About six months ago, I saw one of these for the first time, a fellow living in my fair city had one at a weekly auto geek meet up behind a coffee shop.
At first, I wondered if it was from a kit as it didn’t have the huge flared fenders of the Shelby item or many of the kits for that matter. The hood was open and I saw that it was not a V-8, it was a DOHC 6. Then I spied a tag that said “Bristol” and had an OMG moment.
The owner is quite the collector. Has the number of exotic Ferraris as well. He and I hit it off, he was telling me the other day that he’s getting frustrated with the engine and was wondering if he might sell it. I told him I thought it was a keeper, that it would make him royalty at the auto concourses. He hasn’t taken it to one yet, he did take it to a cobra meet up and had a good reception. And I don’t wonder, this car is major history in physical form. He said there were several other ACs but they had V8s.
Quote:
The engine wasn’t actually a Bristol design, its origins lie in pre-WWII germany where it was developed by engineers at BMW for the BMW 328 sports car – a successful race car in its own right. Bristol got access to the design and tooling as war reparations and used it extensively in their vehicles until they turned to American V8s in the 1960s.
This would be the model that resoundingly won its class at Le Mans in 1959, coming in seventh overall behind six 3.0 liter cars.
|
https://silodrome.com/ac-ace-bristol-car/
I don’t think he’s done a lot of work on it yet, he did have to carefully clean the three air filters with a special solution, and then ran them through an old dishwasher. Not sure if something could be fabbed for a new material replacement for the NLA air filters, no surprise on that.
The annoying issue now is trouble with starting. It has a choke control, a pull out knob, as well as another control, perhaps a primer of some sort. He likes to drive it locally, brings it down to the meet ups now and then.
I wish I had some good advice for him on this. I suspect there are restorers around who would know what to do.
Looks a lot like this one, same color, has some blistering on the bonnet, gives it more authenticity I guess.
