Bristol 400 Zagato David Morley, The Age, 31/05/06 
Waiting over a decade for a car is true devotion, but for one enthusiast there was to be no peace until it was his, reports DAVID MORLEY.
The little red roadster:
Take a look at Ian Tonkin's Zagato-bodied Bristol and take a punt on when it was built.
There's a dash of Aston Martin there, maybe a splash of BMW. Those who know their vehicular styling trends would probably place the car as a late 1950s or early 1960s model.
But if that's where you put your money, you'd be wrong. Very wrong. The truth is that Ian's Bristol 400 is actually a 1947 model. But like all good yarns, there's more to it than that. The reason it looks vastly more modern than the sort of immediate post-war stuff that the rest of Britain was producing in 1947 is that the car was one of a batch of Bristol 400s that were sent to Italy in the late 1950s to be refurbished and rebodied.
The move was the brainchild of Anthony Crook, who was both a Bristol director and a dealer in his own right, and his decision was to send the cars to Italian design house Zagato. The cars weren't returned to Britain for another three years, by which time some of the buyers who had ordered the rebodied cars had lost interest.
Enter the well-known Australian car dealer, the late Peter Menere, who found himself and his family on holiday in Europe in the summer of 1961. He bought the car for holiday transport and decided to bring it back to Australia when he returned some months later.
It was in the late 1960s while the car was still owned by Menere that current owner Ian Tonkin first laid eyes on it. "I was stunned by it," says Ian candidly. "The low waistline and big glasshouse were stunning; the hip over the rear wheels, the bonnet scoop and the sugar-scoop headlights were trend-setting. "Sadly, I couldn't afford the $1900 Peter Menere was asking for it, and the car was sold to a couple in Echuca who used it for everything."
But Ian wasn't going to be deterred by the small matter of a lack of money and he stayed in touch with the new owners, eventually buying the car in the early 1980s.
"When I was looking at buying the car in the 1960s, I was talking to Peter Menere about it and he told me a few interesting things," says Ian. "For a start, it had not been registered in Australia at that stage, and Peter told me that it could be registered as an any year-model from 1947 to 1961. 'You take your pick', he told me.
"Also, the original Zagato seats were leather, slung over tube frames. Apparently they looked great but Peter reckoned they were the most uncomfortable things he'd ever sat on."
Front seats from a Bristol 405 have taken their place, but in other regards the car is pretty much as it was when Zagato's work was completed in 1961. This means it now uses a network of steel tubes, over which are slung the aluminium body panels. Drive comes from a 2.0-litre inline six-cylinder engine and a Bristol-made four-speed gearbox. While it looked cutting edge in 1961, beneath that swoopy aluminium body the Bristol was showing its age. Four-wheel drum brakes were just the beginning, and while the rear suspension was based on a torsion-bar set-up, the front end is built around a transverse leaf spring. Telescopic dampers grace the front but the rear dampers are antiquated lever-arm units.
Despite all that, Ian reckons the car feels very well balanced and, with its "fruity" exhaust note, says it's always fun to drive, although he admits in the same breath that the car doesn't get used anywhere near enough.
"I thought it was a car that, in 1969, was still ahead of what else was on offer," he says. "Mind you, I had a painter a few years ago who said that it was the ugliest car he'd ever seen. Beauty is in the eye, and all that. And as you can see, it's in good condition, but it's not perfect, I have deliberately not painted it. I'm scared of getting to the point where it's too good to use."
Pictures: Gary Medlicott
Bristol: Autobiography
Bristol began building cars after World War II when the company switched from making aircraft and aircraft engines and turned to producing something that civilian consumers wanted.
As with many companies immediately after the war, Bristol found itself with a highly skilled workforce and nothing to make, so cars seemed like a good bet.
It acquired a BMW design as part of war reparations, and the 400 was born.
Zagato, meanwhile, was just one of many Italian design houses that have helped give that country its reputation for style and flair.
Along with the likes of Pininfarina, Gruppo Bertone and others, Zagato has over the years styled models from Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia and even Aston Martin.
Zagato is perhaps best known for its extensive use of aluminium and other lightweight materials, which have helped to produce high-performance cars with relatively modest engines.