Saving Bristol Cars: meet the conservation team

By Simon Charlesworth

| 27 Jan 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Saving Bristol’s history: conservation in action

The end of Bristol Cars was both tarnished and unseemly.

Given that this was a marque formed over a perfectionist manufacturing ideal, the irony looks especially cruel.

Let’s recap Bristol’s final chapter. The £250,000 Bullet was not so much an assault on a new market, but more of a misfire.

Its styling drew from a coupé designed under the company’s enthusiastic previous owner, Toby Silverton, and it was supposed to be an all-new, composite-bodied creation.

The rolling reality, however, was a rebodied Morgan Aero Eight – minus any meaningful weather equipment – polished by Italian stylist F&F Studio.

Bristol’s body bucks were saved in 2020. They were cleaned before going on show in various leading motor museums

Only one was completed and none was delivered, but Morgan later reclaimed the unused chassis, which went on to underpin the Plus 8 GTR.

Just as Kamkorp Automotive Ltd (Bristol’s then owner) had done with its Frazer Nash Namir, only a single car was built: it went up the hill at Goodwood and then that was it.

Bristol Cars’ staff, alas, thought differently. Sticking to what the marque did well, Brian Marelli and Mark Coleman set about re-engineering the 411 to accept GM’s LS3 V8.

It was a tricky transplant, but it promised to produce a tailored blend of powerful restomod and chic Q-car.

One was delivered, one was mid-build and another was on the order books when everything collapsed in January 2020.

The prototype Bristol Bullet (centre) and spare Morgan Aero 8 chassis were found in the firm’s former Windlesham HQ

Thankfully all was not lost, because keeping a studied eye on the situation was the Bristol Owners’ Heritage Trust (BOHT), a charitable group that evolved out of the Bristol Owners’ Club.

The BOHT had previously saved Bristol artefacts and archive material, as and when it had become available, be it the vast archive of the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s works photographer, Ted Ashman, which consists of 3000 technically perfect 12x8in monochrome glass slides (now digitised), or the 551 factory test cards for the Type 85-110, BS and BCE six-cylinder engines.

Both were bequeathed to the BOHT by ‘Mr Bristol’ Tony Crook’s estate.

Bristol Owners’ Heritage Trust chairman Stefan Cembrowicz is on a mission to preserve the marque’s story for future generations

Several sales were organised, consisting of private-treaty lots and an online auction, with the latter running from 19 August-2 September 2020 and totalling 932 items.

The process put an estimated value of £50,000 on the archive. “We bought the wooden body bucks at auction, when the liquidators dealt with the wreckage of Bristol Cars,” recalls BOHT chairman Stefan Cembrowicz.

“The sale was in the derelict Masters of the Universe-type HQ at Windlesham [the former British Oxygen Company building], and we realised that sort of ephemera would be – almost inevitably – lost or destroyed.

“We were fortunate in being able to store them immediately in the aircraft assembly hall at Filton, which is just over the runway from Aerospace Bristol.”

Bristol 405 export papers

“It was brilliant that the Bristol Aero Collection kindly figured out how to loan us the space, and almost all of the bucks have since been loaned to local or national museums: Gaydon has one, plus the Science Museum’s offshoot at Wroughton, and the M Shed in Bristol has the 404/5/Bullet buck,” he adds.

Regarding the Car Division/Bristol Cars archives acquisition, why did this take so long?

The disposal of Bristol Cars’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) was linked to the heritage and archival material.

So as the liquidators attempted to get to the bottom of Kamkorp’s corporate structure, claim and counter-claim were made.

The Bristol 403 that was put together for display in the Aerospace Bristol museum

It wasn’t until 2025 that matters were settled during the liquidation of Kamkorp Autokraft, because certain Bristol trademarks were due to lapse.

In the liquidator’s progress report at Companies House, it states: ‘A sale of the Goodwill of the Company took place. Interested party, Bristol EV Cars Ltd, made an offer to purchase the Goodwill of the Company… Funds of £3000 have be[en] received in respect of the sale of Goodwill.’

It is believed that the sale of the IPR was completed on 19 February 2025.

Stefan explains: “We just had to buy the paper archives – all the blueprints, drawings, correspondence and random scribblings from 1946 to the death in 2020.”

‘Once everything has been catalogued, this could become one of the best single-make archives in existence’

Thanks to financial support from generous members of the Bristol Owners’ Club, the Bristol Owners’ & Drivers’ Association and the Bristol Owners’ Club of Australia, Stefan was true to his word.

“Eventually, we managed to secure it this year [2025]. We sent a 24-tonne truck to pick it all up, but that wasn’t big enough,” says Stefan with a smile.

“Not because it all weighed more than 24 tonnes, but because when you put a plan chest on a pallet, it takes up more floor space.

“We had to send a 3½-tonne truck to get the rest. We bagged it all and that was our sacred task – now the challenge is sorting it, weeding it and making sure that what we have is relevant.”

Bristol Owners’ Heritage Trust volunteers have helped to move the records

“Aerospace Bristol has very kindly given us a lovely space for sorting the documents. We have had to rent storage just around the corner, where the plan chests and filing cabinets are now being decanted.

“The condition of material ranges from pristine and immaculate to poorly looked after. It places quite a challenge from a conservation point of view.”

I’ve been wanting to have a nose around the archive for some time, but circumstances and its nomad-like existence – moving from the Patchway factory to the Kensington showroom’s basement, then Windlesham – frustrated.

Once inside, however, the first thing that catches the eye is one of the plan-chest drawers. It’s labelled ‘240’, making this akin to the Holy Grail for card-carrying Bristol fans.

Bristol technical drawings reveal details of the Type 160 engine intended for use in the 240

Paint with a broad brush, and the story of the Aeroplane Company’s Car Division is one about a beautifully executed line of expensive 2-litre cars that were being made to look increasingly slow by newer, more powerful and cheaper competition.

The last of the BAC-era models would be powered by the Type 110 2.2-litre, but this was not what was originally intended for the model designation ‘406’.

Project 240, or 220 as it was originally dubbed, was a clean-sheet Bristol design for a ‘world car’ that had the best from the likes of Mercedes-Benz in its sights.

Unlike previous Bristols, which used pre-war BMW thinking (notably the pushrod M328 engine and live-axle 326 chassis), the 240 was to be a hop, skip and a jump ahead of its 1950s opposition.

Bristol’s incredible archive includes technical drawings for forgotten models

Using an evolution of Bristol’s stiff A-frame chassis, the 240 was all-independently sprung via Alex Moulton’s rubber Flexitor suspension, and it featured inboard disc brakes.

All of which was then engineered by Bristol’s brilliant Jack Channer to optimise the new model’s ride and handling.

Crucially, this engineering revolution would go beyond the chassis, because it was to be powered by Bristol’s all-new, all-alloy, 3.65-litre (originally 3.5-litre), twin-cam, Type 160 straight-six.

While the chassis was run for around 75,000 miles of testing fitted with a Jaguar XK engine and a temporary body, it never did so with the Type 160, which experienced development problems due to budget constraints.

This Bristol Fighter wind-tunnel model was rescued from the Patchway factory

The reason why the 240, which would have been Filton’s second four-door model, was axed was BAC’s need to concentrate on aircraft – namely the Britannia requiring metal-fatigue testing after the de Havilland Comet crashes.

Meanwhile, Bristol Aero Engines (later Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd) had to contend with the Proteus turboprop powerplant’s icing problem.

What also had to be taken into consideration was the then government’s encouragement of ‘merger mania’ among large aircraft firms, so a small-scale car company was deemed surplus to requirements.

Bristol Cars Ltd was sold off in 1960 and the doors were permanently closed at Armstrong Siddeley Motors.

Styling models for Bristol’s 240 ‘world car’

Interestingly, the archive material reveals that both the 240 chassis and the 160 engine block were formed using Elektron magnesium alloy, the flammable material that contributed to the horrific chaos of the 1955 Le Mans disaster – a race that also happened to be the last outing for Bristol’s Racing Department prior to its closure.

Such construction would have made the 240 incredibly expensive – and potentially dangerous, given the Mercedes fireball at Le Mans – so was this another reason why the 240 was given the chop?

Handling these most precious technical drawings, my thoughts disappear down a route marked ‘If Only’.

Then my eye is caught by a pencil drawing for the Type 160 engine.

The Type 160’s engine block was to be made from potentially dangerous Elektron magnesium alloy

It is a front elevation of the complete unit, and above it is something I’ve never seen before: a new, italicised Bristol badge, gloriously period and quite rock ’n’ roll in style.

This, though, is just for starters. When we move over to the Trust’s processing room in Aerospace Bristol, the paperwork is outshone by two superb 240 styling models.

Beautifully befinned, they are achingly à la mode but still very slim-hipped and very Bristol.

It’s easy to see what a missed opportunity this aluminium-bodied beauty was for Filton, and especially so considering how far the ambitious project had progressed, with everything from the badges to Dunlop wheel designs resolved.

Bristol’s 240 project reached an advanced stage before it was quietly dropped

Stefan underlines the contradiction of conservation: how any material relating to a specific car or model with an owner’s name, designer’s name, blueprint and drawing is both valueless and priceless.

“We have found quite a large number of duplicate handbooks, manuals, brochures and sales pamphlets,” he says.

“We’re marketing spare items in club magazines because we don’t need to keep dozens of examples of each.

“It’s right we should share them with enthusiasts and raise funds, because storage is expensive.”

This Bristol chassis jig was saved

“We’re not at the stage of calling in volunteers yet, but when we’ve got a workflow established and we’re clear about the data-entry technique, we will get people to start filling out worksheets,” explains Stefan.

“And there will be many thousands of lines of them – the idea is to make everything searchable and retrievable.

“It will be deposited in the City of Bristol archive in perpetuity, where it can be viewed in a secure reading room.

“So far, we’ve been pulling out mountains of rusty paperclips and staples, which are a conservator’s nightmare because any rust just spreads and attacks the paper. Even worse is the ageing Sellotape – brown, brittle and gummy.”

The Bristol Owners’ Heritage Trust has amassed a treasure trove of marque history, but the task of processing it all has only just begun

“Soon we will be in a position to offer heritage dossiers on most of the Bristol cars ever made,” he says.

“These will include copies of sales advice notes, delivery notes, plus any service history of which the factory was aware, correspondence with the owner and, in one or two instances, correspondence with their solicitors when an owner wasn’t entirely happy about something!

“What owner would not want the full history and provenance of their Bristol to go along with their ownership? It’s a fabulous thing to have.”

Once everything has been catalogued, stabilised and made available, could this become one of the best single-make archives in existence?

Take in all the filing cabinets, plan chests, drawers and containers, and you can’t help but wonder at what other sort of gold lies within.

As a marque anorak, I have my hopes: I think Stefan has just got himself another volunteer, whether he needs one or not.

Images: Jack Harrison/Sam Frost

Thanks to: the Bristol Owners’ Heritage Trust; Aerospace Bristol

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