Bristol 405 vs Lancia Aurelia B10: focus on the finer things

By Martin Buckley

| 27 Mar 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Bristol 405 vs Lancia Aurelia B10: focus on the finer things

The reputations of Bristol and Lancia probably peaked in terms of fame, influence and quality in the mid-1950s, when the firms built absurdly expensive 2-litre, six-cylinder saloons for the discriminating few.

These unworldly cars appealed to people who appreciated detail refinement and the sort of nuanced driver appeal that does not rely on raw horsepower.

Quality of construction was another shared value.

The Bristol 405 motors along with a free-revving verve

Lancia was still regarded as Italy’s finest car maker in the 1950s, and substantial national pride rested not only on the quality of the firm’s engineering, but also on the way this venerable Turin manufacturer blended tradition with a bent for expensive innovation at all costs.

The Appia still used sliding-pillar front suspension well into the ’60s, but the 1950 Aurelia had the world’s first production V6 – all aluminium, of course – plus pioneered semi-trailing-arm rear suspension and was the first production car to have radial tyres as standard.

As an automobile manufacturer, Bristol was a much younger company than Lancia, making vehicles in much smaller numbers.

The Lancia Aurelia B10 is an effective point-to-point machine

Yet, by reinventing the best of pre-war BMW design (by way of war reparations) in the English idiom, the newly minted car-making outpost of the Bristol Aeroplane Company could hardly fail to make its first-ever automobile – the 400 of 1947 – a really good one.

With such sound raw materials, Bristol looked not to innovate but to constantly refine, while at the same time applying aerospace standards of quality inspection (unreliable aeroplanes falling out of the sky willy-nilly is a serious business).

The Bristol Aeroplane Company went into car manufacture in order to keep its post-war workforce occupied, but it would never recapture the production levels of the 1947-’50 400 model in a new-car market that became increasingly less starved of products.

Lancia script on the Aurelia’s understated hubcap

So by the time the 405 was introduced in ’54, fitted as standard with overdrive and the latest 105bhp 100B engine, car production at Filton had become a sideline activity to the core business of building airframes and aircraft engines.

Even so, the 405, the firm’s one and only four-door offering, was considered to be one of the best of the 2-litre Bristols.

Built in 18-gauge aluminium, but with ash framing around the passenger compartment to support the roof, the 405 dispensed with the BMW-style kidney grilles of the 400/402/403 in favour of an almost jet-engine-style intake.

The Lancia Aurelia’s doorhandles hint at its easy-access party trick

Like all Bristols, a separate box-section chassis – with a very well-located live rear axle – was central to its character, complete with excellent rack-and-pinion steering; late-model 405s were even fitted with front disc brakes.

‘Our’ example was sold new to Betty Box, the film producer probably best known for the Doctor in the House film series that made Dirk Bogarde a star.

Priced at £3188, the 405 must have been one of the world’s most expensive 2-litre production cars in 1954.

The Lancia’s pillarless but less ostentatious cabin

The Aurelia was not far behind it, at £2400 in B12 form; very few B10s came to the UK new, and much of the Aurelia’s profile here centred around the much more obvious charms of the B20 GT.

If the Bristol was handmade in the best sense of the term, the Aurelia saloon emerged from a production line – albeit a very slow one – with a similar degree of hand-finishing.

Lancia had pioneered unitary construction on the 1922 Lambda, so this was part of the birthright of the Vittorio Jano-designed Aurelia.

Chunky graphics on the Lancia Aurelia’s speedometer

Like the Aprilia it replaced, the Aurelia maintained the tradition of rear-hinged back doors with no central pillar, creating a huge opening.

It also featured a transaxle and inboard rear brakes.

The original B10 and B10S of 1950-’53 had a 1754cc 60° V6 that was good for 56bhp and an 82mph maximum speed, along with a rather homely looking body, styled with the assistance of Pinin Farina, that, with various minor modifications, would serve until the demise of the four-door Aurelia in 1955.

‘The Lancia Aurelia rolls somewhat but turns in beautifully, skimming the road with a lighter footprint than the Bristol and very few rattles’

Like all Lancias up to 1954, the B10 came as standard as a right-hooker: the B10S was the optional left-hand-drive or sinistra version.

By the time the last B12 saloons were built in 1955, the Aurelia had spawned 20 variations on the V6/transaxle theme.

Of the factory saloons, the B21/B21S of 1951-’53 featured a larger 1991cc, 70bhp engine, giving 90mph on a higher-ratio rear axle.

The Lancia Aurelia’s two-piece headlight

The B22/B22S of 1952-’53 employed a twin-choke Weber 40DCL5 carburettor and a longer-duration camshaft profile for 90bhp at 5000rpm and a 99mph top speed.

The B12, introduced in 1954, is generally considered to be the best of the lot: a second-generation saloon contemporary with the Series 4 B20 GT.

But, for comparison purposes, we will content ourselves here with a B10 belonging to the vintage watch restorer and serial Lancia collector Mitka Engebretsen.

Horology and Lancia ownership is definitely ‘a thing’, in my experience.

The Lancia Aurelia B10’s 1754cc V6 makes 56bhp

Both the Bristol and the Lancia take justifiable pride in their engines, which in each case has an extensive competition pedigree and a reputation for stamina and durability.

In its original BMW guise – as found in the 328 – the 405’s iron-block, alloy-head straight-six was probably the best of its type in the world.

Using aircraft thinking, Bristol improved it with better materials than had been available to the Germans.

Long and deep, this cross-pushrod, undersquare straight-six looks big for a 2-litre and features triple Solex carburation with a rigid, ball-jointed throttle linkage.

The Lancia Aurelia was designed with help from Pinin Farina

Even in timid single-carb guise, the Lancia’s V6 brings to mind Giovanni Bracco’s exploits on the Mille Miglia and associated sepia-tinted racing glory.

It has crackle-black valve covers, a finned alloy sump and a thermostatically shuttered radiator, which can be drained in an instant via a T-handle attached to a drain tap.

Its compact dimensions allow a relatively snub nose and generous cabin space, but the Aurelia B10 suffers the fate of most Lancia saloons in that its styling is almost wilfully pedestrian.

The Bristol (closest) and Lancia are high-quality classic cars, but the Aurelia is the more understated

The rakish Bristol seems to be, in contrast, all bonnet, which leaves plenty of room for its ingenious wing bays behind the front wheels, separating the electrical system and spare-wheel storage in a way that, again, highlights its designers’ aircraft-making sensibilities.

The 405’s rear doors are so small they are almost not worth the effort, but once inside you are surrounded by the sort of hide-bound and walnut-trimmed luxury that makes the Lancia’s rather severe cabin feel like a doctor’s waiting room.

There are no unnecessary frills inside the Aurelia, only practical refinements: a hand throttle, a light to tell you the choke is on and a driver’s window-winder handle that hinges flat to clear the knee of your throttle leg.

Inside the long, deep boot you will find a drainpipe-sized filler for the floor-mounted fuel tank.

Polished centre caps on the Bristol 405

The Bristol 405 introduced the handsome instrument binnacle used by the firm until the end of Blenheim production.

Its sumptuous red leather seats look as inviting as the Lancia’s bench is uninspired, if practical.

The Aurelia, with its cream steering wheel and pale instruments, manages without a rev counter as standard but has a combined gauge for oil pressure and benzina, plus the usual array of unidentified switches for lights, washers and wipers.

There is ample head- and legroom, and no transmission tunnel, just a narrow housing for the propshaft (which spins all the time the engine is running) – an incidental benefit of the transaxle.

The cabin is easy to enter via doors that latch beautifully top and bottom.

For the Bristol 405, the British car maker ditched BMW-esque kidney grilles in favour of a striking one-piece item

To wake the Lancia you turn the key and press to get the starter, while the Bristol has a separate button, but in both you are soon moving purposefully up the road.

Thanks to experimentation with firing orders and crank pins, the Aurelia’s V6 is soft, mellow and smooth, albeit with some vibration in the drivetrain and the reaction through the steering that is a feature of sliding-pillar suspension.

Naturally, the more powerful Bristol feels the snappier of the two, although the difference does not feel as marked as you might think given the disparity in outputs.

The Bristol 405 has a richly appointed cabin with no-nonsense dials

The 405’s lusty, flexible engine derives much of its appeal from the way the revs pick up and shut down cleanly.

The centre gearchange is not only light, smooth and positive, but also blessed with ratios that keep matters on the boil: 5000rpm in second gives you 60mph, complete with a well-bred induction roar and throaty valvetrain thrash.

Third takes you to 85mph, or you can cruise in a 3500-4000rpm sweet spot, flicking between overdrive and direct top.

An electromagnetic switch to the right of the wheel clicks out when you select third.

The Bristol 405 is powered by a BMW-derived ‘six’ with triple Solex carburettors

A freewheel on bottom would normally take the pressure off your left leg in traffic, but this car has a stronger-synchronised first gear among several other sensible upgrades.

The column gearchange on the Lancia – with first gear furthest away and reverse nearest – is ponderous on this car; it should be both crisp and positive in its action.

A highlight of the Bristol is its steering, which manages to be reasonably light at low speeds yet is high-geared enough to be responsive, with no sloppiness around the middle.

It feels completely natural to take aggressive lines, and nothing seems to upset the 405’s balance.

The Bristol 405 responds well to hard cornering, despite its stately looks

On paper the Aurelia’s steering appears low-geared, at four turns from lock to lock, but it doesn’t feel it.

It rolls somewhat but always turns in beautifully, skimming the road with a lighter footprint than the Bristol and very few rattles.

Balanced 50:50 front to rear, it doesn’t load up its steering and, like so many of its predecessors, has an ability to cover ground over mixed road conditions that goes a long way to making up for its lack of outright urge.

The Bristol 405’s long front wing includes spare-wheel storage

The 405 might have been the last of the BMW-inspired Bristols, if plans for a new unitary-bodied, 3.5-litre car hadn’t been scuppered by the parent firm’s government-initiated merger into the British Aircraft Corporation.

That only 308 were built in four years (including 43 coveted Abbott-bodied dropheads) shows how Bristol’s car-making ambitions were beginning to lose momentum well before the end of the ’50s.

As the Cold War ramped up, the focus shifted back to aircraft.

At least Bristol had its aerospace contracts.

Discreet fins on the Bristol 405

In many ways, Lancia was already the walking dead by the mid-’50s, Gianni Lancia having squandered his inheritance in pursuit of racing glory, rather than investing in infrastructure that would have brought efficiency and profit to the company his father founded in 1907.

As the ’60s dawned, both Lancia and Bristol suffered from the wide availability of much cheaper machinery that appeared, if only superficially, to do most things just as well.

Snob appeal and unseen detail refinement only went so far in this more commercialised era, and both firms would learn that lesson to their cost in the painful decades to follow.

Images: John Bradshaw

Thanks to: SLJ Hackett; Mitka Engebretsen

Factfiles

Bristol 405

Sold/number built 1954-’58/308
Construction steel A-frame chassis, with steel, wood and light-alloy body
Engine iron-block, alloy-head, ohv 1971cc straight-six, triple Solex carburettors
Max power 105bhp @ 5000rpm
Max torque 123lb ft @ 3650rpm
Transmission four-speed manual with overdrive, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by upper wishbones, transverse leaf spring, anti-roll bar rear live axle, torsion bars, lateral links, A-bracket; telescopic dampers f/r
Steering rack and pinion
Brakes drums
Length 15ft 11½in (4864mm)
Width 5ft 8¾in (1746mm)
Height 4ft 9½in (1461mm)
Wheelbase 9ft 6in (2896mm)
Weight 2745lb (1249kg)
Mpg 19-24
0-60mph 13 secs
Top speed 105mph
Price new £3188
Price now £50-80,000*

Lancia Aurelia B10

Sold/number built 1950-’52/4938
Construction steel monocoque
Engine all-alloy, ohv 1754cc V6, twin-choke Weber 40DCF5 carburettor
Max power 56bhp @ 4000rpm
Max torque 78lb ft @ 3000rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, at front by sliding pillars rear semi-trailing arms, telescopic dampers; coil springs f/r
Steering worm and sector
Brakes drums
Length 14ft 8½in (4483mm)
Width 5ft 1½in (1562mm)
Height 4ft 11in (1500mm)
Wheelbase 9ft 4½in (2858mm)
Weight 2425lb (1100kg)
Mpg 27
0-60mph 22 secs
Top speed 83mph
Price new 1.8m lire
Price now £20-35,000*