A top lawyer whose dream of owning a rare Bristol car became a nightmare of escalating costs and contractual wrangling has been awarded more than £120,000 damages against the prestige car manufacturer.

Leading commercial solicitor, Andrew Olins, had wanted a Bristol 405D drophead coupe ever since he first saw one when he was 18.

Only around 40 of the cars were ever made and he could hardly believe his luck when Bristol Cars Ltd offered one for sale in 2011.

The company said it could convert a 1955 Bristol 405 four-door saloon into a 405D and Mr Olins ‘felt he had had to have it', said Mrs Justice Andrews in her judgment.

Mr Olins took out a bank loan and agreed to pay £153,000 for the restored car through his family property company.

However, more than two years on, Mrs Justice Andrews said today that the estimated cost of restoring the car has ballooned to almost £250,000.

Mr Olins, a partner in Uxbridge-based law firm, IBB Solicitors, had initially hoped to take delivery of the car in March 2012.

However, the judge, sitting at London’s High Court, said may not be ready until the middle of June this year.

The court heard the project had been hit by severe financial problems at Bristol Cars.

The manufacturer went into administration whilst negotiating with Mr Olins and the original business was later bought out and re-formed as a ‘phoenix’ company, still bearing its original name.

Mr Olins was reassured that there would be no problem and that it was “business as usual”, said the judge.

A deal was in the end agreed at a fixed price of £153,000, but the judge added: “Unfortunately, Bristol never even made a start on the works”.

When the planned delivery date came and went, and still no progress had been made, Mr Olins ‘began to lose patience’.

He was reassured that the work would be contracted out to a company specialising in restoring classic cars and that this would have no impact on the provenance or value of the car as the job would be ‘signed off’ by Bristol.

However, it emerged that a number of Bristol staff with specialist skills had been ‘let go’ by the administrators and the company was having difficulty replacing them. The men with whom Mr Olins had been negotiating also departed “apparently in somewhat acrimonious circumstances”.

Mr Olins put in a ‘formal complaint’ with the company and a settlement was reached in May 2012. However, the deadline for completion had since been pushed further and further forward and the price of the job ever upwards to just over £249,000.

In the judgment handed down, the judge rejected Bristol’s claim that Mr Olins' company DLL had breached the settlement agreement by failing to use ‘reasonable endeavours’ to strike a deal directly with the car restoration firm.

Ruling that Mr Olins was entitled to rely upon the terms of the original fixed price deal, the judge found that Bristol had committed a repudiatory breach of contract in January last year

The car manufacturer was ordered to pay Mr Olins’ company a total of £124,173 damages, including interest, which largely reflects the difference between the fixed price originally agreed for the car and the projected cost of completing the job.

On Friday, Bristol was ordered to pay DLL's costs and insurance premiums of more than £150,000.