1971cc 6 Cylinder Inline
4 Speed Manual Gearbox with Overdrive
Front Engined Rear Wheel Drive
Hydraulic Drum Brakes
85 bhp
Exterior Red Interior Tan
After World War 2, The Bristol Aeroplane Company branched out into producing cars, primarily to preserve the talented workforce they had from airplane manfuacturing after wartime demand collapsed. As a result they bought the rights to manufacture BMW’s pre-war engine as fitted to the BMW 328 and prewar designs taking over the UK franchise from Frazer Nash. Their first car was the Bristol 400 which was directly based on those licenses, but its replacement, the 401, debuting in 1948, was a new design, built utilizing the same BMW engine, with upgrades utilizing materials and technology that Bristol developed in building airplane engines. The car’s body was originally built by Touring in Milano, utilizing their Superleggera construction, and shows some typical styling for Touring designs of the era, especially at the front end, but it was quickly taken in-house. The design was specifically intended to be capable of efficient high speed in comfort and has very light steering, good suspension and excellent wind-tunnel developed aerodynamics. When introduced it was one of the most expensive cars in its class in Britain, and as a result, especially with its small displacement engine,despite still being able to reach 100 miles per hour, it didn’t find much
favour outside of those who appreciated the design. It was still Bristol’s highest production number for a single model, however, at 611 built.
This example was purchased by the previous owner in the UK in 2009 and exported to California, where it was driven on the California Mille. I purchased it from a dealer in California, and very shortly afterwards discovered that both B pillars were cracking and needed immediate repair. This led to a repaint in the same period correct maroon it was when I bought it, though evidence underneath showed the car was originally a metallic light green. With the repaint, we rechromed most of the external chrome trim, repainted the wheels and fitted new tires, as well as most external rubber seals. The interior of the car is still completely original, however, and I am opting to keep it that way to preserve the patina. In order to improve long distance touring, we fitted a Laycock DeNormanville electric overdrive to the gearbox and rebuilt the brakes and carburettors. The car was shown at The Quail Gathering in 2016.
