Zagato Bristols: Repackaging the Past (Again)

If you'd encountered the light green car above, or the red one below, at a car show, you'd have likely identified them as Zagato* designs from the trademark "double bubble" roofs and the tight curves.  Also, there are the bubble headlight covers, which appeared on Zagato's Alfa Romeos and Lancias of the Sixties. You might be surprised to find that what we see here are shortened (108" wheelbase) and lightened versions of England's expensive and eccentric Bristol 406...

But it's unlikely that you'd encounter one of these Zagato Bristol 406S models anyway, because no more than two 406S cars were built, starting in 1959.  And you'll note we refer to them as Zagato Bristols, rather than Bristol Zagatos, because it was Anthony Crook, proprietor of Bristol's Kensington showroom, and not Bristol Aeroplane's car-making operation, that approached the Italian coachbuilder. The idea was to spark some new buyer interest in Bristol's upper crust cars, which were based on a BMW chassis and engine design dating back to 1936.  By the time the Type 406 appeared in 1958, it was clear that the old long-stroke, cross-pushrod engine, now bored and stroked from 1971 cc to 2216, had neared the end of its design life, and had long become uncompetitive in Bristol's stratospheric price class, which included Aston Martin.  So Tony Crook asked Zagato to design a more aerodynamic, weight-saving body.  The final decision to order an initial run of 10 cars was based not on the short-chassis 406S pictured at the top, but on the standard 114" wheelbase 406. Unlike the previous, ash-framed Bristol 404 and 405 series, these Zagato 406s featured light, tubular steel superstructures on the ladder chassis to which alloy body panels were attached.  Like the "standard" 406 sedan, the cars had a new, Watts-linkage rear suspension to replace the old BMW design, and also 4-wheel disc brakes as standard.  

This idea of refining an existing design, rather than radical innovation (a la Citroen or Lancia) fits firmly into Bristol's approach. The company had moved into the upper crust automobile business after World War II by offering a warmed-over BMW 326 chassis with 328 engine to a car-starved British public, having obtained drawings through war reparations.  But restyles by Superleggera Touring (Types 401-403), Dudley Hobbs (404 & 405*) and even Bertone (the American market Arnolt Bristol*) had kept the cars looking fresh.  The 1960 press photo of the 4-passenger Zagato 406 on the long wheelbase manages to look pretty fresh...

...though squaring of the roof on "production" version shown below didn't help the proportions.  And "production" needs to be understood within the confines of the six cars actually sold, some at steep discounts. Other Zagato bodies from the original order were used to re-body older Bristol chassis for some of Tony Crook's customers. What went wrong with Zagato's repackaging of the Bristol 406?  It was a case of the competition offering better-performing cars at lower prices.  The Aston Martin DB4 offered 240 hp to the new Bristol's 130, and at a lower price. And by late 1961, you could buy two E-type Jaguars for the original, non-discounted price of a Zagato Bristol...

Tony Crook didn't give up on Zagato, though.  After taking a 50% stake in Bristol's automotive arm, he succeeded in getting Bristol to standardize a 5.1 liter Chrysler V8, making the 406 into the 407.  With the old 6 cylinder out of the picture, he commissioned another Zagato body for a special 407 GTZ.  The car was more graceful than any of the earlier efforts, and the return to the longer wheelbase could have allowed mounting the engine back farther in the chassis.  But the car went from concept to completion in only 10 weeks to be ready for the October '61 Earls Court show, and test drives revealed the front-heavy character...

So ZUZ 407 remained the only Zagato-bodied V8 Bristol...well, at least for over a dozen years.  Fashions changed over the years, but Tony Crook seemed fixated on the idea of a special, Zagato-designed Bristol, and eventually he would get one into what looked like series production, by Bristol standards, anyway... 

After Tony took full control of Bristol's car-making operation in 1973, he would approach Zagato one more time about repackaging the aging chassis design, still based on the BMW box-section ladder frame.  The 412, of which about 80 were made, was the last of the 4 Series begun with the 400 in 1947, sharing that car's 114" wheelbase and appearing in 1975.  It followed the removable roof panel / solid roll bar / rear soft top format of Zagato's Lancia Beta Spider of the same  year, but at a larger scale.  Keeping a feature of the 405, the spare wheel hides behind the left panel ahead of the door, with the battery on the right.  This made access easy, but gave a long hood to what was, after all, a car with compact V8 power.  Despite Zagato's alloy body panels, dry weight was over 3,800 lb. and curb weight over 4,400.  

After 1978, Bristol sourced body panels locally for a 2nd series 412 with a Chrysler 360 replacing the heavier 383. To provide added power, a turbocharged Beaufighter version (named after Bristol's WW2 plane; Crook had been a pilot in the RAF then) was offered from 1982 to '93, but no more than 20 were built.  There was also a turbocharged Beaufort full convertible; as with all Bristols built after Tony Crook's takeover, production numbers are vague when available at all.  Bristol production ended in 2011, a victim of a market that was no longer interested in repackaged versions of obsolete cars.  If car enthusiasts were interested in reliving the past at all, it was in cars like the Morgan, that flaunted their obsolescence on the outside.

*Footnote:  

This is Part 3 of a series of posts on cars bodied by Zagato.  Other posts include "Body by Zagato Part 1:  Ferrari and Maserati in the Fifties" (March 31, 2020) and "Body by Zagato Part 2:  Five Decades of Alfa Romeos" (May 6, 2020).  We had a look at Bristol history, including the Le Mans racers and Arnolt Bristols, in "Forgotten Classics: Muddling Through with Bristol" (September 23, 2016). 

Photo Credits:  

Top:  uniquecarsandparts.com.au

2nd:  flickr.com

3rd:  Carrozzeria Zagato

4th:  Classic Car Catalogue

5th & 6th:  Wikimedia

7th:  the author

8th & 9th:  Wikimedia

Bottom:  youtube.com

Housing Part 5: Finding the "Missing Middle" in Prospect New Town

As the world around us seems determined to fly apart at the seams, we decided to foster a bit of hope by taking another look at a problem which actually seems to have some readily available solutions: the shortage of housing, and its high cost.  It turns out that one of the things driving the high cost and low availability of housing (beyond our failure to adopt the Scandinavian model of factory-built houses) is the disappearance of housing types beyond the standard (and mostly oversized) single-family house, partly due to the prevalence of single-family-only zoning.  It wasn't always thus.  Before the post-World War II explosion of bedroom suburbs, cities and towns offered a healthy mix of housing types including duplexes, townhouses (attached or stacked), and bungalows sharing courtyards. These alternatives between small apartments and large single-family houses have been called the "missing middle" in today's housing market by urban planner Daniel Parolek*.

Prospect, the first town planned around New Urbanist principles in Colorado, was designed by the architectural and planning firm of Duany Plater Zyberk to restore that kind of variety to the housing mix, and to offer a walkable townscape with shops and restaurants in easy reach.  Work on developer Kiki Wallace's dream town, within Longmont city limits, started in the mid-1990s.  I recently went back to take another look...

Attached townhouses mix with single-family houses around a central park, convenient for biking or walking dogs.  DPZ intentionally mixed traditional and modernist styles while also mixing housing types and sizes.  By providing a mix of housing sizes and types, including carriage houses and live / work lofts along with apartments, townhouses, and courtyard houses, DPZ anticipated and avoided the problem that young families face in many markets: they can't fit into small apartments, and can't afford the standard-size single-family house, which now averages nearly 2,500 square feet.

The mix with modern design language becomes more apparent when you walk east of that park to visit the commercial area, with apartments sited above shops and restaurants, also around a pedestrian-friendly park.  The New Urbanist framework allows up to 3 stories in overall building height...

Here's the view looking north from that park.  All the ground-level commercial spaces were occupied save one; that space was under renovation.  We found an architect's office at one edge of the park, a possible sign that commercial space is still affordable.  A built-in advantage of the 16 to 40 unit per acre density that goes with mixing housing types (and including smaller sizes) is tthat you get a walkable townscape with commercial and recreational facilities within easy reach.  In my case, it took about five minutes to get from the residential park to the commercial one...

Because of the attention given by planners to these park spaces and to the generous plantings of trees, there is a relaxed feel even to the higher-density areas of the townscape.  

Along with colorful attached dwellings, there is the occasional single-family house.  This one follows Mid-Century Modern themes, with bands of clerestory windows, even above the garage, and a brick privacy fence with perforations to add textural interest and human scale...

This street, a pedestrians-only mews, is lined with townhouses...

No matter what you think of the mix of Dwell Magazine modern and more traditional residential styles, you'll probably admit that the town planners have done a good job with human scale, and with hiding garages in alleys.

After a brisk afternoon walk around Prospect, we're back where we started, looking at the other side of those three nicely-scaled, gable-roofed brick townhouses.  Prospect fared well in the autumn 2013 flood, and the trees have grown up to make it feel like the established neighborhood it is...

Anyone looking for subdivision where alternatives to the single-family house are not offered, and where you won't be able to walk to a coffee shop or restaurant (unless you walk over to Prospect), can check out the development next door.  Rainbow Ridge  borders Prospect along Pike Avenue, and it has a relentless bedroom suburb vibe.  Comically, considering its name, there's nothing like the riot of colors you find in Prospect; everything seems beige or brick-colored. The prevailing design language, much favored by developers in the 80s and 90s, is something we call the Garage Door Festival style...

*Footnote:  The best summary we found of the "missing middle" in US housing is 8 years old, but still relevant:  "Will U.S. Cities Design Their Way Out of the Housing Crisis?", by Amanda Kolson Hurley, posted Jan. 18, 2016 at nextcity.org.  We examined other housing solutions in earlier posts, reviewing the post-WW2 Lustron system, along with the Case Study Houses and a parallel French project, in "Modern Housing Solutions Part 3 (or 4): The Case Study Era and the Lustron Adventure", posted here on March 30, 2023.  For a look at kit houses, starting with a surviving 1920s Sears kit house, see "Kit Houses: A Solution to Overpriced Housing", posted Jan. 15, 2023.  For Part 2 of this series on mobile, modular, prefabricated and kit houses, see "Mobile vs. Prefab: If It Can't Go Anywhere Can It At Least Look Like Home?", in our archives for August 3, 2017. The first in this series was "When Mobile Homes Were Really Mobile:  Bowlus and Airsream", posted July 30, 2017.

Photo Credits

All color photos are by the author.

The monochrome shot of Rainbow Ridge is from ColoProperty.com and was reproduced on the Zillow website.

Forgotten Classics: The Talented Offspring of the Citroen-Maserati Marriage

If asked to name something the three sleek coupes above have in common, you'd probably say "Well, they're all Maseratis."  And that's true, so far as it goes, but they have something deeper in common, as the white Bora and red Merak, as well as the black Khamsin, were all the offspring of the brief, productive, and stormy marriage of Citroen and Maserati...

Citroen, looking for an engine to power a luxury GT project they'd begun designing in 1961, purchased a controlling stake in the Modenese firm in 1968.  They settled on a 90-degree, 4-cam V6 based on a Maserati V8 design, in 2.7 liter size to meet French tax laws, and included their trademark DS-derived hydraulic controls for suspension and brakes, along with new speed-sensitive variable assist power steering.  With body design by Robert Opron, the SM won rave reviews when it appeared at the Geneva show in March 1970...

Pietro Frua had designed Maseratis since the Fifties, with his coupes and spiders on the bespoke A6G 2000 series leading to contracts for real production cars, the 1963 Quattroporte sedan and Mistral coupe and spider in 1964.  The Citroen takeover of Maserati must have looked like a chance to get another idea into production, and Frua's design for a Citroen SM with wedge profile and flying buttresses completing the fastback shape behind a near-vertical backlight made for a more sporting impression.  Because this was a front-engined, front-drive car, one wonders if a conventional fastback with rear hatch would have offered better interior space.  The buttress and flat deck idea seemed more suited to a mid-engine design.  And within a year, it would be used on a mid-engined Maserati...

When Giorgetto Giugiaro's Ital Design reworked their Bora design into the Merak, with a 3-liter version of the V6 in the SM, the car featured cast-aluminum buttresses with open space where the Bora featured a glazed fastback and sides.  It's not certain that Giugiaro was inspired by the buttresses on the Frua-designed SM shown above, but it's likely he was aware of the car.

Maserati Meraks built from 1972 through the end of the Citroen-Maserati combine in 1975 featured the Citroen SM instrument panel with its oval instruments, shown below.  As with the Bora, Citroen hydraulics were employed in the braking system, but this approach was changed when De Tomaso took over in 1978.  The last Meraks were built in 1981...

The Merak's big-engined brother, the Bora, was introduced the year before it in 1971.  Sharing the same 104-inch wheelbase as the Merak, and with Citroen hydraulics controlling 4-wheel disc brakes, the Bora was initially powered by Maserati's 4-cam V8 in 4.7 liter form, with 4.9 liters standard on US versions from '72 on, and available in Europe from '76 on.  The car combined civilized accommodations and a relatively quiet interior with stunning performance, and around 550 examples were built by the end of production in 1980.

The Bora's cabin featured contoured seats with a vertical (but not fore and aft) adjustment; instead of that the pedals and wheel were fully adjustable. It resulted in a "user-friendly" place for driver and passenger, before that was a phrase.  Unlike the Merak, the Bora had its own, dedicated instrument and control layout.

The end of Ghibli production after 1973 left a gap in the product line between the mid-engined Bora shown below, and the more practical, 4-passenger SM.  The yellow coupe lurking in the background was the answer from Maserati, and Bertone...

Marcello Gandini's design for a new front-engined V8 coupe, the Khamsin, appeared in prototype form at the 1972 Turin show, but did not enter production until 1974, the year after the last Ghibli.  Unlike the Ghibli, it offered 4-wheel independent suspension, and Citroen hydraulics for the brakes along with the speed-sensitive power steering that was noted by testers for remarkable responsiveness.

The low, tapered wedge made the car look longer than it was; wheelbase was 4 inches less than the Bora.  Compared with competition like the Lamborghini Espada and Aston Martin V8, the 4.9 liter Khamsin was lighter, faster, and more fuel efficient.  The vertical glass panel between the tail lights added rear vision to the sloping glazed hatch, and provided another detail to puzzle bystanders.  Overall, the car was praised for the driving experience it offered, and production continued into 1981.

I encountered this Khamsin when it was a new car, on the street in Nice in September of '74. The metallic paint shows off Gandini's sharply-tapered planes, even in the rain.  The meter seemed to have run out, though, as it soon would on the Citroen-Maserati marriage...

Bertone also designed the Quattroporte II, based on the SM chassis, around the same time as the firm was designing a suggested BMW 5-Series. The 3-liter, front-drive Quattroporte II has some similarities to that car, especially the nose profile, but oddly stretched proportions from the 122.2" wheelbase, and fussy detailing on the rear roof pillar. It was a casualty of disagreements between Citroen and Maserati, and only 12 were built starting in 1974; the Citroen-Maserati divorce happened in 1975.

The Frua-designed 1971 Quattroporte prototype below took a distinctly more Maserati-based approach to a new sedan.  It was a front-engined 5-liter V8 based on a stretched Maserati Indy coupe chassis, so it featured rear-wheel drive.  The wheelbase of 108.3 inches, along with Frua's cleaner handling of the glassy greenhouse, created better proportions and a sharper impression than Bertone's Quattroporte II.  Apparently the King of Spain agreed; he purchased this 1971 example, and second Frua prototype went to the Aga Khan in 1974.  Despite his success with the first 1963 Quottroporte, with 776 examples built until the end of production in '69 (the Citroen era), Pietro Frua had difficulty getting his ideas into series production by Citroen-Maserati.  His sleek versions of the Quattroporte and the Citroen SM are reminders that the rejected ideas from the Citroen-Maserati union were as intriguing as the ones that made it into series production...

Color Photo Credits:  

All color photos are by the author.

Monochrome Photo Credits:  

Citroen SM:  youtube.com 

SM compared with Frua SM, plus shot of Maserati Merak dash:  citroenvie.com

Frua SM front 3/4 view:  mundosobrerodas.org

Maserati Quottroporte II:  Maserati, at maserati.com

1971 Maserati Quottroporte Frua prototype:  Dirk de Jager, for RM Sotheby's

*Footnote:  

We did a survey of Henri Chapron's special bodies for the Citroen SM, as well as his special DS Citroens, and bodies on earlier French classics, in "The French Line Part 3:  Henri Chapron---Standing Time's Tests", our post for February 12, 2020.  Separate essays on Citroens and Maseratis are almost too numerous to list, but maybe we'll get around to it after getting some real work done...