The Perfect Road to Adventure: A Story of the Bristol 401

I remember my first encounter with a classic automobile that left an indelible mark on my psyche. It was as if I was transported to a world where the boundaries of time and space were pushed to their limits. The machine in front of me, a beautiful 1955 Bristol 401, seemed to radiate an aura of excitement and adventure, inviting me to take a journey that would be etched in my memory forever.

As I sat behind the wheel, feeling the contours of the car's sleek design, I couldn't help but wonder about its history. Who built this magnificent machine? What stories did it hold? The Bristol 401 was more than just a car; it was a testament to the ingenuity and precision of the Bristol Aircraft Company, which had previously built bombers for World War II. The shift from aircraft to automobiles was no less remarkable, as the same precision and attention to detail that defined their work in the skies were now applied to the open road.

I took my foot off the gas pedal, and to my delight, the freewheeling feature engaged with a satisfying click. This was a car that didn't need any special treatment; it was built for the road, not for some exotic racing circuit. The gentle hum of the engine seemed to whisper tales of its own, of long stretches of highway and winding roads, of family vacations and solo escapades. I felt as though I was driving an aircraft, albeit one that could carry multiple passengers with ease.

As I navigated the twists and turns, I couldn't help but think about the automotive writers who had once captured the essence of driving in their work. Ken Ferman and Steve Szwast were two such individuals who had a way of making you feel like you were right there behind the wheel. Their writing was akin to an artist's brushstrokes, conveying the joy and excitement of the driving experience in vivid detail.

The Bristol 401 itself was a marvel, with its lack of fancy features or modern conveniences. Yet, it didn't need them; its understated charm was part of its appeal. The manual that came with it was a treasure trove of information, beautifully illustrated and comprehensive in its coverage. I felt like I had stumbled upon a hidden gem, one that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

As I continued to explore the car's capabilities, I couldn't help but feel a sense of connection to the people who had built it. The engineers, the technicians, the craftsmen – all had contributed to this magnificent machine, imbuing it with a spirit of adventure and freedom. When you saw the Bristol 401 on the road, you knew that you were looking at something special, something that had been crafted by men who had once built bombers for the war effort.

I think back to my mother's stories about her Scottish heritage, and how she always spoke fondly of the British Isles' understated charm. It was a quality that I had grown to appreciate over the years, one that seemed to seep into every aspect of life. The Bristol 401 was an embodiment of this spirit, a car that didn't need to shout its presence to be heard.

As I brought the car to a stop, I felt a sense of gratitude for the experience. It had been a journey through time and space, one that had left me with memories that would last a lifetime. The Bristol 401 was more than just a car; it was an adventure waiting to happen, a machine that seemed to whisper tales of its own, inviting you to take a ride that would stay with you forever.

The years have passed since my first encounter with the Bristol 401. I've had the privilege of reading the stories of other automotive writers who have captured the essence of driving in their work. But none have resonated with me quite like Steve Szwast, whose writing style was akin to a symphony of words that transported you to the world behind the wheel.

The road to adventure is not for everyone, but when you find it, it can be life-changing. For those who seek out such experiences, I offer this: take your time, appreciate the little things, and never lose sight of the thrill of the ride. Whether it's a vintage car like the Bristol 401 or something more modern, remember that the journey is what truly matters.

As I sit here reflecting on my encounter with the Bristol 401, I am reminded of the power of stories to transport us across time and space. It was not just a machine that had left an impression on me; it was a memory waiting to be made. The story of this magnificent car will live on, etched in my mind as a testament to the ingenuity and precision of those who built it.

The 401's manual is a testament to its creators' attention to detail and commitment to excellence. It reads like a novel, a comprehensive guide that covers every aspect of the car's operation. Whether you're a seasoned driver or just starting out, this manual will become your trusted companion on the road.

As I look back on my journey with the Bristol 401, I am reminded that sometimes it's not about the destination but about the journey itself. The road to adventure may be long and winding, but with the right machine by your side, the experience can be nothing short of magical.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou know i call this the most british of british cars because you know it's just so unjust like a brooks brothers suit extremely well made not flashy it's just mature reasonably conservative like i say it doesn't say superleggera all over it it just is welcome to the episode of jaylon's garage today the 1955 bristol 403 i consider this the most british of all british cars and i say that think of rolls-royce and jaguar and mg only because it's the most british of all british cars and we'll get into it in just a minute as you can see aerodynamic car built by the bristol aircraft company i should explain how i came to get this car you know growing up with all the great automotive writers like griff barginson and ljk set right and ken purdy and david davis i used to read them all uh set right i liked because i think he was the most literate of all those guys and he used to rave about bristols and i'd never seen one in america because quite frankly there aren't hardly any and i always wanted to find one so one day i set up my search and you know the three rules in buying a car first have it checked out by a professional mechanic do not buy it over the phone and don't pay the asking price you know the same thing well it caused i didn't do any of those things first of all to find a professional to inspect it i couldn't even find anybody knew what it was let alone a professional second there weren't any for sale except one and i bought it over the phone but ljk set right said uh only the finest gentleman by bristol so i thought okay i guess the guy that bought it must be a gentleman i'll just take his word for it and you know it turned out to be true the car came it was exactly as the owner described there was no body rod there was nothing the engine smoked a little i'll get into that but we fixed that and uh it's one of the greatest driving experiences it's a two liter six cylinder engine with three carburetors on a three solar carburetor you might think it's a bmw judging from the grill in a sense it is you see after the war the bristol airplane company did not need to make aircraft anymore because the war was over and we in the english and the allies had won the british government wanted to keep the bristol aircraft company employed because he had people turning out aircraft you know a dime a dozen and then that stops then you got all these unemployed workers so they thought let's see if we get them to build automobiles and you had something in world war ii called war reparations you could go in and take from the loser basically what you wanted and bristol was offered which automobile company in germany would you like they passed on volkswagen because volkswagen wasn't going anywhere well you saw what happened there but they chose bmw and they took the 328 engine which is a very wise choice it is a brilliant brilliant engine and we'll get into that in a minute that's why it still has that grille but they went back and they did the engine and the entire car to aircraft specifications notice how aerodynamic it is notice there are no door handles there are no handles anywhere on it uh the only intrusion perhaps is side mirror it's 70 miles an hour this thing is extremely smooth and quiet you can have a conversation in it it's got a four-speed transmission it's only 100 horsepower but it only weighs 2700 pounds because it has superleggera construction now what that is you know the italians make a huge deal see what i got they put on the side and make a big deal the british again being british very quiet very subdued they're not really make a big deal about it but it is built extremely light this car weighs 2700 and like one pound something like that and it's pushing only 100 horsepower but the fun thing about this car is you get to use all the power all the time you can just keep your foot in it and when the three carburetors kick in it is so nice to drive has tremendous road feel uh this was a competitor to bentley and jaguar when they sold these in england these were sold to gentlemen who didn't want to make a scene you know just wanted to sort of show up nothing quite as garish as uh rolls-royce or something like that which kind of showed how much money you have and but these were expensive they were not inexpensive cars and you see the aircraft influences in it even the steering wheel when you take a look at it you notice it has the the two center spokes really look like uh like whatever you call the steering apparatus on a on an aircraft it is really just an amazing amazing automobile let me uh let me show you some of the features of this guy let's start with the engine i'll come around this hood opens on two sides i'll show you this is kind of an interesting thing first i'm going to do this you can pull this knob here you can open the engine on this side or you can come around pull the knob on the other side and open the engine on this side which is what we'll do right now again see no door handles everything's flush remember this is 1955. top speed on this car is about 106 miles an hour as you can see extremely small engine pre-war this is one of the greatest motors this is the engine that was in the uh ac bristol you know which is what became the cobra they took this engine out and put in the but you know this is a great engine it was that was certainly a car i think is equal to the 289 a lot of purists like it better than the 289 but that's the end of the story uh it's understood if you if you mistakenly think this is some sort of twin overhead cam engine it is not it is a push rod engine uh with a hemi head can you see these here okay those are the push rods running across i'm going to show you a diagram later in the in the owner's mind who explains how that works you have a long push rug coming up and another push rod going this way it sounds a bit uh a bit weird and overdone but it actually works and it works tremendously well okay now uh ljk set right he wrote a book called um a private car on the bristol and it's one of those english over-produced books it's ridiculously expensive it comes in a leather but it's a great book it's a great book he loved these cars and i'm going to quote what he said about this engine when they took this engine over from bmw because they were an aircraft company one of the metallurgical revisions they made was to make the similar liners out of the room i think it's pronounced by radium bri vad ium radium alloy it's a steel they used in the sleeve valve engines of the centaurus arrow centaurus aeroplane and they said they had a bore life of 600 000 miles so i thought that was pretty impressive you've got some interesting features here you've got a one-shot lubrication system there's a pedal on the floor when you press it it shoots oil or whatever lubricant you're using to all four points this engine started out it was the 400 and i had 85 horsepower then the 401 402 this is the most power version with one powerful version of 100 horsepower which i again doesn't sound like a lot but it is so much fun to drive uh this here is the one shot lubrication you have a pedal under the uh under the dashboard by your foot you press it once every couple of days or so and it shoots chassis lubrication to all the pertinent points you've got your headers here let me show you that super lagera construction that i was talking about see all these tubes you see how lightweight this whole thing is made because it's a series of tubes and it's not a big heavy chassis this is just it's hard to convey what a wonderful driving automobile this is and when we take it out in a minute i hope you can get the same feeling that i get i think it's cool you've got three carburetors kind of like the old 389 gto when that came out with the tri-carburetor setup different carburetor setting these two outer ones are the same the jets are different here in the center one this is really a well-thought-out engine it's a pre-war engine that worked well into the 60s and uh it's really fascinating in fact let me while i have it here let me get the handbook i'm going to show you this is the you know and this is a real instruction manual this gives you everything you need i want to show you how this engine works okay here we go can you get a shot of that you see your cam is down below you have one push rod goes up here and the other push rod goes across the motor into the hemi head right here on paper it doesn't sound like it would work it seemed like rather convoluted but it works tremendously well this is just a wonderful engine when i got this car as i said before it was an excellent shape but the engine smoked a little bit so we decided to do new valve guides uh and it was well you have to call everybody you know in england and find parts for these it was a little tricky to do but it was well worth it and it took like you know it is i got it i drove it it smoked so much the people would yell at me at traffic lights hey misty your car stinks you know this is california you can't have a car that smokes it's just so i parked a few years and other things came along and six years later i decided look let me just pull the engine let's take it completely apart and now we've got just i should have done this the first year we just had other things that got in the way and now it runs perfectly well and gets excellent gas mileage it's fast it probably could use another gear but most cars at this period could you've used another gear at the time they just didn't do five speeds uh all sorts of just interesting little things as i said the hood opens either side you now have to worry about a hood flying off or opened on one of these because then um from it opens from the side and you can open it from either side battery is here windshield washer here what else your jack is right over there obviously radiator fan a two blade fan just like an aircraft it's it's funny how that is and it works fine that two bladed fan actually works very good this car does not overheat come on let's shut this off and we'll take you around the inside well i want to spend some more time spend a minute on this on this bro you know that's what i love about the english they're great writers i mean they're a nation of scribes and i don't say that as an insult to be insulting i mean because it's true and they just do i mean this has wonderful illustrations it shows you how to adjust everything imagine an owner's manual now telling you how to adjust the valves set cam timing most manuals now won't even tell you the tire pressure because they're so afraid of getting sued see your dealer yeah i'm going to go see my dealer about tire pressure yeah so that's why this is such a joy to have i mean this is not only owner's manual it's also a workshop manual you've got look at these beautifully illustrated it's as if arthur rackham he you know you do all the illustrations for dickens christmas carol it's like he did these i mean it's fantastic and your spare tire courses under the trunk you see it comes down below like that uh let me see what else really have here you've got all these pages that come out because that shows you the sort of lubrication chart how the engine is lubricated but anything you need to know adjusting the horn cam timing just just every single thing uh it's really fantastic there's your one shot lubrication and as i said this was not an inexpensive car when it came out uh when you look at the now come around here i'll show you the inside once again i have my comprehensive manual here uh this explains all look look how many switches there are on this dashboard okay you've got twin glove compartments on each side which one for each glove if you want your ammeter you have your clock this is a petrol reserve when you pull that out the light comes on let you know you're on reserve this one here is the de-mister this is your starting button right here this is your enricher which is basically just like a choke this one here is a fog lamp switch this one here is a hand throttle that's ignition wipers lights and dome light inside not only does it have one of those radio mobile radios in it but it doesn't your headlights are here this is your traffic haters all this has regular uh regular tail lights on it now speedometer oil temperature water temperature and of course oil pressure and of course this wonderful steering wheel here which has the uh oh just like an aircraft here you're flying an aircraft that's a lot of pilots bought these surprisingly just because they like the way they were built they were built to such a standard you know i call it the most british of british cars because it's just understated you don't see a lot of ads for the bristol in magazines touting how great it is either you knew about it or you don't thank you goodbye and up until well just this year the bristol company was still going you could send your bristol back to the factory and they would redo it like new um it's just that old world sort of english craftsmanship that you don't a lot of people pretend to still use but but don't you know they were handmade automobiles and built to aircraft quality standards it's hard to convey i guess the best thing we can do is just take it for a ride and show you what i'm talking about well these are i love the way these come down they got ash trays in the doors again you ingress and egress you press this to get out that's your door switch there um and the speaker up here in the roof which is really the best place for it you know modern cars have it down low in the corners but up here it's really because it's closest to your ear so that would make sense it's just a well thought out car again this is 1955. it's small it's efficient but it's not really small inside it utilizes space very efficiently and just a great engine you know when all three carburetors open up on this thing especially when you're rolling it feels like a turbocharger it sort of kicks in we don't have a carburetor just perfect yet we're close it's hard to find jets for these solex carburetors if you know anybody that's got solex jets let me know um but we've got it pretty good i i mean i noticed it but i don't think you will notice it on the on the drive um what a rear view mirror of course right here switch through the rear shade right here just sort of pull this little ring and i'm almost afraid to pull it i don't know what kind of condition the cord is in because if it breaks i got to pull the whole headliner so i'm not gonna do it because why would i put a shade up so i couldn't see out the back it makes no sense but it's there if you wanna it's the right size of a car it's it seats four people comfortably but it's not a huge automobile oh let's take it next door put it up on the lift and show what it looks like underneath that's what we'll do okay i'll show you how you open the door on this thing you press this button right there now to get to the trunk this is kind of cool but you have a center armrest you pull that center armrest down and you have a little lever there give that a pull and that opens your trunk right up so but that's kind of cool keeps valets and people out of your trunk let's put it up on the lift all right we've got the 403 up in our stellar corner live your spare tire is right under here this drops down as you can see it's nicely lubricated under here that one-shot lubricator it does shoot uh oil everywhere your shocks right there and this is such a well crafted automobile it really is your transmission across your engine modern fuel pump and all the grease points you've got under here a few little leaks but it wouldn't be english if it didn't leak a little bit your shocks right there these springs you got the alfin brake brake drums these are these i guess the equivalent would be the buick brake drums of the 50s those are the most beautiful but these alpha brake drums see they're finned can you see that and you see how big the brakes are in fact there was a school of thought that when the earlier models had too much break and they sort of made the backs a little different than the fronts i thought it had too much braking but i don't know how that's possible uh as you can see it's never really been damaged or hit this is a driven used automobile it's not a show car so i drive it a lot it is just so nice to drive it's it's well you'll see in a minute there's a drop of oil right there notice this nice clean oil see that's everything we take care of our cars here all right let's uh get around on the road and we'll show you what it's like once again our shocks our rear brakes often break thumbs all the way around let's set her down and go for a spin you know i call this the most british of british cars because it's you know it's just so understand like a brooks brothers suit extremely well made not flashy it's not you know it's just mature reasonably conservative like i say it doesn't say superleggera all over it it just is if you didn't know it was you wouldn't know it maybe until you drive it i have no idea what the american equivalent would be of a bristol uh it might be like perhaps buick to cadillac you know oh you don't want to cadillac there's a little show offi so you get the top of the line buick you know if you don't want a rolls royce or even a jaguar you'd get oh the bristol you know and people who know know you know that's sort of the fun part about it but i could spend hours in this i have you know it's a it's a great long distance especially on a two-lane highway you know if you're drowning along on the 405 or the 210 at 80 90 miles an hour it might seem a bit hurried but if you're out just like a fast two-lane road through malibu or anything like that oh it's just just wonderful responds so well it's a two liter that thinks it thinks it's a three and a half liters i remember reading set wright's book about you know the private car about the bristol i bought the book before i bought the car and uh he just kind of went on and on and i go well how could that be how could it be as good as he says but it actually is it is it again it's one of those cars you get or you don't get it also has some surprising features when i first got it i didn't realize you have freewheeling in first gear which means if you're in gear you take your foot off the gas you will roll and it actually makes sense pulling up to a stop light or something like that you see what that there it's not there any other gears but you do have to be careful when you park it because you can't leave it on a hill in first gear and walk away without pulling the brake or else we'll slide down the hill on you i love the font of the gauges on the dashboard and it costs a classic uh sort of wood english library english drawing room sort of interior when all three carburetors open up that's what it really pulls nicely it's hard to believe that's a pre-war engine design but bristol didn't just take the engine although they did but they did make it their own they improved it i mean it does feel like it's a twin cam but it's not you've got one long push rod one short one going sideways into a hemi head two valve cylinder brakes are excellent especially for a 50s car when i first got it had like a nerdy steering wheel on it nah that just didn't work for me i wanted to put the original so luckily the ritual was included with the price and uh i like that i like sort of resting your hands here the way they did back in the day well what people always ask oh is it weird driving on the right hand you know it's second nature you get used to right away and the car is not so wide that you feel you know you're only sitting what 18 inches this way instead over there this is my favorite version the 1955 403 because as i said it had the superlook era construction they i think they abandoned it after this particular model may be too expensive and i think this is the last one to use uh this engine although i'm not sure i have to check on that later they did uh the bristol fighter and they used some chrysler motors and some other things but this to me was the heyday built by the same folks that won world war ii with their aircraft guess how british uh bristol is you know they say this is what they say why do bristols not have air conditioning well they didn't put air conditioning in the car because they feared that you would miss the pastoral smells as you drove through the countryside yeah yeah that's why that's what it is that just made me laugh i mean can you get more english than that miss the pastoral smell normally i would have gotten air conditioning but then i didn't want to miss the pastoral smells yeah i just love the harmonics of this engine it just sounds so nice and you feel it through the metal when you step on the gas not in an unpleasant way you just feel like you're part of the vehicle you know that's why i enjoy uh lj said wright's writing because he can he can uh explain you know in in literary terms what it's like to drive and own various automobiles you know when i was doing my talk show i used to have astronauts on and most astronauts at least in the early days like buzz aldrin those guys were fighter pilots great guys great men unbelievable but you know you'd say what's it like to walk in space and walk on the moon and they go cool you know okay it's kind of like fighter pilot talk you know and then once they had an astronaut named story musgrove and he was an astronaut but he was also a philosopher and a teacher and when he talked about space he made it sound so amazing and so exciting you know that he he he could really equate and make you feel like you're a part of it you know that's why i like reading the great automotive writers like ken ferdi and certainly uh mr setwright because they really can make you feel what it's like to drive and home one of these vehicles and that's what i try to do sometimes i succeed i think sometimes not but at least it's heartfelt see this is the perfect kind of road to this automobile 55 to 60 miles an hour you know take you know a lot of turns a lot of twists keeps you busy keeps your mind active you're not daydreaming and some long stretch of super highway you actually enjoy the whole process of driving and there's really nothing on this car that's been updated exactly as it would have been in 1955. how many miles i got on this thing no i don't know about 80 000 kilometers so what's that about 60 000 miles something like that but since we re built the engine it doesn't smoke anymore i don't have to be self-conscious i can really enjoy using it driving it and it gets about 24 miles per gallon which isn't bad like i said it could use another gear but it just tracks so nicely drives so nicely when people look in the rearview mirror they think it's a bmw it is a car that sold pretty much strictly on word of mouth i mean they did advertise a little bit but not to the extent of when you think of advertising in america with beautiful models and you know cars at the beach and all that kind of thing uh they really sold basically just on their reputation oh we had a bristol okay you know very advanced i think it was time notice there's no vent window everybody had vent windows in the 50s but this window opens all the way up this way i guess it wasn't aerodynamic a lot of people think this looks like a big 356 porsche and i can see that too i think the only car would compare to is one of the bmw sedans that came out about well 20 years after this thing was produced you know the bavaria or was it the 535 was that it even the 2002 because it's a sensible car you can actually put your whole family in and go somewhere it's funny how you rest your hands here on the spokes of the steering wheel and you're sort of driving like an aircraft or flying like an aircraft and this freewheeling is actually cool i take my foot off the gas and touch it again and it reengages i keep harming on the fact that this was built by the bristol airplane company but i just like that sort of precision that's what i find interesting you know the guys that went through world war ii and probably built one of these cars i'm sure this is all built by veterans 55 and they went from making bombers to making automobiles and you know the precision that they needed in the aircraft they put into the car and plus i just liked things from the british isles my mother was from scotland so i always found the understated uh understatedness of english people to be uh sort of charming you know i always tell the story when i was doing the tonight show it the first week was an actual starring jay leno and my mother said it all started jay leno just knew mr stott and mr big shot got to be started okay mike so i changed the tonight show with jay leno and that's the way it remains in the next almost uh well 20 21 years and a half after that and the same thing about this it doesn't save muscular gear or light reconstruction it's just built the best way they can and they don't pat themselves on the back and this is the car we built we hope you like it and that fabulous manual the manual is just great i read that like it's a novel beautifully illustrated that tells you how to do every single thing on the car i mean every single thing so well i could go on for hours about this i hope you enjoyed this little trip down uh it's not even memory lane because you don't remember this car you probably never heard of it so anyway you see a bristol on the road give them a thumbs up because remember they built those aircraft that helped us win world war ii all right you guys see you later thanks bye-bye uhyou know i call this the most british of british cars because you know it's just so unjust like a brooks brothers suit extremely well made not flashy it's just mature reasonably conservative like i say it doesn't say superleggera all over it it just is welcome to the episode of jaylon's garage today the 1955 bristol 403 i consider this the most british of all british cars and i say that think of rolls-royce and jaguar and mg only because it's the most british of all british cars and we'll get into it in just a minute as you can see aerodynamic car built by the bristol aircraft company i should explain how i came to get this car you know growing up with all the great automotive writers like griff barginson and ljk set right and ken purdy and david davis i used to read them all uh set right i liked because i think he was the most literate of all those guys and he used to rave about bristols and i'd never seen one in america because quite frankly there aren't hardly any and i always wanted to find one so one day i set up my search and you know the three rules in buying a car first have it checked out by a professional mechanic do not buy it over the phone and don't pay the asking price you know the same thing well it caused i didn't do any of those things first of all to find a professional to inspect it i couldn't even find anybody knew what it was let alone a professional second there weren't any for sale except one and i bought it over the phone but ljk set right said uh only the finest gentleman by bristol so i thought okay i guess the guy that bought it must be a gentleman i'll just take his word for it and you know it turned out to be true the car came it was exactly as the owner described there was no body rod there was nothing the engine smoked a little i'll get into that but we fixed that and uh it's one of the greatest driving experiences it's a two liter six cylinder engine with three carburetors on a three solar carburetor you might think it's a bmw judging from the grill in a sense it is you see after the war the bristol airplane company did not need to make aircraft anymore because the war was over and we in the english and the allies had won the british government wanted to keep the bristol aircraft company employed because he had people turning out aircraft you know a dime a dozen and then that stops then you got all these unemployed workers so they thought let's see if we get them to build automobiles and you had something in world war ii called war reparations you could go in and take from the loser basically what you wanted and bristol was offered which automobile company in germany would you like they passed on volkswagen because volkswagen wasn't going anywhere well you saw what happened there but they chose bmw and they took the 328 engine which is a very wise choice it is a brilliant brilliant engine and we'll get into that in a minute that's why it still has that grille but they went back and they did the engine and the entire car to aircraft specifications notice how aerodynamic it is notice there are no door handles there are no handles anywhere on it uh the only intrusion perhaps is side mirror it's 70 miles an hour this thing is extremely smooth and quiet you can have a conversation in it it's got a four-speed transmission it's only 100 horsepower but it only weighs 2700 pounds because it has superleggera construction now what that is you know the italians make a huge deal see what i got they put on the side and make a big deal the british again being british very quiet very subdued they're not really make a big deal about it but it is built extremely light this car weighs 2700 and like one pound something like that and it's pushing only 100 horsepower but the fun thing about this car is you get to use all the power all the time you can just keep your foot in it and when the three carburetors kick in it is so nice to drive has tremendous road feel uh this was a competitor to bentley and jaguar when they sold these in england these were sold to gentlemen who didn't want to make a scene you know just wanted to sort of show up nothing quite as garish as uh rolls-royce or something like that which kind of showed how much money you have and but these were expensive they were not inexpensive cars and you see the aircraft influences in it even the steering wheel when you take a look at it you notice it has the the two center spokes really look like uh like whatever you call the steering apparatus on a on an aircraft it is really just an amazing amazing automobile let me uh let me show you some of the features of this guy let's start with the engine i'll come around this hood opens on two sides i'll show you this is kind of an interesting thing first i'm going to do this you can pull this knob here you can open the engine on this side or you can come around pull the knob on the other side and open the engine on this side which is what we'll do right now again see no door handles everything's flush remember this is 1955. top speed on this car is about 106 miles an hour as you can see extremely small engine pre-war this is one of the greatest motors this is the engine that was in the uh ac bristol you know which is what became the cobra they took this engine out and put in the but you know this is a great engine it was that was certainly a car i think is equal to the 289 a lot of purists like it better than the 289 but that's the end of the story uh it's understood if you if you mistakenly think this is some sort of twin overhead cam engine it is not it is a push rod engine uh with a hemi head can you see these here okay those are the push rods running across i'm going to show you a diagram later in the in the owner's mind who explains how that works you have a long push rug coming up and another push rod going this way it sounds a bit uh a bit weird and overdone but it actually works and it works tremendously well okay now uh ljk set right he wrote a book called um a private car on the bristol and it's one of those english over-produced books it's ridiculously expensive it comes in a leather but it's a great book it's a great book he loved these cars and i'm going to quote what he said about this engine when they took this engine over from bmw because they were an aircraft company one of the metallurgical revisions they made was to make the similar liners out of the room i think it's pronounced by radium bri vad ium radium alloy it's a steel they used in the sleeve valve engines of the centaurus arrow centaurus aeroplane and they said they had a bore life of 600 000 miles so i thought that was pretty impressive you've got some interesting features here you've got a one-shot lubrication system there's a pedal on the floor when you press it it shoots oil or whatever lubricant you're using to all four points this engine started out it was the 400 and i had 85 horsepower then the 401 402 this is the most power version with one powerful version of 100 horsepower which i again doesn't sound like a lot but it is so much fun to drive uh this here is the one shot lubrication you have a pedal under the uh under the dashboard by your foot you press it once every couple of days or so and it shoots chassis lubrication to all the pertinent points you've got your headers here let me show you that super lagera construction that i was talking about see all these tubes you see how lightweight this whole thing is made because it's a series of tubes and it's not a big heavy chassis this is just it's hard to convey what a wonderful driving automobile this is and when we take it out in a minute i hope you can get the same feeling that i get i think it's cool you've got three carburetors kind of like the old 389 gto when that came out with the tri-carburetor setup different carburetor setting these two outer ones are the same the jets are different here in the center one this is really a well-thought-out engine it's a pre-war engine that worked well into the 60s and uh it's really fascinating in fact let me while i have it here let me get the handbook i'm going to show you this is the you know and this is a real instruction manual this gives you everything you need i want to show you how this engine works okay here we go can you get a shot of that you see your cam is down below you have one push rod goes up here and the other push rod goes across the motor into the hemi head right here on paper it doesn't sound like it would work it seemed like rather convoluted but it works tremendously well this is just a wonderful engine when i got this car as i said before it was an excellent shape but the engine smoked a little bit so we decided to do new valve guides uh and it was well you have to call everybody you know in england and find parts for these it was a little tricky to do but it was well worth it and it took like you know it is i got it i drove it it smoked so much the people would yell at me at traffic lights hey misty your car stinks you know this is california you can't have a car that smokes it's just so i parked a few years and other things came along and six years later i decided look let me just pull the engine let's take it completely apart and now we've got just i should have done this the first year we just had other things that got in the way and now it runs perfectly well and gets excellent gas mileage it's fast it probably could use another gear but most cars at this period could you've used another gear at the time they just didn't do five speeds uh all sorts of just interesting little things as i said the hood opens either side you now have to worry about a hood flying off or opened on one of these because then um from it opens from the side and you can open it from either side battery is here windshield washer here what else your jack is right over there obviously radiator fan a two blade fan just like an aircraft it's it's funny how that is and it works fine that two bladed fan actually works very good this car does not overheat come on let's shut this off and we'll take you around the inside well i want to spend some more time spend a minute on this on this bro you know that's what i love about the english they're great writers i mean they're a nation of scribes and i don't say that as an insult to be insulting i mean because it's true and they just do i mean this has wonderful illustrations it shows you how to adjust everything imagine an owner's manual now telling you how to adjust the valves set cam timing most manuals now won't even tell you the tire pressure because they're so afraid of getting sued see your dealer yeah i'm going to go see my dealer about tire pressure yeah so that's why this is such a joy to have i mean this is not only owner's manual it's also a workshop manual you've got look at these beautifully illustrated it's as if arthur rackham he you know you do all the illustrations for dickens christmas carol it's like he did these i mean it's fantastic and your spare tire courses under the trunk you see it comes down below like that uh let me see what else really have here you've got all these pages that come out because that shows you the sort of lubrication chart how the engine is lubricated but anything you need to know adjusting the horn cam timing just just every single thing uh it's really fantastic there's your one shot lubrication and as i said this was not an inexpensive car when it came out uh when you look at the now come around here i'll show you the inside once again i have my comprehensive manual here uh this explains all look look how many switches there are on this dashboard okay you've got twin glove compartments on each side which one for each glove if you want your ammeter you have your clock this is a petrol reserve when you pull that out the light comes on let you know you're on reserve this one here is the de-mister this is your starting button right here this is your enricher which is basically just like a choke this one here is a fog lamp switch this one here is a hand throttle that's ignition wipers lights and dome light inside not only does it have one of those radio mobile radios in it but it doesn't your headlights are here this is your traffic haters all this has regular uh regular tail lights on it now speedometer oil temperature water temperature and of course oil pressure and of course this wonderful steering wheel here which has the uh oh just like an aircraft here you're flying an aircraft that's a lot of pilots bought these surprisingly just because they like the way they were built they were built to such a standard you know i call it the most british of british cars because it's just understated you don't see a lot of ads for the bristol in magazines touting how great it is either you knew about it or you don't thank you goodbye and up until well just this year the bristol company was still going you could send your bristol back to the factory and they would redo it like new um it's just that old world sort of english craftsmanship that you don't a lot of people pretend to still use but but don't you know they were handmade automobiles and built to aircraft quality standards it's hard to convey i guess the best thing we can do is just take it for a ride and show you what i'm talking about well these are i love the way these come down they got ash trays in the doors again you ingress and egress you press this to get out that's your door switch there um and the speaker up here in the roof which is really the best place for it you know modern cars have it down low in the corners but up here it's really because it's closest to your ear so that would make sense it's just a well thought out car again this is 1955. it's small it's efficient but it's not really small inside it utilizes space very efficiently and just a great engine you know when all three carburetors open up on this thing especially when you're rolling it feels like a turbocharger it sort of kicks in we don't have a carburetor just perfect yet we're close it's hard to find jets for these solex carburetors if you know anybody that's got solex jets let me know um but we've got it pretty good i i mean i noticed it but i don't think you will notice it on the on the drive um what a rear view mirror of course right here switch through the rear shade right here just sort of pull this little ring and i'm almost afraid to pull it i don't know what kind of condition the cord is in because if it breaks i got to pull the whole headliner so i'm not gonna do it because why would i put a shade up so i couldn't see out the back it makes no sense but it's there if you wanna it's the right size of a car it's it seats four people comfortably but it's not a huge automobile oh let's take it next door put it up on the lift and show what it looks like underneath that's what we'll do okay i'll show you how you open the door on this thing you press this button right there now to get to the trunk this is kind of cool but you have a center armrest you pull that center armrest down and you have a little lever there give that a pull and that opens your trunk right up so but that's kind of cool keeps valets and people out of your trunk let's put it up on the lift all right we've got the 403 up in our stellar corner live your spare tire is right under here this drops down as you can see it's nicely lubricated under here that one-shot lubricator it does shoot uh oil everywhere your shocks right there and this is such a well crafted automobile it really is your transmission across your engine modern fuel pump and all the grease points you've got under here a few little leaks but it wouldn't be english if it didn't leak a little bit your shocks right there these springs you got the alfin brake brake drums these are these i guess the equivalent would be the buick brake drums of the 50s those are the most beautiful but these alpha brake drums see they're finned can you see that and you see how big the brakes are in fact there was a school of thought that when the earlier models had too much break and they sort of made the backs a little different than the fronts i thought it had too much braking but i don't know how that's possible uh as you can see it's never really been damaged or hit this is a driven used automobile it's not a show car so i drive it a lot it is just so nice to drive it's it's well you'll see in a minute there's a drop of oil right there notice this nice clean oil see that's everything we take care of our cars here all right let's uh get around on the road and we'll show you what it's like once again our shocks our rear brakes often break thumbs all the way around let's set her down and go for a spin you know i call this the most british of british cars because it's you know it's just so understand like a brooks brothers suit extremely well made not flashy it's not you know it's just mature reasonably conservative like i say it doesn't say superleggera all over it it just is if you didn't know it was you wouldn't know it maybe until you drive it i have no idea what the american equivalent would be of a bristol uh it might be like perhaps buick to cadillac you know oh you don't want to cadillac there's a little show offi so you get the top of the line buick you know if you don't want a rolls royce or even a jaguar you'd get oh the bristol you know and people who know know you know that's sort of the fun part about it but i could spend hours in this i have you know it's a it's a great long distance especially on a two-lane highway you know if you're drowning along on the 405 or the 210 at 80 90 miles an hour it might seem a bit hurried but if you're out just like a fast two-lane road through malibu or anything like that oh it's just just wonderful responds so well it's a two liter that thinks it thinks it's a three and a half liters i remember reading set wright's book about you know the private car about the bristol i bought the book before i bought the car and uh he just kind of went on and on and i go well how could that be how could it be as good as he says but it actually is it is it again it's one of those cars you get or you don't get it also has some surprising features when i first got it i didn't realize you have freewheeling in first gear which means if you're in gear you take your foot off the gas you will roll and it actually makes sense pulling up to a stop light or something like that you see what that there it's not there any other gears but you do have to be careful when you park it because you can't leave it on a hill in first gear and walk away without pulling the brake or else we'll slide down the hill on you i love the font of the gauges on the dashboard and it costs a classic uh sort of wood english library english drawing room sort of interior when all three carburetors open up that's what it really pulls nicely it's hard to believe that's a pre-war engine design but bristol didn't just take the engine although they did but they did make it their own they improved it i mean it does feel like it's a twin cam but it's not you've got one long push rod one short one going sideways into a hemi head two valve cylinder brakes are excellent especially for a 50s car when i first got it had like a nerdy steering wheel on it nah that just didn't work for me i wanted to put the original so luckily the ritual was included with the price and uh i like that i like sort of resting your hands here the way they did back in the day well what people always ask oh is it weird driving on the right hand you know it's second nature you get used to right away and the car is not so wide that you feel you know you're only sitting what 18 inches this way instead over there this is my favorite version the 1955 403 because as i said it had the superlook era construction they i think they abandoned it after this particular model may be too expensive and i think this is the last one to use uh this engine although i'm not sure i have to check on that later they did uh the bristol fighter and they used some chrysler motors and some other things but this to me was the heyday built by the same folks that won world war ii with their aircraft guess how british uh bristol is you know they say this is what they say why do bristols not have air conditioning well they didn't put air conditioning in the car because they feared that you would miss the pastoral smells as you drove through the countryside yeah yeah that's why that's what it is that just made me laugh i mean can you get more english than that miss the pastoral smell normally i would have gotten air conditioning but then i didn't want to miss the pastoral smells yeah i just love the harmonics of this engine it just sounds so nice and you feel it through the metal when you step on the gas not in an unpleasant way you just feel like you're part of the vehicle you know that's why i enjoy uh lj said wright's writing because he can he can uh explain you know in in literary terms what it's like to drive and own various automobiles you know when i was doing my talk show i used to have astronauts on and most astronauts at least in the early days like buzz aldrin those guys were fighter pilots great guys great men unbelievable but you know you'd say what's it like to walk in space and walk on the moon and they go cool you know okay it's kind of like fighter pilot talk you know and then once they had an astronaut named story musgrove and he was an astronaut but he was also a philosopher and a teacher and when he talked about space he made it sound so amazing and so exciting you know that he he he could really equate and make you feel like you're a part of it you know that's why i like reading the great automotive writers like ken ferdi and certainly uh mr setwright because they really can make you feel what it's like to drive and home one of these vehicles and that's what i try to do sometimes i succeed i think sometimes not but at least it's heartfelt see this is the perfect kind of road to this automobile 55 to 60 miles an hour you know take you know a lot of turns a lot of twists keeps you busy keeps your mind active you're not daydreaming and some long stretch of super highway you actually enjoy the whole process of driving and there's really nothing on this car that's been updated exactly as it would have been in 1955. how many miles i got on this thing no i don't know about 80 000 kilometers so what's that about 60 000 miles something like that but since we re built the engine it doesn't smoke anymore i don't have to be self-conscious i can really enjoy using it driving it and it gets about 24 miles per gallon which isn't bad like i said it could use another gear but it just tracks so nicely drives so nicely when people look in the rearview mirror they think it's a bmw it is a car that sold pretty much strictly on word of mouth i mean they did advertise a little bit but not to the extent of when you think of advertising in america with beautiful models and you know cars at the beach and all that kind of thing uh they really sold basically just on their reputation oh we had a bristol okay you know very advanced i think it was time notice there's no vent window everybody had vent windows in the 50s but this window opens all the way up this way i guess it wasn't aerodynamic a lot of people think this looks like a big 356 porsche and i can see that too i think the only car would compare to is one of the bmw sedans that came out about well 20 years after this thing was produced you know the bavaria or was it the 535 was that it even the 2002 because it's a sensible car you can actually put your whole family in and go somewhere it's funny how you rest your hands here on the spokes of the steering wheel and you're sort of driving like an aircraft or flying like an aircraft and this freewheeling is actually cool i take my foot off the gas and touch it again and it reengages i keep harming on the fact that this was built by the bristol airplane company but i just like that sort of precision that's what i find interesting you know the guys that went through world war ii and probably built one of these cars i'm sure this is all built by veterans 55 and they went from making bombers to making automobiles and you know the precision that they needed in the aircraft they put into the car and plus i just liked things from the british isles my mother was from scotland so i always found the understated uh understatedness of english people to be uh sort of charming you know i always tell the story when i was doing the tonight show it the first week was an actual starring jay leno and my mother said it all started jay leno just knew mr stott and mr big shot got to be started okay mike so i changed the tonight show with jay leno and that's the way it remains in the next almost uh well 20 21 years and a half after that and the same thing about this it doesn't save muscular gear or light reconstruction it's just built the best way they can and they don't pat themselves on the back and this is the car we built we hope you like it and that fabulous manual the manual is just great i read that like it's a novel beautifully illustrated that tells you how to do every single thing on the car i mean every single thing so well i could go on for hours about this i hope you enjoyed this little trip down uh it's not even memory lane because you don't remember this car you probably never heard of it so anyway you see a bristol on the road give them a thumbs up because remember they built those aircraft that helped us win world war ii all right you guys see you later thanks bye-bye uh\n"