‘DRIVING THE MARCOS TODAY REVEALS JUST HOW CORRECT THE ORIGINAL FORMULA WAS. THE PACKAGE HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME INCREDIBLY WELL’
V8 is good, then a V10 has to be two louder – and those party-piece gullwing doors and whacking great exhausts reinforce the point. (In fact, owner Nick informs us, the exhaust tails are dummies on this car, the real outlets exiting below the car so as not to dirty up the rear.)
But no, if anything the Fighter is almost absurdly refined. Not fighty at all. The interior is nicely detailed and free of creaks and rattles, sumptuously crafted and clearly made with love. The switches have satisfyingly firm clicks. There are also reminders of the marque’s aeronautic heritage; much as the exterior exhibits laminar flow with its absence of spoilers and diffusers, so the interior is packed with an improbable number of gauges in the dash binnacle, below the steering wheel and in the roof. There’s even an engine-hours gauge: a nod perhaps to the original 1916 Bristol Fighter.
While the engine is undoubtedly muscular, it purrs rather than rumbles, and the extra space in the cabin – combined with the colossal glasshouse, which affords excptional all-round vision – makes for a very different proposition to the Marcos. The Fighter is a car you could happily cross continents in, and get out without wincing at your brutalised spine.
But what really characterises the experience is the V10’s torque. It’s little short of incredible. The gearbox is precise and short of throw, but its six ratios seem largely redundant as this car simply picks up its skirts and hares for the horizon in any gear, at any speed. It feels almost supercharged, the power is so immediate.
It doesn’t handle with quite the agility and precision of the Marcos, and it has a tendency to tramline, perhaps partly because the front tyres are the same width as the rears. But once you’ve made peace with the fact that it’s a physical contraption to steer, you can simply file that under ‘technique’ and sit back and waft. It’s so cosseting, you almost stop noticing that everyone’s gawping and taking photos… because that’s what happens with cars as rare and special as these.
‘We call the Bristol “The Unicorn”,’ grins Nick. ‘If I had a fiver for every time someone told me they’d never seen a Fighter before, I’d be able to afford two more!’
Both cars are masters of the unexpected. Most people will never see one, but that doesn’t mean they’re dusty relics or that they’re challenging to use: a decade-and-ahalf on, both of these machines are reliable, engaging, fast, poised and refined. Endearingly, both have gained the odd personal touch here and there, too; the Fighter, for instance, has a champagne cork for a washer filler bung, presented by the head of the House of Taittinger when Nick took part in the Beaujolais Run. Such details go to prove that these cars aren’t museum pieces, they’re just, well, they’re cars, built to be driven and enjoyed.
Just as fate can be kind, however, so she can be cruel; Marcos was losing money on every TSO, and Bristol wasn’t faring much more brightly with the Fighter. In both cases the numbers simply weren’t sustainable.
So today these cars are visions of what might have been. A 21st-Century future for two thoroughly 20thCentury brands that didn’t quite happen. But the cars themselves deserved better. The production numbers may have been tiny, but each in its own way is a winning blend of form and function. End