01
Origins
When peace emptied its order books, the Bristol Aeroplane Company decided to build cars to aircraft standards, and began with confiscated homework: BMW's pre-war designs, acquired as war reparations, with engineer Fritz Fiencke contributing to the transfer. The 400 of 1947 wore a version of BMW's kidney grille over a chassis derived from the 326 and, crucially, a development of the 328's brilliant 2-litre hemispherical-chamber six. Everything was then executed with aerospace fastidiousness — better metallurgy, finer tolerances, endless testing. The result was expensive, restrained and exceptional to drive; around 700 were built. The 400 set Bristol's character permanently: engineering without showmanship, sold quietly to people who knew. Few carmakers ever started from a higher floor, or guarded their standards more jealously afterwards.
Bristol 2Litre 2 · No machine-readable author provided. ChiemseeMan assumed (based on copyright claims). · Public domain
