Who could possibly want one? Any Bristol is such an old-fashioned looking piece of motoring machinery that its customers must be rapidly dying out or losing their driving licences through age. Yet, with styling hints of the old Rover 820, Bristol Cars has just announched a new car, the Blenheim 3G.

The unique selling proposition here is economy. The Blenheim 3G is a bi-fule car, sporting a pair of LPG tanks in the boot and yet leaving enough room between them for a golf bag, or half a dozen golf bags. And they say it will do 30mpg.

Even the concept, as we head rapidly towards serious alternatives to the internal combustion engine, comes from 25 years ago and the fuel crises of the time.

Which was, by the way, when Bristol first gave the option of having bi-fuel.

Still, Bristol is the only remaining luxury car manufacturer under British control, and therefore has probably another USP for the British market.

And it sells the Blenheim 3G as a formal luxury car within the external width of a medium-sized saloon. The ‘exceptional optical quality’ of the glass around the cabin is emphasised in the literature.

Then there’s that special ‘flawless hide’ complemented by matched walnut veneer and a Wilton carpet, naturally. Edge-bound in leather, naturally. As they say, in a Bristol, every journey becomes an occasion, a ‘relaxed and satisfying place from which to observe the hectic world outside’.

That odd gap you see in the left wing actually contains the spare wheel, and this is one of the other USPs, that ‘uniquely’ Bristol has the entire engine and all major masses, including the spare wheel and battery, within the wheelbase’.

To provide the optimum front-rear balance, of course. And ‘exceptional agility combined with imperturbable stability’ at speed and ‘remarkable roadholding under all conditions’.

The 5.9-litre V8 engine, with an unspecified horsepower or torque, causes the car to ‘move swiftly away from rest as if it weighs almost nothing’. ‘Every throttle movement will be answered with swift, obedient authority’.

As befits ‘a true gentleman’s Grand Touring coupe’. It is, of course, ‘a vehicle of rare ability and unequalled quality’. And is a ‘combination of virtues’ which cannot be matched by any other.

They wanna watch out. BMW will want to buy them. Which would have a certain historical resonance, as the original Bristol so beloved of some, mainly British, in the top aristocracy of motoring journalism, was in fact a ‘spoil of war’ when the drawings of the pre-WW2 BMW sports coupes were ‘liberated’ to Britain.

Listen, I’m not old enough to consider one yet.

£144,818.75, including VAT, in the UK. Just in case YOU are.

By the way. It’s a hefty lump of car. And it DOES do the 0-60mph in 6.3secs, on petrol. Let’s face it, impressive.