Bristol alternatives.

[jimfoz]

Originally Posted by Richard Levine

"Bristol murders" were at 3 maybe, but by my count it's up to 4, as this thread should be deemed DEAD.

Apologies. For a moment I thought we were on a Bristol Cars discussion forum.

[Markus Berzborn]

In 2005, Jack Boxstrom, wrote:

"Max is my younger brother by 7 years. He flunked his grade 11 French about three times, including summer school. So eventually our parents said, "so what do you want to do now?" and he asked for a one way ticket to the UK (at aged approx 20 - this would be about 1965).

Max got a free welding school and was hired as a chassis welder at McLaren, so I told all my racing friends not to buy a McLaren Can-Am or Formula car that year since my brother was still learning his craft! In any case, his forte was design and engineering, not welding and later he studied vehicle aerodynamics at Manchester University with Costin and designed some cars with the latter for Tiga - including a formula car that had a cockpit canopy and set a lap record at Monza.

Then he designed racing wheels for cars and bikes and had a company called Dymag Wheels that eventually had about 100 employees and made pretty well all of the world's magnesium racing wheels for F-1, Prototypes and his famous 3-spoke bike racing wheel. Sold the company and went on to project consulting and race car design. His major "from scratch" car was the AMR-1 Group "C" Aston Martin for which he also built the chassis and bodies in his new kevlar-carbon fabrication shops. He is a very clever chap and there are lots of other stories and achievements - not bad for a kid that I used to get very annoyed with because he would draw "improved" bodies, chassis, etc in my Road & Track magazines, superimposed on the magazine pictures. Early, while he was still in Canada he had a motorcycle magazine and wrote technical articles for Track & Traffic magazine - one on supercharging was so complex that I could not understand it!

Max also designed a new car with a Viper V-10 for Bristol called the "Fighter" and was with Jaguar on a contact basis doing "engine development". He still lives in Leicester, England and has been recently active in ocean going sail boat design."

If I may add - unfortunately Max Boxstrom died last year.

By the way, there was a very nice photo of a Fighter rolling chassis somewhere on the net, but I just can't find the link no more. Maybe someone knows the URL.

Regards,
Markus

[Markus Berzborn]

I am not talking about this schematic

http://www.loaditup.de/files/288597.jpg

although this is also interesting. But there was a real photo somewhere of a rolling chassis taken in the Kensington showroom.

Also note that the Fighter has a much longer wheelbase than the Viper and a narrower track.

Regards,
Markus

[browning l]

The car is remarkably light too; just over 1500kg at the kerb (a 599 weighs 1688kg), and this despite what must be a fairly sizeable contribution from the massively strong steel box-section chassis with honeycomb flooring and a couple of heavy duty roll-hoops designed by race-car engineer Max Boxstrom whose credits include the Aston Martin AMR-1 sports racer that raced at Le Mans in ’89. The coil-sprung double-wishbone suspension with anti-roll bars front and rear is also largely Boxstrom’s work.

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by Markus Berzborn

Also note that the Fighter has a much longer wheelbase than the Viper and a narrower track.

Regards,
Markus

Good point!

At last, some factual information instead of bluster.

It occurred to me when lying in bed last night that if the wheelbases were different then that would suggest the Fighter chassis is different from the Viper. That's good enough for me. I shall inform my friend who visited the Viper plant that his suspicions are ill founded - I'm surprised he didn't think of that!

[Markus Berzborn]

It's rather interesting for me to notice that even with a newly designed car like the Fighter, Bristol keep to their tradition of long wheelbase and relatively small track - in a configuration with very short front overhang and an engine moved back to the centre as much as possible.
This makes the Fighter as well as the Blenheim look a bit disproportionate for today's taste with their long hoods, but this layout is very much in tune with classic designs from the coachbuilt area.

Regards,
Markus

[browning l]

Originally Posted by Kevin Howard

Good point!

At last, some factual information instead of bluster.

It occurred to me when lying in bed last night that if the wheelbases were different then that would suggest the Fighter chassis is different from the Viper. That's good enough for me. I shall inform my friend who visited the Viper plant that his suspicions are ill founded - I'm surprised he didn't think of that!

'Arf a mo, here, Kev...you wrote, "But when anyone declines to comment when asked a simple yes/no question, that makes me suspicious.

What's this about your mate's suspicions?

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by browning l

'Arf a mo, here, Kev...you wrote, "But when anyone declines to comment when asked a simple yes/no question, that makes me suspicious.

What's this about your mate's suspicions?

He had his own suspicions because the Chrysler guys clammed up. When he told me the story I also became suspicious.

I am no longer suspicious, he however will remain so.

Indeed he will take some convincing that his suspicions are ill founded, because he is a Chrysler devotee. In fact even when I point out the differences in the wheelbase length and track he will probably still argue that it is based upon a Viper chassis!

For what it's worth he also reckons Bristol copied the torsion bar rear suspension from Chrysler, but I suggest we don't go there ...

[Markus Berzborn]

I don't think the high price of Bristols has anything to do with the engines, whether modified or not.
Consider Jensen, Monteverdi, Facel Vega and so on.
They all used common American engines and had similar prices. It's the small series production that makes them expensive.

Regards,
Markus

[Claude]

In 1995 I bought an engineless LHD 405 from Jim Rogers of New Baltimore Michigan who used to work for Chrysler in a small department that was devoted to their relationship with Bristol Cars. He said that the sales volume to Bristol was less than a single Chrysler car dealership, but the company found the engineering brilliance to be worth maintaining the relationship. He cited one issue related to the early V8 engine where Chrysler had about 40 engineers on it, and when they visited Filton to check out what Bristol had done, they found two blokes with slide rules who were doing more than Chrysler's 40 man team. After that, Chrysler cut a deal in which Bristol would get all the performance stuff they wanted at standard cost, provided Bristol passed on their R&D for free. Chrysler deemed it valuable enough to staff it, and Jim told a number of delightful stories about his visits with Tony Crook and company. For a Michigan boy, England, pubs, fast cars and eccentric ex-race drivers is exotic stuff.

Jim had no reason to deceive. He was retired from Chrysler and was telling stories in a garage as I loaded the 405 on a trailer for the long haul home. What it suggests is that Bristolised may not mean after the engines arrived in Filton that they were changed by Bristol for the 407 to 412+ cars, but that Bristol engineers suggested changes, they were made to the Chrysler product line and then provided to Bristol. It may be that some of the police specials and hot rod parts came compliments of British engineering.

The non-derivative report says Bristol was very important to Chrysler, far more important than the sale of motors would merit. It says that Bristol engineering was superior, and because they provided it to Chrysler with no charge, they got first class handling.

This would suggest that there is more to the story than marketing hype as alleged.

Claude