Bentley are to build 12 1920s ‘hypercars’ for customer sale, all exact recreations of the iconic 1929 4.5 litre ’Blower’ Bentleys.
Iconic the cars may have been but they were not the Bentley model that brought the marque its Le Mans winning success stories.
Those four consecutive factory wins from 1927 through to 1930 all went to Bentley models without superchargers. Somehow though the ‘Blower’ Bentley, and in particular, the car campaigned by Sir Tim Birkin, has emerged as THE iconic Bentley of the period!
The new programme will see 12 recreations, all to be built by Bentley’s Mulliner bespoke division, over a two-year build programme.
Bentley Motors own a sister car and it will be entirely disassembled, with every single part 3D scanned for 12 sets of part, exactly to the original specification to be produced using original 1920s jigs and moulds as well as state of the art tooling.
Some modern safety upgrades will be incorporated.
Bentley says that the 12 car run has been determined as it reflects the 12 races that the original four cars contested .
Whilst the car’s contemporary race career did not produce the major honours that either Bentley nor Birkin hoped for it did fire the imagination of buyers, the boost in performance saw the car as the fastest road car of the day (power up from c.130 bhp to c.240 bhp) and customer demand stretching to some 55 customer cars on top of the original five racing models.
Bentley then follows Aston Martin and Jaguar into the recreation marketplace, Aston’s run of DB4 GTs following Jaguar’s ‘new’ lightweight E-Types and later XKSS runs in recent years.
