RE: Bristol Fighter: Spotted
Discussion
andy_s said:
I'd love one, but no idea why.
Me too. Every Bristol thread goes the same. There is one or two owners on here too, they post up sometimes saying they are a good everyday car which are enjoyable to own. They then get completely ignored, and a pile more dribble comes out from people who have never even sat in one.jonny142 said:
I spent an hour or so on a Sunday chasing a bloody Pigeon back and forth in the factory at Patchway that was causing the alarm to activate back in the mid 90.'s . 1st time i'd seen a Viper in the flesh that was there in the factory , lots of various older stuff being worked on/ being restored .. rumour from other people i worked with said the test chap who was in his 70's/80's back then got up in the early hours and test drove each new car up the M5 well over the speed limit for a shakedown test , The main office was like going back to the 50's with old wood panels walls/tall filing cabinets /desks/chairs ..
I think this is the salient point - they were a very high end 1950s British car firm, designing and building cars in the 90s.As such, they're bloody superb - if admittedly deserving of pretty much every criticism thrown at them.
Morgan passed on to younger generations of engineers and designers, Bristol didn't. Rumour (and yes, I'm well aware that there's a lot of rumour/bullst surrounding Bristol, TC actively encouraged it) has it that the Fighter was drafted, and various bits were calculated using slide rules...
The key engineers were though, all aircraft engineers 'by trade'. As such, pretty bloody knowledgeable about weight distribution/aero/etc.
I'd buy one in a bloody heartbeat, and spend enough to make it build as well as it deserves. What's not to like about excellent visibility, minimal weight, great luggage capacity, comfort and five hundred v10 horsepower?
SJMW said:
Parts bin special. Build quality shocking. I know of an owner who had to have the rear window glass ground down at Bristol til it fitted properly. Doors leaked. Company lied about production numbers. So many nicer cars for that money
It was anything but a parts bin special. That was part of it's problem. Apart from the drive train everything was bespoke, even the HVAC unit was designed from scratch because there was nothing available that functioned the way they wanted it to.gigglebug said:
Was going to be an S version as well which fitted inbetween the standard car and the T. The styling of the T improved the looks for me.
This is the original design intent not a re-style for the S or T. The picture is a retouched image of the original 1/3 scale model taken near Kenwood House!I remember when they were taking pre-orders at Goodwood - there was a massive thread on the car here - very divisive. The one thing I do remember was two or three people arguing for pages about the interior as one thought it was well made, another thought it was shoddy. Consensus at the time was a beautiful looking car seriously over priced (think people felt £50-80K was about the right level at the time, not 230k), poorly made, and with the reputation of Bristol meaning you never quite knew what you'd have bought and the way you were treated depended on how the Bristol owner liked you.
oilburner said:
gigglebug said:
This is the original design intent not a re-style for the S or T. The picture is a retouched image of the original 1/3 scale model taken near Kenwood House!Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff