CREWE CUT

If you were going to build a single-seater, you probably wouldn’t start with a Rolls- Royce Silver Shadow. But this unlikely old warhorse recently won its first race

- PAUL HARDIMAN

''Don’t look at the gear gate,” shouts owner Ben Eastick over the exhausts. “The pattern is normal, but the gate’s back-to-front and it’ll just confuse you.”And he’s right. The last gearchange I experienced that demanded this much concentration – and respect, for its huge, weighty stick – was in a Scammell Explorer. Even a ‘WO’ Bentley’s right-handed four-speed is more instinctive. But once you learn to trust your intuition and thrust the lever where you want it, any nervousness recedes. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much synchromesh at play, but it’s better as it warms, still preferring a deliberate double-declutch down to second… just like a Scammell (or a WO Bentley, as it happens).

Not that it matters much which ratio you select in this unique Bentley T-type Special. With a near-flat torque curve that doesn’t so much peak as flatline at 400lb ft once you’re over about 1500rpm, and only c2425lb to propel including driver and fuel (it weighs 2236lb, just over a metric tonne), it is prodigiously fast in any gear. Rolls-Royce advised that its pushrod V8 shouldn’t be revved to more than 5000rpm – though it now runs custom-made solid lifters – but the telltale sits 1000pm lower, and that’s quite enough for our small test track, especially with the 2.88:1 diff. It’s a mild balancing act to get it off the line because it doesn’t feel as if there’s much flywheel. Eastick says it’s much smoother since the blower was fitted, and here the low extra mass of its internals must help.