“Continuation” Cars
 

Sounds ambitious.

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1292456

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1290604

Continuation Cars
 

I was under the impression that Spencer Lane Jones were building the remaining part finished Fighters.
Very odd about the 411's, I thought again that the bucks had been bought by Bristol Heritage Trust.
Thse must be built out of the umpteed wrecks that were at Windlesham, or rather I think they may be.

Who is Jason Wharton, the gentleman behind the companies listed within the advertisements? Does he have Bristol pedigree?

All somewhat strange this- where do they have the facilities to produce these vehicles ? Perhaps they are working with SLJ on this , though nothing mentioned by them.

I am keen to know what this means. Surely it is related to the previously announced SLJ project ?

Whilst in all honesty I doubt I would ever own one, the idea of a 6.2 V8 Fighter is quite appealing. It's a better engine than that old V10.

As electric vehicles are the future, production of electric 411s could revitalise Bristol as a marque - classic style with a modern power plant. However, I have doubts on what the advert claims though would liked to be proved wrong.

It does seem that they also claim to own intellectual property relating to Bristol Cars.

I am not sure they have copyright on my car's images!

There were not 8 411 shells at Windlesham - one or two scrapped cars at most.

"sourcing of the full parts catalogue" - interesting as that is absolute balderdash.

SLJ have the last of the Fighters - not sure where these others are coming from.

It all seems a tad suspicious to me.

Continuation
 

Indeed, SLJ Hackett are advertising the 3 unfinished cars (Fighters). Having 8 would increase the overall Fighter production numbers by about 50%, so highly unlikely. It would be possible to purchase 8 basket case 411s and completely refurbish them, although whether there is a market for 8 £150,000-£200,000 411s remains to be seen.......

I have been doing a bit of digging around the IPR issue. Sorry for the long post, but it casts some light on what is going on here.

The original BRISTOL registered trade marks are currently owned by Kamkorp AutoKraft Limited which in turn appears to be owned by Kamkorp Limited, according to KAL's most recent filed accounts. They are the Bristol badge, BRISTOL FIGHTER, BRISTOL, BRISTOL CARS, the stylised BRISTOL signature, BRISTOL BULLET and the Pegasus badge. Presumably they are part of the IPR package which the liquidators are putting/have put together for sale.

KAL is not in liquidation but its majority shareholder, Kamkorp Limited, is in liquidation. The Siddiqis are still directors of KAL according to Companies House records. To make it even more complicated, the liquidators of Kamkorp Limited may not be the same people as are liquidators of the rest of the Bristol Cars group. Phew! Still with me??

All these KAL trade mark registrations are currently the subject of cancellation proceedings (ie applications to remove the trade marks from the Register) at the UK Trade Marks Registry. These cancellation proceedings were started by Bristol Fighter Limited, one of the companies mentioned in the Car and Classic advertisements

BFL has itself registered BRISTOL FIGHTER, BRISTOL BUCCANEER, BRISTOL CARS, BRISTOL SPEEDSTER (application only at present) and BRISTOL ELECTRIC (application only at present). The current registrations were applied for in February 2020 (around the time of the liquidation of Bristol Cars Limited) so BFL must have been planning its strategy for quite a while. I am not sure how the Registry allowed some of these registrations to get on the Register when the existing equivalent KAL registrations were already there.

Jason Wharton is, I believe, a chartered surveyor, who got involved in 2011 in setting up an Allard continuation car company but I am not aware of this project having gone anywhere since.

It looks to me that "someone" is seriously after the right to use the BRISTOL related trade marks in the future and maybe to exclude others from using the mark BRISTOL in relation to new vehicles and new vehicle parts.

Further to the last post....

Jason Wharton set up Wharton Motor Company in 2012; in danger of being struck off by Companies House in November 2014.
It was dormant for most of its life.
It changed its name to Albatross England in May 2019. On 8 September 2020 that company became BRISTOL MANUFACTURING LIMITED.

Bristol Manufacturing Limited (08164632 - Group), Bristol Fighter Limited (12449369), Bristol Buccaneer Limited (11986176) Bristol Electric Vehicles Limited (13021060) Bristol Cars™, Bristol Fighter™, Bristol Buccaneer™ are registered trademarks owned by our Group, together with other associated intangible and tangible assets. Gallafents, London act for our Group in relation to IP.

Personally, I cannot see any history in all this beyond a long term dream as there are no assets and appear to be just one person as Director and Company Secretary.

I am not sure to what extent you can trademark “Bristol Fighter” as it is first and foremost the name of the aeroplane produced by the Bristol Aeroplane Company from which the car took its name. I am assuming the trademark is limited to use in motor vehicle production.

Even the badge is limited in its trademark, as the design - the castle on the cliff with the ship - is not an exclusive design made for the Bristol Aeroplane Company or Bristol Cars but a variant of the coat of arms of the City and County of Bristol, the coat of arms has been in existence since the 14th Century. It is used by various organisations/businesses, for example Bristol City Council use it and Bristol City and Bristol Rovers football clubs have used it as have Bristol Rugby club. Using it with the name Bristol in relation to motor vehicle production could be restricted.

411 Series 8
 

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1292456
The car and classic advert states:

We are delighted to offer for sale a limited edition series of eight new Bristol 411 Series 8 Cars, after several years of very careful design development, business planning, and sourcing of the full parts catalogue.

The Bristol 411 Series 8R is a fully re-mastered version of the original Bristol 411 Series 6, built to UK IVA Homologation, and comes with the latest Chrysler 6.4L V8 Powertrain, and an 8-Speed Automatic Transmission. Available to order and specify now, with the placing of a deposit, and build order mandate.

The Bristol 411 Series 8E is a fully re-mastered version of the original Bristol 411 Series 6, built to UK IVA Homologation, and comes with a patented British Electric Vehicle (EV) Powertrain, with bespoke power, torque and range outputs available. This model is still in prototype development, but orders are being taken, to enable final completion of homologation, and testing.

There are no 411 bodies to make 8 cars, the bucks for them are not available for use as they now reside in a museum.

I note that the Autocar article uses a 603 image posing as a 411 - well it does have 4 round headlights!

That isn't necessarily a huge impediment nowadays. I believe the latest 3D scanning and CAD technology can be used to make a new body buck quite quickly (in a few weeks).

There are however challenges sourcing many other parts. For example, last time I spoke to BCL about bumpers they could only offer secondhand ones. Similarly there will be many other parts which are not available new in any quantity and it wouldn't be economically viable to have them all manufactured from scratch. Which suggests they may be planning to purchase donor vehicles.

I note that 'new' Jensen Interceptors are being produced using a similar approach.

These ads for continuation and "new" 411s and Fighters are still running.
Here is a record of the court case involving this individual when he tried to secure the Allard name: www.ipo.gov.uk/t-challenge-decision-results/o21414.pdf
Judge for yourselves how serious this is.

Bristol Cars website back up, implying that they now have premises in Kensington and Filton.
New Speedsters added to "New Car" lineup last week, also at £300k.
This week, prices jacked up to £500k!
Maybe Wharton has a new "sleeping" partner named Lewis Carroll?

£495,000 plus VAT is in fact £594,000

Update
 

The Bristol Owners Club twitter account has a press release from The Frost Group, joint liquidators for Bristol Cars, regarding the continuation cars and ownership of IPR.

Link: https://twitter.com/bristolowners

More on this on the cardealermagazine website.

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publ...-rights/223769

Update regarding the IPR of Bristol Cars Limited:

https://www.wyleshardy.com/product/b...marks-and-ipr/

The Trade Mark Registry's decision can be seen here:
https://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-challenge-d...lts/o79021.pdf

It seems that Jason Wharton's company, Bristol Fighter Ltd, sought revocation of a number of registered trade marks owned by KamKorp Autokraft: BRISTOL/BRISTOL CARS, BRISTOL in cursive script (Wyles Hardy refer to it as "York Scroll), the Bristol V8 bonnet badge device, BRISTOL FIGHTER and the "Pegasus sitting on the Bristol City Shield" device. The revocation application was based on non-use over a 5 year period, varying in the case of each mark.

KA conceded that no relevant use of BRISTOL FIGHTER had been made over the 5 year period so the mark was revoked. There was a dispute over whether relevant use had been made of the Pegasus device but it was held that AK had NOT shown that relevant use had been made over the 5 year period, so this mark was revoked as well.

AK proved relevant use of all the other marks and these survived the attack - these are the registered trade marks names in the liquidator's new sales package, together with AK's BRISTOL BULLET mark which had not been attacked.

Jason Wharton's company owns registrations of BRISTOL CARS, BRISTOL FIGHTER, BRISTOL BUCCANEER, BRISTOL SPEEDSTER and BRISTOL ELECTRIC, all registered in 2020.

Given that the sales package includes not only the trade marks but also the library of historic design documents, here's hoping that the Bristol community can come together to bid for the assets and ensure that they remain available for us and the BOHT.

George

George,
Not quite how I read it, Bristol Cars remains a registered trademark of KA as does Bristol .
Geoff.

Geoff

We are both right.

The BRISTOL CARS mark is part of the BRISTOL/BRISTOL CARS trade mark registration, registered as a series mark under no 2424875 to Kamkorp Autokraft Limited. The registration covers both the word BRISTOL and the words BRISTOL CARS. This was one of the registrations I referred to in my post as having been attacked by Bristol Fighter Limited, and successfully defended by Kamkorp Autokraft, and it therefore remains registered in the name of Kamkorp Autokraft. It is one of the marks referred to in the Wyles Hardy press release (albeit with a slightly erroneous registration number) as being one of the assets of Kamkorp Autokraft, the company whose share capital is being offered for sale.

The mark "Bristol Cars" (ie without the word "Bristol" on its own) is registered to Bristol Fighter Limited, under registration no. 3467857 as of 9 August 2020. The words are in lower case but this is irrelevant for trade mark purposes. The application presumably slipped through to registration during the hiatus after the liquidation of Bristol Cars Limited on 22 January 2020.

There are therefore 2 concurrent trade mark registrations for the words BRISTOL CARS, one in the name of Kamkorp Autokraft Ltd and the other in the name of Bristol Fighter Ltd.

Incidentally, Kamkorp Autokraft Limited is not itself in liquidation, but its parent company, Kamkorp Limited, is.

George

George,
I didn't realise that my apologies, so many names so many registrations, trademarks are too expensive to maintain thankfully Ltd Companies are not as I own Frazer-Nash Cars Ltd and Frazer-Nash Bristol Cars Ltd both available to the first two buyers of two out of the three of my 401's I want to sell in the new year.
Companies House is far more precise in respect of company names so if for example someone tries to register Frazer Nash Cars ltd or Frazer Nash Bristol Cars Limited without the hyphen it will be rejected.
Geoff.