Innehållsförteckning för September - October 2022 från Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver

Older cars that mean a lot to their owners are often important because of their place in the family, or because of the memories that tie them to one particular family member. This meant enough to David Watt to bring his late father’s Bentley – the one in which he holidayed as a child – back from Canada, as detailed on page 40. Our cover car only exists in its unique form because of one lady, known to us through documentation and records associated with this 1939 Wraith’s build. The interior, the part that is most personal to her, has survived in excellent unrestored condition. To sit in her seat and see the modern world through the shaded windows of this 83 year-old car is a thought-provoking experience. We investigate…

Rolls-Royce at the end of World War Two found itself in a somewhat curious situation. Despite being the victor of the conflict, Britain was a shattered state; practically bankrupt after six years of fighting, its infrastructure crippled by bombing, and with so many of its pre-war population no longer around. With the immediate future being cold, grey austerity, it was not the time to be a prestige car manufacturer selling very expensive, luxury vehicles. Yet Rolls-Royce was also a national hero. All of the country’s motor manufacturers had wholeheartedly thrown themselves into the war effort and their industrial output had been vital in the Allied triumph. But the name of Rolls-Royce was more covered in glory than that of almost any other car-maker. That’s because the company had been responsible…

The story of this Bentley, bearing chassis number B202LAN, begins when it left the Bentley factory in Crewe 1955 to be delivered to the waiting craftsmen and designers of the famed coachbuilder’s workshops at Freestone & Webb, located in Brentfield Road, Willesden, North-West London. This was the year the Bentley S1 and Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud were first introduced, presenting a new canvas for coachbuilders on which to paint. Though the new Silver Cloud and S-Series cars retained a separate chassis, which gave hope to the coachbuilding industry for a few more years, the new S1 was not offered as a chassis-only option so all the but the wealthiest and most insistent customers opted for a catalogued model, and coachbuilt examples are scarce. Like many companies during World War II, Freestone…

From my early teen years, I have been fascinated by Bentley and Rolls-Royce design. I made many drawings of the Rolls-Royce cars of the early 1960s with their graceful lines and timeless appeal. The Bentley S3 is still on my ‘bucket list’. Currently I am the proud owner of three Bentley cars, the oldest being a 1994 Bentley Continental R. This Continental R immediately appealed with its exterior and interior colour scheme, plus its very low total of only 33,000 kms (20,505 miles). The car was originally commissioned by a major Singapore based collector. After subsequent shipment to New Zealand, it was owned by a colourful owner interested in all thinks satanic. He even swapped the Flying B for a miniature skull with illuminated red eyes! In my ownership we…

It’s been an enjoyable summer with the Turbo R. Mixed daily use and the odd romp to a car meeting has been something the big Bentley has take to with ease, never showing any signs of overheating or discombobulation. Well…there was one mysterious stall in the middle of a rainstorm. It started again straight away, and the problem hasn’t recurred. Perhaps humans aren’t alone in resenting wet weather. Before bringing the car up to my home in Scotland, I visited Nigel Sandell in Isleworth during a long road trip from our publishing offices in Kent, as covered in the previous issue. He found that the dashboard’s DIP unit, which had been away for repair, needed another going-over and so swapped it for a known good one from another car This…

BENTLEY’S SPEED SIX TO BE REBORN Only 18 months after the completion of ‘Car Zero’, the first new ‘Blower’ Bentley for 90 years, Bentley Mulliner (effectively the ‘special wishes’ branch of Bentley Motors) has announced it is bringing the almost equally iconic Speed Six back to life. This new Continuation Series of 12 cars will be mechanically and aesthetically authentic to the Bentley racers that won Le Mans in 1929 and 1930. The most successful Bentley racing car of its era, the Speed Six is regarded as one of the most important Bentleys in history, not only further demonstrating the marque’s world-beating performance credentials but also proving the concept of the Grand Tourer – a fast car that remained comfortable and luxurious, and capable of covering huge distances with ease.…

Send an email to rrb.ed@kelsey.co.uk or write to: The Editor, Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver, Kelsey Publishing Ltd, The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent, ME18 6AL LPG – A GOOD THING I refer to your reader’s letter on page 36 of the July/August 2022 edition, regarding the use of LPG in these cars. A few months ago I acquired my first Bentley, an early Arnage with the 4.4-litre BMW engine. Having decided on this model as my long-overdue entry to Bentley motoring, finding an example with a LPG conversion was a major factor in choosing this particular car. For some years I have been running, as the daily driver, a Range Rover L322 with the same BMW M62 engine, also with LPG conversion. My experience of this engine and…

Something else that made the Bentley MkVI significant was its status as the first model to be built at Rolls-Royce’s new Crewe factory. Actually, ‘new’ isn’t quite the right word. Prior to World War Two, car production had been carried out in Derby, but once it became obvious that conflict was inevitable, the British government started building a network of shadow factories. The aim of these was to ‘shadow’ production at other car plants that had switched to war work, so if facilities were temporarily disabled or completely destroyed by bombing, their vital tasks could still continue elsewhere. Crewe was set up so that Rolls-Royce would have somewhere else in addition to Derby to concentrate on aircraft engines that would also be reasonably safe from aerial attack. The 60-acre site…

INTRO & MODEL HISTORY When launched in 1965, the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow represented a sea change in the way Rolls-Royce approached car production. It spawned everything the Crewe marque created until its purchase by BMW in 1998, meaning the Shadow left its mark on over 30 years of Rolls-Royce and Bentley history. The Silver Shadow was Rolls-Royce’s first monocoque. At launch it used the same engine and gearbox as the outgoing Silver Cloud, which meant a V8 of 6.2-litres coupled to a four-speed automatic gearbox, though in 1968 all Shadows moved over to the three-speed GM400 automatic, then in late 1969 the engine grew to 6.75-litres. All Left-Hand Drive models were fitted with the GM400 automatic gearbox. Available from the factory, initially only as a four-door saloon, coachbuilder James Young…

By 1976, Bentley was a poor relation at Rolls-Royce, with nothing more than a badge to give it an identity, and correspondingly poor sales. These are pages from a brief but handsome brochure that doesn’t even picture the third model available – the Corniche two-door saloon – though the text does mention its existence. It also touches on the famous Bentley success at Le Mans, which seems a distant reason to buy a cosseting cruiser like the T-series. The cars were beautiful, but the marque itself needed an injection of fresh energy, which duly arrived in the 1980s.…

I’m listening to Jonathan Gould tell his story about the search that led him to this Arnage Red Label, and it reminds me there are some things that buying guides can’t tell you. Most important of those, and most basic – will I like this car? It’s a tricky issue. Not many people find themselves behind the wheel of other people’s luxury super-saloons, especially for a long enough drive to form an opinion. Sometimes a short test drive at a dealership, next to a chatty salesman, is not enough. Though I remember making my mind up about a previously much-admired Maserati Quattroporte V in a few minutes – marvellous engine, shame about the rest. But back to the point…it’s quite possible to get as far as buying a car before…

At Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver, we’re proud to have readers all over the world, with a particularly strong following in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. But while the cars are the common factor, the way they’re regarded both in image terms and value must vary a good deal, as do the challenges in keeping them on the road. This is perhaps truest of all in America, for so long a key market for both marques, but one that exists somewhat separately as a ‘scene’ for collectors and traders alike. So we asked three expert witnesses to enlighten us. Steve Natale has been writing for R-R&BD for quite a while, but his interests extend from Rolls-Royce and Bentley across all kinds of classic cars many ages. He lives in…

When it came to the creation of the Standard Steel body for the Bentley MkVI, the company drew on past influences but also reflected contemporary – if still traditional – styling trends. Or, rather, the trends of the late-1930s, for the natural evolution of car design had essentially come to a halt in 1940 and didn’t start to progress again until 1944, when British vehicle makers could be reasonably confident of victory and start to think about what their post-war ranges might look like. The MkVI/Dawn featured what is typically referred to as semirazor-edge styling, with some very angular lines and sharp edges, but also incorporating some graceful curves – for any standard body couldn’t be too radical for fear of upsetting a very conservative clientèle. There were echoes of…

In my pursuit to ‘modernise’ my 1988 Silver Sprit, I met a man named Troy Balkejian at his wrecking business, New Model Wreckers in Sydney. I was after a 1998 Bentley console to update my dashboard with GPS, hands free and Bluetooth to make my car easier to drive, park and enjoy. He had one – the last usable part of a Mulsanne wreck. Then Troy, before closing the deal, showed me his 1948 Silver Wraith. Its weird old-world beauty amazed me. It was large, black and in reasonable condition, but to me, missing love and care. I had no interest, apart from curiosity, about this ancient machine, as I already had my beautiful, modern, fully sorted Silver Spirit. After 12 months ownership and hard work, my new Spirit console…

We ended the previous report somewhat daunted by the switchbox. This is what Rolls-Royces have instead of a simple ignition switch, as found on other cars’ dashboards or steering columns. It evolved from a format that goes back a while, I think to the 1940s. It turns the ignition circuit (or auxiliary circuit) on and off, operates the starter, the headlamps and sidelights. There are also warning lamps for the charging circuit and for oil pressure. To someone un-used to the Rolls-Royce way of doing things, it seems almost comically complex, resembling something between a box of precision avionics and the workings of an old clock. Keys and switches turn barrels that move cams which open or close connections, bring bus-bars into play or leave them out, and some of…