Toby Silverton interview in Octane

[browning l]

John Keighley...supposedly I am being mailed a copy of the CAR (also not available on any local magazine racks) article...assuming I get it, how could I best get you a copy of the article, if you would like one?

An interesting reply from the subject of the OCTANE article, after I emailed him that I had it, and enjoyed reading it and hearing about his odd socks, among other things:

"Hello there, LL,
I may have odd socks but they seem to be trying to portray me as an eccentric! How unfair. TS"

You can rest assured TS's tongue was planted firmly in his cheek when he replied.

What caught my eye in the O story were:

1. "The product line had been essentially static for years." - DD, editorializing.

2. "We've also tried to make the cars to a higher quality and more efficiently, and a lot of quality has been added where you can't see it." -DD, quoting TS.

3. Addressing "the adversarial relationship that had grown up between Tony Crook and the media... (DD, editorializing.)"
"Tony was so secretive that it always seemed he was covering up something bad, and therefore even people who are interested in Bristols are often quite sceptical about us; at times we've had journalists write bad reviews of the cars who have never sat in one." DD, quoting TS.

4."Personally, the only questions I won't answer are production figures...The truth is most years our production is set by how many cars we can physically make." - DD, quoting TS.
[DD = article author, Dale Drinnon; TS = Toby Silverton]

I have read my Balfour book twice, very carefully, and as a newcomer to Bristols (21 months since first hearing of the marque), I have enjoyed it tremendously.