DriveTimes Five

Far-out facts on Bentley With the unveiling of the Bentley Bentayga – the prestigious marque’s first ever SUV – we give you everything you every wanted to know about the British firm.

The bike racer

Before he started making cars, Walter Owen Bentley actually raced motorcycles. While he was good enough to get a factory ride for the Indian team at the Isle of Man TT in 1910, it was for nothing as his rear tyre burst on the second lap, taking him out of the race. It was the second time he failed to complete the TT, as he had also dropped out the in the previous year when he rode as Rex. In 1912 he joined forces with his brother Horace Milner Bentley in a company called ‘‘Bentley & Bentley’’ selling French DFP cars.

The Woolf man

Woolf Barnato was the extremely wealthy businessman who came to Bentley’s rescue in the mid-1920s investing heavily and eventually taking control. He was a physically impressive man with ‘‘a heavyweight boxer’s build’’ and a sharp business mind. But he was also one of the celebrated ‘‘Bentley Boys’’ who won Le Mans three times (all in Bentley 3-litres), was a Captain in the British army during WWI and played firstclass cricket. While his full name was Joel Woolf Barnato, he had an uncle named Woolf Barnato Joel and a grandfather named Joel Joel. Interesting naming habits aside, the family amassed its huge wealth mining diamonds in South Africa.

Smoking kills

Following Bentley’s withdrawing from racing in 1930, Sir Henry Ralph Stanley Birkin, 3rd Baronet – otherwise known as Tim – had a drastic change in his life. The legendary Bentley Boys were no more and his racing career was in tatters. He kept racing, however, using the Bentley Blower No. 1 that had since been re-bodied by Reid Railton and was now known, rather brilliantly, as ‘‘The Brooklands Battleship’’. He won Le Mans in an Alfa Romeo in 1931 and again beat the lap record at Brooklands in the Battleship. Unfortunately in 1933 he was competing in the Tripoli Grand Prix when, during a pitstop, he reached for a cigarette lighter and burned his arm badly on the exhaust. The wound turned septic and Birkin died in a nursing home at the young age of 36.

The secret deal

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression had a crippling effect on Bentley and by 1931 it had been placed into receivership. Fellow car manufacturer Napier made an offer for the company, but was beaten to it by a mysterious entity called ‘‘The British Central Equitable Trust’’ that made a winning bid of £125,000 (£7,680,000 or NZ$13,500,000 in today’s money). The trust turned out to be Rolls-Royce, a fact that even W.O. Bentley didn’t know until after the sale. Interestingly Woolf Barnato had just happened to purchase a sizeable stake in RollsRoyce before this happened and was not only paid out for his shares in Bentley, but was also appointed to the board of the ‘‘new’’ Bentley Motors…

The name’s Bentley

As any self-respecting James Bond nerd will be able to tell you, author Ian Fleming’s choice of ride for his fictional super-spy was a 4 1/2-litre Blower Bentley. Bond did drive an Aston Martin in Goldfinger –aDB3– the movie adaptation of which is also the first appearance of the iconic DB5. A cinematic reference to Bond’s favoured cars in the novels is made at the start of From Russia With Love where a 1935 drop head appears (complete with on-board phone), as well as the ‘‘unofficial’’ Bond film Never

Say Never Again which briefly features a 1937 4 1/2-litre.