410 exhaust manifold

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted by Bryn Tirion

313 Canadian market vs. 318 US market: In the 1960s Canada still had a road taxation system based on the egregious RAC horsepower system. This caused a rise in road taxes to come with an increase in bore, rather than stroke. To fit the Canadian variant of the 318 poly engine into a slightly cheaper taxation class, bore was reduced. Nothing to do with making poor old Canadians think they had an inferior car!

That's interesting Bryn. Was it based on the sum of the bore of all cylinders in the engine? (surely not the bore of one cylinder?)

Nevertheless, there does appear to have been some favouritism shown to the US market. Some of Chrysler's cars available in the US were never offered in Canada and Canadian cars were still given the older poly engines after the US market had moved on to the B series engines. Not a bad thing for earlier V8 Bristol owners looking for parts!

As for the "Crook bunch", I don't think we should be too harsh on them. After all they had a private car company to run which needed to be profitable. Maybe their use of cheaper engines was one of the reasons why they outlasted all other prestige marques that bought in a Chrysler power train, and many other companies who developed their own. In fact if it wasn't for the cost of developing the Fighter, Bristol still might never had gone bust.

Of course we now know the "Bristolisation" of Chrysler engines was BS, but in those days, in the UK market at least, most car manufacturers marketing departments were full of it