Description
Author: Donald Bastow, Hardbound, 366 Pages, ISBN: 9780854292158, First Edition, September, 1978 - Second-Hand Book in excellent unread condition !
Motoring history is always in the making. New designs, concepts and methods are discussed and announced every day and old ones reviewed. Here we have one man's substantially first hand view, of how one of the greatest names in motoring history came to make some of that history.
W. 0. Bentley - Engineer is as much a human story as it is a technical one. There is as much philosophy here as there is 'nuts and bolts' calculation. For the first time W. 0.'s work is analysed from an engineering viewpoint. His philosophy, methods, reasoning and working pressures are explained. Was he actually correct? Could he have been criticised or praised, more in his own time? How do his ideas stand up in light of retrospective analysis?
Donald Bastow has written this book in two parts. The first describes the work and the resulting success (or failures) and relates directly to the cars and aircraft concerned. The second part at the end of each chapter, suggests some calculations which may have taken place and offers the budding or practicing engineer a latter day analysis of them.
This is not a text book; its exciting conflict of ideas sees to that. It is a readable appraisal of the 'why and how' of those excellent and exciting cars, which carried the Bentley wings. W. 0.'s involvement with Lagonda and Armstrong Siddeley is not ignored and it is in this particular area that some hitherto unknown facts emerge.
No motoring enthusiast should be without this knowledge of the past when trying to assess the worth of the engineering giants, viewed in the light of today's experience. It will also prove indispensable when trying to put into perspective the whole spectrum of motoring history.
Donald Bastow graduated from University College, London (Faculty of Engineering) with a B.Sc. (Eng.) 1st class honours in 1929. Straight away he became a post-graduate pupil at Daimler where he stayed until 1932. Then he joined Rolls - Royce. At this point automobile engineering became his life.
For the next twelve years he was a designer (soon to become a Section Leader) in the Car Division Design Office. He started there as a Junior under B. I. Day, responsible for general chassis design in the small West Wittering design office of Sir Henry Royce. Amongst his R-R designs come the Phantom III, Wraith and Bentley Mark V independent front suspensions. During the Second War he was responsible for the suspension design of the Cromwell tank.
It was during his next term of employment with Lagonda that he first worked with W. 0. Bentley. First he was the Technical Production Engineer and later assistant to W. 0., the Technical Director. He obviously knew W. 0. well and fully appreciated what the latter had achieved as an engineer.
In 1947 he moved with W. 0. to a small Weybridge office, to act as a consultant to Armstrong Siddeley. Still assistant to W. 0., his colleagues comprised two other designers and a secretary. This venture lasted three years.
At BSA Group Research he was Manager of the Engine and Mechanism Laboratory at Small Heath for two years. Next, he became Chief Engineer with Jowett Cars Limited for two years and then moved to Metalastik Limited as Technical Assistant to the Managing Director for an interesting and educational year.
1955-1957 saw him as Assistant Chief Engineer (to Walter Hassan) at Coventry Climax, and later as Chief Engineer, Electric Vehicles. He then became a Director of Birfield Engineering, responsible for design. until 1959, when he became Chief Engineer with Hardy Spicer until 1963. For one year he was Director to Dobson & Barlow Limited and for two, Director at TMM Research. both companies in the Stone-Plan Group.
In 1965 Donald became a freelance consulting engineer. After a few more busv %tan he decided to devote most of his time writing and this is his first book.
He has very recently been awarded kw second Starley Premium, (his first was a 1952) for an engineering paper on rear suspension.
