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| Bristol News & Other Bristol Discussion About the company, clubs, car owners, and Bristol discussion not specific to the 6,8 or 10 cyl cars. |
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11-05-11, 01:07 AM
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Bristol Article in Octane June '11 issue
There's a four page article on Bristol in the June 2011 issue of the Octane mag, which was obviously written before the acquisition by FN was announced. The article is headed;
'Has the recession affected you?' 'Not at Bristol Cars, sir... We don't do recessions' Approx a third of the text briefly outlines the history of Bristol Aeroplane Company, Bristol Cars and the White family starting in 1854. The rest of the article is really a collection of anecdotal stories, most of which we have heard before. It seems the aim of the article was to identify what makes Bristol special, but some of the stories could be off-putting to some, depending on your point of view. For example Richard Levine's account of his visit to the showroom for a test drive and Tony Crook saying "You write me a cheque for the full price of the car before the drive and we'll put right anything that is wrong." The author says "Bristol's attitude to customers was sometimes amusingly anachronistic in Tony Crook's era", as though this was a positive trait. In my opinion if probably contributed to their demise. 
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11-05-11, 02:36 AM
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demise
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While I acknowledge your views on Bristol in an attempt to point out over the years that the King has no clothes, I would say it was mortality not attitude that got Bristol to where it is today... which BTW is technically not in demise, but transition. Mr. Crook realised his daughter had no interest in taking over the company, thus he needed a succession plan. If Mr. Crook had been immortal, I believe he could and would have kept the company running with the minimum and least expensive variations required to keep the doors open. While the 1950's style showroom was eccentric, it also was cheap. It did not cost much since all the furnishings had been amortised back when we were in primary school. When he was forced to create a web site, it looks like he hired a college student and paid chips for it. It took the company years even to accept credit cards. As long as customers bought parts, needed service and a very few of them kept buying new cars (perhaps as few as one or two a month), he was able to keep his low-budget business operating. Far from the typical service centre of a Mercedes dealership, his shop looked like a dark and dusty grease-monkey shop, but the staff kept the cars running and their knowledge-base (as opposed to a computer database) in their heads was huge. Compared to the competition, the prices of parts was fair and they stock them far longer than the statutory 10 years. Bristol's attitude toward customers worked because Bristol was a custom-build shop - they did not need to be nice to customers because they never built to sell, rather they sold prior to build. Mr. Crook had the luxury of being brusque because his business plan did not include "the customer is always right" or "the customer is number one". Rather in his world, the car was number one, and it did not have to be a car that competed with other cars (which is why he also did not need car magazine journalists). Number one did not mean what it does to you, but what it meant to those few, exclusive people who parted with six figure cheques in his shabby showroom. Even the Richard Levine comment makes sense in the context of that business plan. I would love to have taken a Bristol for a test drive when I visited Mr. Crook, but I would not have been a serious prospect as a buyer. Crook did not include a demonstrator in his portfolio; that too was part of his business plan. Obviously, enough new car customers were willing to accept this or Mr. Crook had sufficient discernment to know when to offer a drive in whatever was his company car for the moment. While Mr. Crook's business seemed to be contracting every year, I tend to suspect it avoided debt. If sales became sparse, it simply did not matter, except that the resale value of the company kept getting smaller. Because the car was number one, not the brand, Crook probably turned down brand-offers that would have made him and his daughter comfortable. He was Bristol and Bristol was him. In this world of everything monetised, frankly I admired that. It's just this inconvenient mortality that gets in the way. Imagine what would have happened if the CEO and chief salesman appears before that nice young judge who takes his driver license away because he is deemed to old and frail to drive any more. Age caught up with him as it does to all mortals who live a full life. When Mr. Silverton came in, it seems to me, if we judge it on the face, he failed to understand that Mr. Crook actually had a sound business plan; thus Mr. Silverton sought to turn BCL into a more conventional car business. That proved fatal. He used debt. That suggests he used projections of ROI on a spreadsheet. He spent more money making the web site look good, hiring PR types and that not insignificant new capital investment of designing a whole new super-car from scratch. Of course, alternatively, it could be that Mr. Silverton had a sound business plan that included forced administration, where the investors would take a haircut if the sales did not hit the spreadsheet projections. The only fly in that plan, if it existed, would be that it did not count on a competitive bid trumping him. In any case, the company is not in nor ever has been demise (even if it did come close), Mr. Crook is now in retirement, and it is beginning to sound like Mr. Silverton may stay on for a while. If funds allow it, I would love to have my 411 converted to electric motors, especially if I can sell my freshly rebuilt 400 w 383 heads for a pretty penny. Claude
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11-05-11, 04:43 AM
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Although very new to the Bristol scene, having first become aware of B only 3 years ago, I feel Claude's comments as pertaining to Mr. Crook make a lot of sense. An entrepreneur, for better or worse, is his own man.
Thank you for your reasoned comments. It's too soon for mortal man to know/understand the changes that began following Mr. Crook's decision to see his business.
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11-05-11, 05:04 AM
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Can I add to Claude's list of ludditism
- fax machine instead of email address, well up until TS took over - typewritten letters, certainly long after the rest of the world abandoned them
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11-05-11, 12:31 PM
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Okay, let's drop the demise word and replace it with decline. It's hard to argue that BCL has not been in decline since the 1980s, selling fewer and fewer cars each year. In the mean time there are wages to pay, and if not rent, at least rates, insurance, maintenance and those costs just go up each year, without growing the workforce. You actually have to make more money each year, not less. I believe that had Toby Silverton (and his father-in-law) not bought into BCL when he did, that Mr Crook would have either had to sell to someone else, or the company would no longer exist today.
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12-05-11, 08:53 AM
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[quote=Claude;5128]. As long as customers bought parts, needed service and a very few of them kept buying new cars (perhaps as few as one or two a month),
For some reason people seem to have fixation on BCL having been a car manufacturer for the last twenty years; I find it baffling that this should be the case. If indeed BCL had been producing 'one or two cars a month' since 1991 where exactly are the 500 Britannias, Brigands and Blenheims that would have been made? In reality BCL made one to two cars a year, the real income coming from servicing, sales of parts to existing owners (one of the reasons for maintaining such a large stock of parts) and renovation work. The 'business plan' saw the company trying to sell a model that was falling further and further behind the products of manufacturers that had once been seen as competitors. The exact reasons for Tony selling out to Toby when he did remain shrouded in mystery, as with most things that Tony did; one can only summise that finances had deteriorated to the point where it was sell or fold. The fact that Toby actually tried to turn BCL back into a manufacturer of cars, which he succeeded to some extent with the Fighter seems, to some at least, to be a reason to demean his efforts and long for the 'good old days'. "you can't please all of the people all of the time" never rang so true....
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12-05-11, 02:01 PM
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[quote=TBC;5136]
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Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Aston Martin V8 Bristol 603 Porsche 911 Mercedes 450SLC Although the Bristol was praised for the usual luxury car accoutrements (comfort, engine, equipment etc) I think it was voted the least desirable even by the landed gentry guest testers who were hauled in to try them out.
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12-05-11, 03:42 PM
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[quote=jimfoz;5137]
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I think it was Autocar that voted the 411 S1 as their car of the year at one point, so these tests can be very eratic ! Although correct on that occasion.
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13-05-11, 03:21 AM
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[quote=GREG;5138]
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Fans of all kinds of cars, they absolutely loved it - smoothness, power, comfort, l'essence de l'experience.
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13-05-11, 03:27 AM
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If the test was done today with equivalent current model cars, the outcome may be far worse for Bristol. What would today's comparative cars be from Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and Porsche? (in the same price range as the current Blenheim), .... although why the 603 was compared with a Porsche 911 and a V8 Aston is a mystery. Quote:
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12-05-11, 04:06 PM
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Eclectic indeed. As to their general character, these five cars have next to nothing in common.
Regards, Markus Quote:
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13-05-11, 10:31 AM
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