Remember Bristol? No, I’m not referring to the city that gave us Ben Collins, James May, and Massive Attack. Yup, I'm talking about an automaker which hasn’t made a new car since 2011.
To make a long story short, Bristol Cars has always been a low-key and low-volume manufacturer ever since its inception in 1945. The last model to roll off the assembly line was the Fighter, a British interloper with gullwing doors and a big V10 from the Dodge Viper.
Five years after it stopped making the Fighter, Bristol Cars is now working on something called Project Pinnacle. As per Autocar, the actual handle of the upcoming model is the Bristol Bullet. It sounds good, doesn’t it? But a lovely name isn’t everything there is to this car.
According to Bristol Cars general manager Julian Ramshaw, the remnant of the Bristol Aeroplane Company believes that “people’s expectations are changing. And Bristol Cars is changing too. This [Project Pinnacle] is just the start, and there is a lot more to come from us.”
What Ramshaw is talking about is a grand tourer that will be launched sometime after the Bullet makes its debut on July 26. Teased by a camouflaged prototype during the 2016 Goodwood Festival of Speed, the Bristol Bullet will start production early next year.
Manufactured from carbon fiber, the two-seat barchetta-bodied sports car will be animated by a naturally aspirated 4.8-liter BMW engine. To be more specific, it’s the N62B48 that’s also employed by the Morgan Aero 8.
If it’ll at least mirror the output of the engine in the Morgan (367 bhp and 370 lb-ft of torque), then the 2017 Bristol Bullet will be reasonably quick considering how light it is. The Bullet will hold a special place in automotive history. Why? Well, the first-ever Bristol model, the 400 of 1947, borrowed the 1,971 cc straight-six powerplant of the BMW 328.
Bristol Cars isn’t the only British manufacturer to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. TVR also happens to work on an all-new sports car that'll boast with a Cosworth V8 and the iStream Carbon manufacturing process of Gordon Murray. Yes, that Gordon Murray who designed the McLaren F1 and worked as technical director for the McLaren F1 Team.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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