Bristol Article in Octane June '11 issue

[TBC]

[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....