Invicta goes bust - Telegraph Invicta owner Michael Bristow saw his dream die when his company, maker of the £150,000 super-coupé Invicta S1, was wound up last week over an unpaid £40,000 debt. The Westpoint Car Company (formerly the Invicta Car Company), which built the cars, was issued with a winding up order by Bath County Court. The order was bought after the presentation of a petition presented to the court by Robert Fountain, of County Durham. Bristow had had long harboured a desire to relaunch the historic Invicta marque and after acquiring the name in 1980 his first effort, the S1, designed by Leigh Adams, debuted at the 2002 Birmingham Motor Show. Ten years ago, he said: "If the S1 sells, then we will survive. If it doesn't, we don't deserve to survive. Although Bristow said he had created a firm that could survive making just a handful of cars per year, in 10 years he says, "the handfuls weren't enough." In spite of efforts to restructure the company and a last-minute change of name to protect the Invicta marque from a fourth financial collapse in its 87-year history, Bristow appears to have now admitted defeat. "With the collapse of Lehman Brothers and subsequent credit crunch," he said, "the market for £150,000-plus sports cars has suffered severely and Invicta, sadly, has not been immune to this recession." The Invicta name joins a long litany of attempts to revamp once-proud British car makers. Invicta was founded in 1925 by Captain (later Sir) Noel Macklin after the sugar magnate Oliver Lyle (of Tate and Lyle) failed to find a car for his wife, who couldn't change gear. Macklin set up Invicta at his home in Cobham, Surrey, producing a series of sports saloons and dropheads of such quality and performance they eventually bankrupted the company several times. Bristow's attempt to reinvent the name was paved with good intentions, but now it joins the BRM, Vanwall, Austin Healey, Connaught and Lea Francis badges as failed rebirths.