Back in 1972, when I had just bought SMG 72 ( which I now know to be one of the two 400 Cabriolets made as part of the first batch of four complete cars made) for the first time, I found it very frustrating how little information there was written about these cars. The “Classic” magazines had not yet been invented, no books on Bristols existed, and (apart from the Club) no-one could tell you much the cars, and very little information came from the Company. Any question as to how many were made, who was the previous owner, or similar met with a polite refusal.

Given that I lived at the time near Oxford, and had reading rights to both Oxford and Cambridge University libraries, I resolved to do some “academic” research on this problem. I found out where The Motor and The Autocar were held in the libraries (Cambridge was much better, as these were on open shelves, whereas Oxford buried it all underground and you had to make formal requests on paper as to what you wanted). Then I started at January 1st 1946 and worked forward, page by page, looking for Bristol references in these two “journals”.

I kept the notes, and the rather poor photocopies that I could get taken by the library staff, all these years, always resolving to write it up for the Bulletin “one day”. Here it is, finally.

The first document I found was in Autocar, Sept 6th pp 787 - 790. Under the heading: New Cars Described was a 4 page, copiously illustrated article entitled: “The Frazer Nash – Bristol. A Really Interesting New Chassis with Exceptional Suspension, Which Holds the Road Magnificently at any Speed”

This was what I was looking for, particularly the very last line “There are to be two models, one a four-seater saloon, the other a drophead coupe. So my car might be “real”, and not a conversion.

The next item was in the following week (both these titles were weekly at the time) in The Autocar (both styles seemed to run together, with and without the definite article), an advert on page 18 of the Sept 13th issue. This advert (see fig 1), which certain people have tried to suppress, is, as far as I know the first advert printed for our cars. Under a roundel with Frazer-Nash-Bristol around the circumference, and the arms of Bristol in the middle, the car shown (subtly different –look at the wheels- from the previous week) now has bumpers, but no windscreen wipers!, is clearly a 400. Now we are told “Descriptive brochures of the 17-hp Bristol Saloon and Cabriolet models and the 2-litre sports model now available”. Who from? A.F.N. Limited – “to whom all retail and trade sales enquiries should be addressed”. One can almost feel the prickly atmosphere between HJ Aldington and The Board of The Bristol Aeroplane Company even at this distance.

This uncertainty was resolved the very next week, Sept 20th in The Autocar (and Sept 25th in The Motor) when basically a retraction was issued, as a full page advert, stating that “the range of high-performance touring models to be built at Bristol will carry the name BRISTOL while the range of sports models built at Isleworth will be known as FRAZER-NASH, and the Frazer-Nash-Bristol badge was consigned to the dustbin (and apparently any cars with these badges had them forcibly removed and destroyed). AFN were still down as the sales outlet however, at which, if you trace early 400 registrations, they were very good.

The Motor followed up this rather odd advert with a somewhat stylistic picture of a 400 in their “paper Motor Show” in their Sept 30th issue, where they bemoaned the fact that the public could not see all the new cars in one place (a real Motor Show) so they produced a paper version instead.

Back to The Autocar for the 1st of November, where a rather more considered version of the same message is given in a full page advert, this time with a photo of a real car, with curly bumpers, wipers and a lady driver, in a real setting. The section covering the Bristol products is entitled “BRISTOL 2-LITRE SALOON AND DROP-HEAD CABRIOLET MODELS. Frazer-Nash are describing the “FRAZER-NASH GRAND PRIX SPORTS MODEL” with “aerodynamic two seater coachbuilt body” which is presumably a coded reference to the Touring-built Mille Miglia winning BMW 328, which they had re-badged and re-grilled as a Frazer-Nash, having repatriated it from Germany a month or two before. (The first UK built post-war Bristol-engined Frazer-Nash wasn’t built until 1948, and then scrapped.)

Returning to this advert, we are told that “deliveries will commence in the spring of 1947, and prices will be announced in the near future”. The car is plated “BAC 568”, a very curious registration number, and is presumably 400 Chassis no 1 (the car Mr Crook still retains, registered as JHY 261). It could equally be chassis no 2 NHX 115, but this is staying from the point.

The next article, and the first mention of 400 as a model name, is in The Motor for November 6th, pp 309 – 312, clearly using the same car, photographed in the same setting, still showing BAC 568. The article is titled: “The Bristol 400 A two-litre car of outstanding qualities and performance”. The Motor were clearly very impressed by the performance of the car, giving a whole lot of statistics to prove their point: “the outstanding statistical feature is undoubtedly the remarkable figure of 77 bhp per ton, this being over 40 per cent better than the average of comparable cars listed in “The Motor” specifications. And so on and so forth. What they liked was that this was accomplished by moderate engine size and careful attention to weight. Still no prices given, but continuing mention of the production of “a cabriolet having similar lines”. The Motor concludes with congratulations in “getting it into production so quickly” and admiration that “intensive road-testing of pre-production models is continuing, both in this country and under the arduous conditions of Continental travel.

Switching now back to The Autocar, the testing theme is highlighted with a photograph of JHY 261 in Milan, on page 1088, dated Dec 6 1946, and a caption “the Bristol is described as having fully lived up to promise”. Given that the testers shown included Count “Johnny” Lurani, one would have to believe it. Turning to Motor Sport briefly, because the photo I have is somewhat clearer, see fig 2 which shows the same scene somewhat clearer, and John Aldington (son of HJ) has helpfully identified all the people in the picture with some captions – probably not visible. HJ is second from the left, with Lurani on his left, and then David Murray. This car has odd, non-perforated wheels, which probably caused the brakes to overheat (Jack Channor said as much many years ago when he reviewed the early development of the car), and Lurani is often quoted as saying of the 400 “a wonderful car with terrible brakes”.

The very last entry for 1946 is again the Autocar, Dec 27th, showing the earlier photo as used in an advert in September 13th, with yet another type of wheel, in an article entitled “The Year in Retrospect”, with the comment “the entry of the Bristol Aeroplane Company into car manufacture promised great things.”

That’s it for 1946, when things were definitely moving at quite a pace. I would estimate that all four prototypes were on the road in 1946, but probably no production cars. My evidence – well JHY 261 was in Milan in December 1946, and the first Cabriolet of the two prototypes made is pictured on page 602 of The Motor for January 29th 1947. – see figure 3. I had finally found a picture in print of the 400 Cabriolet. A small cheer echoed around the quiet library! My own Cabriolet has some components dated November 1946, and was first registered in March 1947 (though the paranoid security regarding owners, even back in 1972, prevented Eric Storey telling me who the first owner was, though he did tell me that mine was the first car Bristols actually sold to a member of the public).

And the prices: true to prediction they were announced early in 1947; in The Autocar, of January 24th, there is a comment that prices increased from £1450 for the Saloon and £1500 for the Cabriolet to £1853-10-7 and £1917-8-4 (this increase almost certainly due to a large increase in purchase tax on cars over £1000).

The price was repeated (for both models) in The Autocar of 25th April 1947, but that is the last official comment I have come across about the 400 Cabriolet.

There is an intriguing comment in the report of the Geneva Motor Show for 1947 in The Autocar of 14th March 1947 covering the display of both a saloon and a Cabriolet “in cream with a red hood”, but I have no photo to back this up. However, I am now straying into 1947, and that is a whole different story.