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.
Denne historien er fra June 30, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 30, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
