The cult of the continuation car

Time travel is afoot in England’s storied car factories, which are revisiting their greatest hits. But are these remakes the real deal, asks Adam Hay-Nicholls

- Adam Hay-Nicholls

THE whiff of motor oil from the antique-looking 4½-litre ‘Blower’ engine is the bouquet of an era one yearns to have witnessed. I flick down two magneto switches behind an immense steering wheel, engage the fuel pump and press fire. The effect is like that of a prewar flux capacitor, transporting me back to the rakish era of the jazz-age Bentley Boys.

This car, however, was not built in 1929. It was built in 2021. A replica, then? Rinse your mouth out, please. This is a ‘continuation’ Blower, built officially by Bentley and forensically based on a car still in the company’s possession, the 1929 Team Car No 2, as raced by its inventor, Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin, in the 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Upon its centenary in 2019, Bentley stripped and restored No 2 (valued at £25 million) down to the nuts and bolts. In so doing, the team digitally scanned each component and microanalysed each fibre, then reproduced the 1,846 bespoke parts that go into the 2021 re-release.

The continuation car’s heavy-gauge steel chassis is hand-formed, beaten and hotriveted by a Derby company that makes locomotive boilers, using the original tools; the frame is ash; the paint is cellulose; the cockpit is clothed in Rexine; and the oxblood leather seats have been stuffed with horse hair. All the old tricks. Some non-existing items have needed sourcing, such as the threestud tyres and No 2’s dashboard lap counter, which was ‘liberated’ from a Paris billiard room during post-race celebrations. One can even specify a Birkin-heel-sized depression marking the wood under the accelerator.