RETRO

BECAUSE THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THEY USED TO

- WORDS OLLIE KEW PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN WYCHERLEY

The new face of Bentley is apparently inspired by a car named after a race with a train. But is this radical experiment on the right track?

The 'Blue Train' Bentley is not blue. It is also not a train. It's a car named after a race that it did not compete in. An illegal street race no less. And yet it is - with the possible exception of one of the Le Mans winning 'Blowers' - the single most valuable Bentley in existence. Call it 20 million quid between friends.

Allow me to regale you with its story. It's the summer of 1930 and Bentley's playboy boss Woolf Barnato is unimpressed about Rover bragging that its latest model is faster from Cannes to Calais than Le Train Bleu, the most luxurious long distance train of the time.

He wagers £100 (over £5,600 today) that he can drive from Cannes all the way up to Calais, board a ferry, sail to the south coast of England and make his way to the Conservative Club in London before the train puffs into Calais. And then he went and did it. The Bentley beat the train by four minutes.

Naturally the French were furious, banned Bentley from the 1930 Paris Salon and fined him more than his winnings, but Barnato had proved once again - on top of his hat trick of Le Mans wins - that Bentley made the fastest, most reliable long distance grand tourers.

The car he drove for the 830-mile dash was his trusty Speed Six saloon. To celebrate, he named the Gurney Nutting coachbuilt coupe he'd ordered after the feat. It was delivered a month after the race and became known as the Blue Train Bentley. Over the years the tale got twisted and people understandably started to believe the Blue Train was the car that raced. It even fooled transport artist Terence Cuneo who immortalised the wrong car in his painting of the event. Thankfully the facts have now been straightened out, both Bentleys associated with the race still exist, and both are owned by the same American collector.