Lot 747: 1953 Bentley R-Type ‘Speed Six Replica’ Tourer

Based on a 1953 Bentley R-Type chassis, this car is recorded in Ray Roberts’ book, Bentley Specials and Special Bentleys, as featuring ‘two-seater vintage style open bodywork following behind a vintage Bentley Speed Six type radiator.’ Even by Bentley standards, the 6½-Litre Speed Six was an exclusive car - only 182 were built between 1928 and 1931 - with ownership confined to a necessarily wealthy few, a situation that obtains to this day. Small wonder then, that more than one enthusiast had been tempted to recreate what was one of the finest sports cars of the Vintage period using more readily available components.
With characteristic humility ‘W O’ was constantly amazed by later generations’ enthusiasm for the products of Bentley Motors Limited and it is testimony to the soundness of his engineering design skills that so many of his products have survived. From the humblest of beginnings in a mews garage off Baker Street, London in 1919 the name of Bentley rapidly achieved fame as an exciting fast touring car, well able to compete with the best of European and American sportscars in the tough world of motor sport in the 1920s. Bentley’s domination at Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930 is legendary, and one can only admire the Herculean efforts of such giants as Woolf Barnato, Jack Dunfee, Tim Birkin and Sammy Davis, consistently hurling the British Racing Green sports cars to victory.
W O Bentley proudly debuted the new 3-litre car bearing his name on Stand 126 at the 1919 Olympia Motor Exhibition. Powered by a four-cylinder single-overhead-camshaft engine with fixed ’head and four valves per cylinder, it set the pattern for the more refined six-cylinder 6½-Litre model that followed. The latter’s introduction mid-decade was prompted by the 3-Litre’s waning competitiveness and the fact that too many customers had been tempted to fit unsuitably heavy coachwork to the excellent 3-Litre chassis. It is the stuff of legend that in 1925 a prototype of the Bentley ‘six’ encountered Rolls-Royce’s ‘New Phantom’ while on test in France, the episode resulting in ‘W O’ increasing the engine capacity from 4½ litres to 6,597cc, in which form it was to remain from 1926 to 1930.
In 1928 the Speed Six, W O’s favourite car, was introduced. Although the 6½-Litre had been conceived as a touring car to compete with Rolls-Royce’s New Phantom, in Speed Six form it proved admirably suited to competition: in 1929 Barnato/Birkin’s Speed Six won the Le Mans 24 Hour Race ahead of a trio of 4½-Litre Bentleys and Barnato/Kidston repeated the feat in the following year’s Grand Prix d'Endurance at the Sarthe circuit ahead of similarly-mounted Clement/Watney.
Documentation on file indicates that this replica Speed Six was constructed over a 12-year period at a reported cost exceeding £100,000 - possibly by more than one individual - using an original body and radiator together with a MkVI 4¼-litre engine, gearbox and (presumably rear) axle. The car was sold to the current owner in April 2002 soon after completion and comes with bill of sale, sundry restoration invoices, current MoT/road fund licence and Swansea V5 registration document.