The Filton Flyer

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Bristol cars have a reputation for being rather sober, conservative vehicles, forever stuck in a timewarp of cosy 1940s technology. Bristols may have been fast, but they were never really sports cars.

Things might have taken a very different turn during the 1950s, had Bristol persevered with a programme to develop a pure sports car on a short chassis, powered by a tuned version of the famous six-cylinder engine. This was a period of massive reorganisation of the Bristol company and just two prototype 406S chassis were built before the motor car division split from the aircraft side of the business.

One of these cars was bodied at the factory, using design cues seen on production Bristols, but with a more space-age appearance. Dudley Hobbs and Dennis Sevier's styling is both familiar and alien, and utterly purposeful. The second 406S was sent to Italy and bodied by Zagato at the behest of Tony Crook. It was the first Zagato car to be styled by Ercole Spada and set the template for future designs from the famed coachbuilder, not least the Aston Martin DB4GTZ.

Happily, both cars have survived and are in enthusiastic ownership. Unusually, it seems that in period the two 406Ss never actually crossed paths. So, for perhaps the first time, The Automobile magazine recently united the cars at Filton to drive them both. You can read the results in the February issue, which is out now.

Photographs by Stefan Marjoram

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