras but I finally saw the light after buying a AC Aceca Bristol fitted with a Holden 3.3 litre straight six and auto . What a terrible combination but within 6 months I fitted a 100 series 2 litre Bristol engine and sports box with overdrive . The car came alive and was not far short in top speed of a AC 289 I later owned .
The first true Bristol was 400 chassis 452 which I purchased in 1976 as a basket case . After a extended restoration it was on the road in early 1985 and a few years ago gave it its second rebuild and special 100B2 engine .
I suppose its a long time to own a car but what other car of the late 40's can do what a 400 does , hopefully it will be with me for more rebuilds .

Later came a 401 with D2 engine & original 85C which I reverted back to standard and fitted the D2 to 400/452.

A AC Ace Bristol BE 167 ,once again with Holden 6 engine was a big resto job but luckily I already owned the original D engine for it . it was a interesting early car with Aussie race history.

A 402 I bought by tender from a deceased estate of a BOCA Club member , from memory for about A$6,000
It was a really nice Sunday touring car fitted with BW CR5 gearbox and 403 sway bar . I sometimes feel I should not have sold this 402 (it is still in the same family I sold it to ), but when one owns about 7 cars spread around Australia in rented garages .a few had to go .
AC Cobra , 402 , Ace which gave me a nice home and later a 4 car garage .

A 411 series one was offered and I could not resist . This was a great everyday driver , mechanically good but needed painting . I used it happily driving to work each day for eight years and had fun on trips at the weekend .
When it was previously domiciled in UK, BCL replaced the original engine with a later 400 ci engine , that was hopeless and I could not get it reving much over 4500.
I reverted back to a STD HiPo 383 which would rev to 6000rpm in top gear , a very fast car.

In between there was another Aceca Bristol , 404 & Arnolt all bought and sold in pieces and happily now on the road with later owners .

By the late 80's I was trying to purchase a BMW 328 but missed out and heard about Werner Oswald making a batch of 328/Frazer Nash wheels . Enquiring further placed a order for one of his Frazer Nash Le Mans Rep kits but in the end purchased the chassis , body , grille & some mechanical components . It arrived in about 1990 and I set to building it up . I used the engine and some mechanical bits from a extinct 401 plus BW CR5 box with syncro high first . It was a rewarding project to take on but has still only done about 1500 miles.

In my spare time I completed a 16 year restoration of a 1936 AC 16/80 two seat competition sports. This AC was later sold and replaced by a Lancia Aurelia B20 5th series a low mileage original car with unusual original leather trim . A nice car .probably faster than the 400 , but terrible seats & gearbox, antiquated sliding pillar front suspension , good brakes , steering , De Dion rear end and of course lovely Pinninfarina body. But as a whole I preferred the 400 to drive .

My brother Peter is also a keen Bristol owner and I purchased from him one and a half 400's that were parts cars he had purchased with another 400 years before . The better car , chassis 400/650 has been built up as a 400 convertible. copying the hood and cant rail design of the 402 .
It needs about another 6 months work to complete a 8 year restoration .
This should be fun , maybe not a 402 , 405DH or Farina 400/401 but far better than having a shed full of 400 parts I would probably never use or sell , it has saved another Bristol.

Later came my chance of owning a 30's BMW after missing the 328 . I was offered a 1937 BMW 329 with 2 seat Reutter body , it was a real basket case having been stored out in the open in sea air for nearly 40 years . When I separated the body from the chassis I found the chassis & mechanicals to be sound but the body was in many rusted & rotted pieces in a pile on the ground.
For those who are not aquainted with the BMW 329 they are basically the same tube chassis as a 319 & 328 but with 50hp engine , small diameter cable brakes and bolt on disc wheels .
This chassis currently sits with a replica Touring designed alloy body similar to the three 328's developed for the 1941 Berlin to Rome race organised by Hitler & Mussolini but never took place as WW2 took hold. But still needs a full restoration.

My latest purchase a few months ago was the last Aerodyne produced , 403 chassis 1580 , 70,000 odd miles from new , two previous owners , straight body with the usual rust in bottom of doors , sills etc .
I don't think it will be a long term project but I will no doubt improve it and find a keen new owner .

So my current fleet is
400/452 , 400/650 , Frazer Nash Rep , BMW 329 , 403 /1580 and the bones of a 1936 AC 16/70 special .
I retired earlier this year and probably need 20 healthy years to finish all my projects .
How the past 40 years has flown , luckily owning a variety of nice cars and meeting hundreds of really nice people along the way

Regards
Geoff

[Claude]

Originally Posted by Barrie

Thank you for a most fulsome contribution Claude!
That's quite a tale you tell.

I'm curious about the 'most beautiful multi-toned leather' and can't imagine what it looked like. Are there any references to it on the internet or pictures that you have?
Regards, Barrie

http://www.bristolcars.info/forums/a...1&d=1385927856

Your welcome Barrie,

Attached is a photo of the interior. I should explain that my intention was to make the 411 a keeper, thus I did the interior to my own taste rather than a faithful repeat of "factory". Although I do note that in a long conversation with Tony Crook, he made clear that "factory" was often whatever the first customer wanted. He spoke of paint colours to match the customer's school tie, and of course the Elliot Gant 410 had a custom Mota Lita steering wheel, custom trim (that seems to have become the model for the more subdued 411) and the body was repainted three times (at his expense) until he was happy with the result and took delivery of the car which he had shipped to New Haven, CT USA (this latter story from Brian... and I should note only told because Gant had spoken with me on the phone prior, thus they were revealing no secrets about the first buyer of their cars).

Anyway, back to my car, the dash was veneered in burl walnut with the assistance of the Stradivarius violin specialist Peter Moes (who raced Arnolt Bristols along with his wife Wendy... his and hers cars). The carpet was made from a new hand-knotted Persian runner. The brown leather trim was Italian book leather that came from a film company auction (the company that made those fantasy wonders such as Xena Warrior Princess).

The company had a three-day auction to close out a warehouse full of film stuff, and the last day at 5 pm they auctioned off the leather. I was there to buy one shelf to repair some furniture damaged when our container was shipped, but the exhausted auctioneer, seeing about fifty lots at the end of the auction said "Shall we just do the whole room as a single lot?" You may imagine my dismay fearing my day's vigil was a waste, as I was there only for one lot. My reserve for that shelf was $1,000. At NZ$800 my hand was the only one remaining up, thus I bought about $30,000 in leather, plus a room full of tools including a 300 pound Industrial-Revolution era riveter. I had to call in a crane-truck to haul all the loot home and I still have over a cubic metre of skins.

I then found a brilliant leather upholsterer who in a previous life had done the top classic cars in NZ. He decided to go back to art school to earn a degree, and discovered the student's life means being broke. On a very reasonable hourly rate, he agreed to upholster a few jobs for me. He did my 1982 Mercedes G-Wagon in saddle leather (about 1/4 inch thick) to survive the abuse that jeep gets from dogs, horse-daughters, and various construction projects that are part of the territory when living on an island in an island nation. The Bristol 409 had its front seats upholstered in a strong but comfortable leather than was then dye-matched to the original.

With the 411, we selected a blond deer leather for the inner panels and a harder brown leather for the outer parts of the seat squab where there would be more wear. In the back of the seat he made a pull-out table suitable for a picnic when not driving, and then made leather seat covers to protect all. The seat covers have bleached from the sun, thus proving their worth. He also refurbished the foam, making the seats more comfortable. Sadly however, due to the import inspection laws passed after I brought the car into the country, the seats have less than a mile of driving time on them.

And that's the leather story.

Claude

[Barrie]

That's quite a tale Claude!
The leather auction must have been interesting at the time as I'm sure you were bemused/horrified/pleased in equal measure.

The steering wheel looks very practical as in the straight-ahead position you'll be able to see all the instruments as the two spokes are at 'twenty to four' So often these after-market wheels obscure the dash. I understand from Mota-Lita that such a design if frowned upon now for health and safety reasons.

[stovo]

To add some current photos of the cars Claude mentions in his post:

Flickr: stevesparkesnyc's Photostream

I was fortunate to acquire the 410 and 405dh from Claude, who was typically magnificent in both transactions(thank you). They are both in the USA, and the 410 recently covered 190 miles on a brisk November day without missing a beat. Lovely. It is also sporting the single side strip that Barrie mentions in his post. I wonder how many others had that instead of the more usual twin strips?

The Brigand in the pictures was my first Bristol and was originally a Britannia, albeit with Brigand wheels and headlights from new. The factory completed the upgrade to full Brigand spec for me, with turbo, drainpipe exhaust, new bonnet etc. This positive engagement with the factory (and service center) was the beginning of a slippery but very enjoyable slope that ultimately led to the 410 and 405 restorations. They all have stories..

Happy motoring!

[backseateducation]

Lovely cars Steve.
Your photography's not bad either!

[Barrie]

Originally Posted by stovo

The Brigand in the pictures was my first Bristol and was originally a Britannia, albeit with Brigand wheels and headlights from new. The factory completed the upgrade to full Brigand spec for me, with turbo, drainpipe exhaust, new bonnet etc. This positive engagement with the factory (and service center) was the beginning of a slippery but very enjoyable slope that ultimately led to the 410 and 405 restorations. They all have stories..

Happy motoring!

Hello Steve,
We met some time ago when you visited me in Westminster as you were thinking of selling the Brigand/Britannia. It was only my extraordinary height which prevented me buying which was a shame.
You showed me pictures of your 410 with its sumptuous leather in a green that the superstitious Anthony Crook would probably never have approved of.
I hope you are keeping well.