Bristol alternatives.

[browning l]

Originally Posted by Kevin Howard

No I did mean the chassis. Just thought I would throw that one out there and see what the reaction was

We all know the engine is a Viper engine, and presumably the transmission, but I assumed that Bristol made the chassis.

However, just last week I was talking to a guy who recently visited Chrysler in Detroit. He is doing some development work on another model of car to utilise the Viper engine so he had some meetings arranged with Chrysler people. They looked after him, picked him up from his hotel, took him out for lunch and gave him a tour of the Viper production plant. These guys were very forthcoming with information until he asked if the Bristol Fighter used the Viper chassis - "No comment" was the response.

Now if Bristol were not using the Viper chassis it would be very simple for the Chrysler guys to say that. But when anyone declines to comment when asked a simple yes/no question, that makes me suspicious.

Why would Bristol not use the Viper chassis? It's a great chassis, well proven and successful in racing versions of the Viper. It would also have saved them a fortune in development costs.

Has anyone ever seen a reasonably detailed description of the Fighter chassis?

Your assumption was correct, but then you stop doing justice to Bristol's aircraft-derived engineering practices. A simple inquiry of Bristol Cars LTD elicited the facts that there is no secret about the Fighter chassis; The car has been shown in chassis form both at shows and in the showroom. The two chassis are completely dissimilar.

[Jon McCarthy]

This may be a case of adding 2 + 2 and getting 5, But I seem to remember
that David Martin who at one time owned a considerable number of Bristols in
the UK (over 20) and from whom I bought my 400 in 1973, was murdered in the
eighties , I think, and that his body had never been found. I seem to recall
that his business partner was convicted and given a very long sentence but I
have no other details that I can remember of the story.

I don't recall seeing the story that you read about more recent events and
my "connection" is tenuous at best, I think.

Jon

[Ashley James]

I knew David well, he was a Rock and Roller and found him a man to
run his company and build to the point where he was able to sell it
for a fair amount of money.
He was murdered by two bit conman who'd sold a him a few non existent
cars and two dismantled Robinson Helicopters in a Lorry container that
didn't exist either. The total bill was £200K and David's Solicitor
persuaded the chap to sign a promise to repay it. He didn't have the
money but he did have a collection of pistols and he used one to shoot
David.

I think David had two 400s, 1 Arnolt and one 411ish. Most were with
specialists and taking longer than they should to be rebuilt or
whatever. David was easily conned I'm afraid, but had become very
famous for supplying very powerful PA systems to the biggest touring
rock groups of the day.

Ashley

[jimfoz]

Wow - this thread just gets better. So out of the 3 people that have supposedly died in Bristols, one was actually murdered?

[Ashley James]

But not in or near his Bristol. They found evidence in his house of
a pool of blood that had been cleaned up and in it there were
footprints made by Golfing shoes with the spikes removed, which were
the preferred footwear for our moderate IQ murderer.
In this instance I don't think Bristol can be held responsible.

Ash

[Richard Levine]

"Bristol murders" were at 3 maybe, but by my count it's up to 4, as this thread should be deemed DEAD.

[jimfoz]

Originally Posted by Richard Levine

"Bristol murders" were at 3 maybe, but by my count it's up to 4, as this thread should be deemed DEAD.

Apologies. For a moment I thought we were on a Bristol Cars discussion forum.

[Markus Berzborn]

In 2005, Jack Boxstrom, wrote:

"Max is my younger brother by 7 years. He flunked his grade 11 French about three times, including summer school. So eventually our parents said, "so what do you want to do now?" and he asked for a one way ticket to the UK (at aged approx 20 - this would be about 1965).

Max got a free welding school and was hired as a chassis welder at McLaren, so I told all my racing friends not to buy a McLaren Can-Am or Formula car that year since my brother was still learning his craft! In any case, his forte was design and engineering, not welding and later he studied vehicle aerodynamics at Manchester University with Costin and designed some cars with the latter for Tiga - including a formula car that had a cockpit canopy and set a lap record at Monza.

Then he designed racing wheels for cars and bikes and had a company called Dymag Wheels that eventually had about 100 employees and made pretty well all of the world's magnesium racing wheels for F-1, Prototypes and his famous 3-spoke bike racing wheel. Sold the company and went on to project consulting and race car design. His major "from scratch" car was the AMR-1 Group "C" Aston Martin for which he also built the chassis and bodies in his new kevlar-carbon fabrication shops. He is a very clever chap and there are lots of other stories and achievements - not bad for a kid that I used to get very annoyed with because he would draw "improved" bodies, chassis, etc in my Road & Track magazines, superimposed on the magazine pictures. Early, while he was still in Canada he had a motorcycle magazine and wrote technical articles for Track & Traffic magazine - one on supercharging was so complex that I could not understand it!

Max also designed a new car with a Viper V-10 for Bristol called the "Fighter" and was with Jaguar on a contact basis doing "engine development". He still lives in Leicester, England and has been recently active in ocean going sail boat design."

If I may add - unfortunately Max Boxstrom died last year.

By the way, there was a very nice photo of a Fighter rolling chassis somewhere on the net, but I just can't find the link no more. Maybe someone knows the URL.

Regards,
Markus