British muscle: 1972 Bristol 411

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The Bristol coupe has a conservative but shapely body style

Here’s an Anglo-American muscle car that most likely flew right past your radar. And no, it doesn’t have Shelby in its name.

The Pick of the Day is a 1972 Bristol 411, and if that does not sound familiar, rest assured that Bristol is a relatively obscure luxury-car brand and few of them were ever brought over to the U.S. from Great Britain.

Made for the U.K. home market, the Bristol is right-hand drive

What boosts the appeal of this shapely coupe is what the factory put under its hood: a performance-tweaked Chrysler 383cid V8 rated at 340 horsepower that reputedly will take the lightweight car past 140 mph.

The Bristol is right-hand-drive, being British and all, but that shouldn’t deter any red-blooded motorhead with a need to go fast, look cool and bang gears with the left hand.

The Chrysler 383 has a four-barrel carb

This “sports saloon,” chassis 7649233 and one of just 287 of the Bristol 411 models built, has been well-maintained with extensive service records, and it’s all ready to go, according to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dealer advertising the car on ClassicCars.com.

“This Bristol 411 can be classified as a good driver-quality car, mechanically well-maintained and ready to be enjoyed and driven,” the seller says in the ad. “There are obvious cosmetic imperfections surrounding the vehicle but nothing that truly warrants attention.”

The Bristol boasts a luxurious interior

The Bristol car company was founded just after World War II as a niche builder of small-batch “motor cars for the discriminating owner,” as they might say in the U.K. Besides its attractive bodies (well, most of them), Bristol was known for engineering an interesting and powerful 4-cylinder engine, which among other things powered the AC Ace Bristol sports car (which was used by Carroll Shelby to formulate the 289 Cobra, so yes, there is a tenuous Shelby connection here).

The asking price for this British coupe with American muscle is $50,000, which sounds like a fair deal “for something completely different,” to paraphrase from another quirky British enterprise of that era, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day.

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Bob Golfen
Bob Golfen is a longtime automotive writer and editor, focusing on new vehicles, collector cars, car culture and the automotive lifestyle. He is the former automotive writer and editor for The Arizona Republic and SPEED.com, the website for the SPEED motorsports channel. He has written free-lance articles for a number of publications, including Autoweek, The New York Times and Barrett-Jackson auction catalogs. A collector car enthusiast with a wide range of knowledge about the old cars that we all love and desire, Bob enjoys tinkering with archaic machinery. His current obsession is a 1962 Porsche 356 Super coupe.

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