Description
Author: Richard Bird, Softbound, 128 Pages, ISBN: 9781855321878, First Edition, 1991
This book is a pictorial record (or perhaps more accurately, a celebration) of those 1920s Bentleys that are in existence today. It is difficult to be confident of production figures, but between 1919 and 1931, Bentley Motors produced some 3024 cars.
A few experimental designs and oddities increase the (disputed) total to 3039. Of these, some 1600 are known to survive: and most of these — their very survival a tribute to the engineering skills and craftsmanship of their creators — are not museum pieces. They are driven, and driven hard: in sprints, hillclimbs, time-trials, rallies, or if not run in competition, then they cover endless miles as 'regular' transport (at least as regular as a 1920s Bentley could ever be).
You will find these vintage machines not just in England or Europe, but in the United States, in India, South Africa and Australia; wherever someone has been seduced by engineering excellence or dreams of Le Mans glory days.
At the risk of stating the obvious to any Bentley owner, one of the joys of these cars— particularly for a photographer — is that they were made in the era of the coachbuilder, when a customer would order a chassis from Bentley Motors and then could choose the body almost a la carte (though admittedly there were standard bodies available from Vanden Plas, Hoopers, Park Ward eta/—and most 1920s Bentleys received a Vanden Plas body through the Bentley Company). Nevertheless, the variety of coachwork, and the myriad decisions that the customer could make concerning lamps, instrumentation and trim, mean that every early Bentley is unique.
The multiplicity of styles on the chassis of the 3-litre, 41-litre, 61- litre, Speed Six and 8-litre which feature in these pages has an effect — mostly a liberating effect — on restoration parameters today. If the original owners were sending their cars to be heavily plated, or ordering paint finishes more or less in any colours they wished, then who is to say just exactly how a 'standard' 1920s Bentley should look? There is no right and wrong as to the extent of restoration work, only personal preference.
