Yes, girls, too. In fact, if it hadn’t been for one—Mildred Mary Bruce—the famous Blower Bentley could have stayed an idea rolling around in Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin’s head. Bruce was even more daredevil than most of the Boys. One of her minor accomplishments was in 1929, when she single-handedly drove a lumbering great 4½ -liter Bentley non-stop around the Montlhéry circuit just outside Paris at an average of 89 mph for 24 hours to establish a world record, which was never beaten by any other woman. One of her many major achievements was, in 1930, when she flew solo around the world – after just 40 hours of flying lessons!
The Boys? Most were rich. There was the heir to a Kimberley diamond mine fortune, a highly talented steeplechase jockey, a Harley Street bacteriologist, a journalist and painter, the heir to a Nottingham lace manufacturing fortune, the inevitable “professional” playboy, a couple of aviators, a submariner and even a pearl fishing magnate. On last count there were 16 Bentley Boys – but there were almost certainly more who came and went – whose extraordinary courage and driving skill won the marque the 24 Hours of Le Mans no fewer than five times between 1924 and 1930.
But motor racing was just one exciting facet of their privileged lives. They were very big spenders, debs’ delights, lovers of wild parties, swashbucklers the lot of them. And they weren’t all British, either. There were at least a couple of Frenchmen, a Canadian and an Australian.
All of them craved excitement, and boy did they get it…in the cars built by their antithesis. A quiet, conservative, all three buttons of his suit coat done up, plain featured little Englishman named Walter Owen Bentley, who hated both of his first names so he was called W.O. for most of his life. Odd thing to say about the man who designed such brutishly fast cars, but W.O. was also one of the Bentley Boys. He was a quick driver in his day.
Ex-First World War officer and career soldier Sir (the knighthood was hereditary) Tim Birkin got it right when he was asked, in 1932, why he became a Bentley Boy. He said civilian life offered him none of the excitement of the war – he was a pilot in the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps – because each day was just more vapid and tedious than the last. He felt there were many who found sedentary business life into which they had been forced intolerably empty. So they went motor racing and things suddenly looked up.
W.O.’s car design formula was as straight-forward as he was, but he was a stickler for it. It was to build good, fast cars that were the best in their class. That’s all. And there were no frills on his motor racing objectives, either. He thought the sport was the best way of testing his designs and it was certainly the most effective way of advertising his fire-breathing wares. Bentley once told an old friend of mine, Brian Robins, editor of BBC TV motoring programs, “I would have been perfectly content to see our cars running around Le Mans in inglorious solitude so long as the Daily Telegraph gave us their front page on the Monday morning.”
From the outset Bentley, based in the London suburb of Cricklewood, went motor racing with meticulously prepared cars of advanced technology– four valves and twin spark plugs per cylinder, overhead camshaft – run by a team burning to do well. Engines with straight cut gears were especially built for racing and had bigger clearances between their working parts. Racing chassis were reinforced as necessary, uprated shock absorbers were fitted for the bump-thump of the old Le Mans road surfaces. Racing manager Nobby Clark recalled that they carefully sifted every scrap of post-race data and continuously made improvements to their power units, pit stop systems and team discipline.
One thing did get up Nobby’s nose, though—maintaining the early 3-liter racing cars’ oil pressure was a nightmare. By 1927, the factory cars had an extra oil reservoir under the scuttle that was connected to the oil filler neck. As soon as the driver saw the oil pressure gauge cavitating, going through a corner, he had to turn on a tap so that it spewed more oil into the sump. Not surprising then that the 3-liters racing at Le Mans would slurp up one gallon of the stuff every 100 miles!
When W.O. first heard of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the brainchild of Charles Faroux, editor of the French sports daily L’Equipe, he thought it was just plain crazy. In those days, the roads that weaved their way through the Sarthe were mainly unmade, narrow, dusty and covered with stones. It was really a bit of a moth and flame job though, because there was no way W.O. could resist the challenge. So he helped Canadian John Duff, who became the first Bentley Boy, to prepare his privately entered 3-liter Sport for the first Le Mans, in 1923, and even lent him Frank Clement, the Bentley works tester and occasional racer, as co-driver. A genius with carburetors, Frank had prepared the 3-liters that came second, fourth and fifth in the same year’s RAC Tourist Trophy race driven by Clement, W.O. and W.D. Hawkes.
W.O. went to France to watch his protégés and the car he designed, the only British vehicle in the event. They came fourth, as the Bentley was slowed by a stone-punctured fuel tank. The trip was fatal…Le Mans got under Bentley’s skin. He decided his main aim in life was to win the race. His big green monsters may have been entered for other events before and after their dazzling Le Mans exploits, but their performance at the Sarthe was what made the company’s name. And, with the exception of Frank Clement, all that success was down to a bunch of la-di-da, rich chinless wonders whose tongues were hanging out for excitement and the joy of speed.
W.O. made sure Duff’s petrol tank, radiator and headlights were fitted with sturdy stone guards for the 1924 Le Mans. Far bigger 25-gallon fuel tanks were also installed as refueling stops were only permitted every 200 miles and a racing 3-liter Bentley, at full speed, would do about 10 miles to the gallon, if that.
Duff was still a private and not a Bentley Motors entrant in the 1924 Le Mans, but his car was prepared at the Cricklewood works and he was partnered by Frank Clement again. The two days were boiling hot, but the Bentley ploughed on relentlessly to win at an average speed of 53.630 mph and, of course, took the 2001-3000-cc class.
Dr. J. Dudley Benjafield received his MD from the University of London, in 1912, and began to specialize in bacteriology until the outbreak of the First World War, during which he served in Egypt. He was crazy about speed but, strangely, started out in boats. But, in 1920, his beloved motor launch was destroyed in an accident, so he switched to cars. Benjy bought a stripped down red Bentley 3-liter special that had been developed and raced by Frank Clement and he competed with that at Brooklands. Then he entered the car for the 1925 24 Hours of Le Mans, co-driven by Bertie Kensington Moir, who ran out of petrol unwisely dueling with another competitor after just 19 laps into the 129 lap race. The car just groaned to a halt and stayed there for the rest of the race. Benjy, who was furious, did not even get his hands on the car and spent a lot of money for nothing. The good doctor tried again in 1926, this time with artist and Autocar motoring journalist S.C.H. (Sammy) Davis, another larger than life character who kept his bubbling enthusiasm for everything at just below detonation level right up until his death at 94 years of age on his birthday, January 9, 1981. This time Benj’s car roared on to nine laps before the end, when a wilting Davis stuffed its nose into a sand bank to bring the car’s race to yet another ignominious end. Shame, because they had covered 138 of the eventual 147 laps. That was a poor year for Bentley at Le Mans, because Tommy Thistlethwaite/Clive Gallop and George Duller/Frank Clement also retired their 3-liters.
In 1925, Woolf “Babe” Barnato became the majority shareholder and later chairman of Bentley Motors. Woolf was the fabulously wealthy heir to his father Barney Barnato’s Kimberley diamond fortune and was nicknamed Babe because of his, shall we say, stocky figure. He went to all the right schools – Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge – and was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. By 1925, W.O.’s business was experiencing severe cash flow problems so Babe, who had enjoyed his brief taste of racing Bentleys, agreed to finance the business, became its main shareholder and subsequently chairman, all in that same year.
Woolf’s injection of cash meant W.O. was able to design a new generation of cars, the mind boggling 6 ½-liters Speed Six. Chairman Barnato had a hand in quite a few of John Duff’s exploits and was, for instance, the Canadian’s co-driver when the two of them established a new 24-hour world record of 95.03 mph at Montlhéry on a wet September 21, 1925, in his 3-liter Bentley, in which Duff eventually broke an incredible 21 world speed records.
The 1927 Le Mans could have been an even bigger disaster for the Bentley Boys than the 1926, because all three cars – the entire team – were involved in an accident at the Maison Blanc corner. The 3-liter Super Sport driven by André d’Erlanger/George Duller retired immediately, but the Frank Clement/Leslie Callingham 4 ½ -liter managed another lap before it could take no more and died a death. But Sammy Davis had been able to untangle Benjy’s Bentley Sport, which everyone called “old number seven,” from the carnage and limped back to the pits with it on a buckled wheel with a smashed headlight and bent bodywork. When he got to the pits, he found the car’s front axle had been pushed back and that played havoc with brake compensation. But the 3-liter was not undriveable, so he and Benjafield pressed on, with a policeman’s torch strapped to the windscreen pillar as some compensation for the wrecked headlamp. Old number seven was still running with four hours of the race to go and was in second place when Davis noticed the leading 3-liter Airés Surbaissée, being driven by future Bentley Boy and veteran French racer Jean Chassagne, was slowing. The leader had been struggling with a sick ignition system for much of the race, costing a number of lengthy pit stops, and the fault eventually killed the Airés stone dead on lap 122. So the battered Davis/Benjafield car inherited the lead and ended up covering a total of 137 laps at a fairly slow average speed of 61.228 mph to win. And before his race was so brusquely interrupted, Frank Clement had managed to set a fastest lap of 8 minutes 46 seconds in the 4½-liter. So W.O. and the Bentley Boys really had something to celebrate.
And celebrate they did. The victory sparked off a new tradition, which entirely befitted the image of the gutsy, fun-loving, super-rich (most of them, anyway), plummy Bentley Boys. A dinner party was held to mark Bentley’s first Le Mans win at London’s swanky Savoy Hotel which, together with Claridges, was owned by Benjy’s wife, and the guest of honor parked right in the center of the dining room was none other than the battle scarred old number seven.
Babe Barnato loved every minute of his life as Bentley’s chairman, but thought it was time he competed at Le Mans. He was a fast and dependable driver, so he entered himself and another ‘jeweler’, Australian pearl fishing magnate Bernard Rubin in a Bentley 4 ½-liter, for the 1928 24 Hours.
The end of the race was a real heart stopper, because Barnato and Rubin had to nurse a cracked chassis frame for much of the event. And as if that were not enough, while leading on the last lap the top water hose came adrift, but Woolf timed it beautifully so that he crossed the finish line just after 4 pm, less than a lap ahead of a fast-gaining Eduoard Brisson/Robert Bloch Stutz DV16 Blackhawk. If he had kept his foot down the Bentley would have crossed the line seconds before 4 o’clock and he would have had to attempt another 10-mile lap with an empty radiator! A little gilt was added to the gingerbread by Sir Tim Birkin and Frenchman Jean Chassage, who brought their Bentley 4 ½-liter home fifth.
Meanwhile, Tim Birkin was convinced the big, heavy 4 ½-liter Bentley would benefit greatly from supercharging, but W.O. was vehemently opposed to the idea saying such shenanigans would pervert his design and corrupt the car’s performance. So Sir Tim went it alone and that was almost his undoing. He hired a workshop in the new town of Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, and called in Amherst Villiers supercharging expert Clive Gallop, to develop the system for him. But his family was cutting up rough about Tim frittering away a not insignificant slice of their fortune on motor racing. The blower escapade was the final straw and Tim was told he could have no more money. So he went to a friend, the obscenely wealthy Hon. Dorothy Paget, daughter of Lord Queenborough and American heiress Pauline Whitney. She was not especially fond of men, but Birkin still managed to sweet-talk her into bankrolling his enterprise. In a way, it was her price for being able to muscle in on the all-male, glamorous clique called the Bentley Boys.
It was an anguished birth, but Birkin’s Blower Bentley made it out of the womb. The 4 ½-liter engine was strengthened to withstand the rigors of the Amherst Villiers supercharger that protruded from the lower regions of its radiator and increased the car’s power output from 124 hp to and impressive 165 hp. But Sir Tim’s battle was not over yet. There was still W.O. huffing and puffing in the background. Birkin knew he had a strong ally in Barnato, who was keen on the supercharging idea, and got Babe the Bentley chairman and official holder of the purse strings to push the notion with the old man. W.O. eventually relented so that 50 Blower Bentleys were built to meet Le Mans homologation requirements, much to W.O.’s disgust. But it was almost a “told you so” situation after the car made its debut at Brooklands at the end of June 1929. It broke down and would never be as reliable as the unblown Bentleys, although Sir Tim made many heroic attempts to change all that: but a supercharged Bentley never won Le Mans.
At around the same time, Mrs. Mildred Mary Bruce, wife of the wealthy Hon. Victor Bruce, winner of the 1926 Monte Carlo Rally, decided to try her hand at setting a new record driving the Montlhéry circuit non-stop for 24 hours. A freckle-faced, blue-eyed beauty with an iron will, Mary had already made a record attempt at the Parisian circuit with her husband in an A.C., but Victor rolled the car after 15,000 miles and 147 hours. Once bitten and all that … so Mary decided she would make a solo attempt, in a Bentley 4 ½-liter and fixed a meeting with W.O. to discuss the project. A petite bulldozer of a woman, Mrs. Bruce cajoled W.O. into lending her one of his cars for her ‘little project’, but when they went to look for one there was a problem – none could be found. W.O. was unwise enough to tell Mary that he had a 4 ½-liter earmarked for Tim Birkin to drive in several international events that year and Earl Howe had put another one on hold for the following month’s Le Mans. Mary didn’t let a little thing like that stand in her way. She announced that she would use one of them: she would be doing Bentley Motors a favor by running the car in for them! She even wheedled free servicing at Montlhéry out of W.O. into the bargain. Her ‘little project’ took place on June 6 and 7, in Lord Howe’s car and it was a surprise to nobody, but a pleasure to many, that she did it. She broke the record by covering 2,164 miles in 24 hours, single-handedly, at an average of 89 mph to become one of the Bentley Girls, about which history has spoken so little.
But she was probably a little over-optimistic about running-in his lordship’s car, because of the five Bentleys entered for the 1929 24 Hours of Le Mans a few weeks later his, which he shared with Bernard Rubin, was the only one that dropped out! The others went on to take the top four places to give Bentley its most incredible year ever at the French classic. Woolf Barnato/Tim Birkin won in the new Speed Six, which pleased W.O. no end, at an average speed of 73.16 mph and Birkin put in the fastest lap of 7 minutes 21 seconds in the car. Jack Dunfee/Glen Kidston – the latter a former First World War submariner – came second, Benjy Benjafield/André d’Erlanger third and Frank Clement/Jean Chassagne fourth, all in 41/2-liters.
In 1930, Dorothy Paget dipped deeper into her handbag for Sir Tim. She financed the Blower Bentleys’ entry for the year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and allowed the squad to be called Team the Hon. Dorothy Paget. One was driven by Tim Birkin, said tongue in cheek to be romantically involved with this man-hater, and 49 year-old French veteran Jean Chassagne, with another driven by Dr. Dudley Benjafield and Giuseppe Campari’s ex-co-driver at Alfa Romeo, Giulio Ramponi. Both dropped out as the Blower continued to prove W.O. right, but not before Birkin turned in the race’s fastest lap of 6 minutes 48 seconds The Hon Dorothy gradually lost interest in those noisy, greasy cars and withdrew her financial support, although she did still finance Tim’s red single-seater, known rather unkindly as the Brooklands Battleship, for a time.
The glory went to Bentley’s chairman Woolf Barnato and aviator Glen Kidston, who drove their superfast Speed Six to a stunning victory having covered 178 laps in the 24 hours, turning in an average of 75.301 mph. Bentley Motors’ other Speed Six came in second half a dozen laps down in the hands of a determined Frank Clement and Dick Watney, who did well to cover 172 laps during the 24 Hours leaving the Brian Lewis/Hugh Eaton Talbot GB 90 to come a distant third after completing 161 laps.
Bentley Motors never raced again. The company had been severely battered by several financial crises and the coup de grace was courtesy of the 1929 Wall Street crash. Barnato did not come to the rescue again, so the company was sold to Rolls-Royce, who did little or nothing with the brand for years. Barnato went on with his aristocratic lifestyle, shooting with British royalty, skiing in Switzerland, though he built Bentley specials with Wally Hassan. But he died of cancer in 1948 at the age of 52.
W.O. was kept on at Rolls-Royce as a glorified test driver, but he left that humiliating job for Lagonda with whom he went back to Le Mans one last time: their V12s came third and fourth. Bentley saw out the Second World War and then retired to rural life. He died in 1971 at the age of 82.
The 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans was by no means the last appearance of the Bentleys in motor racing. Young bloods continued to campaign them in a variety of events, not least Sir Tim Birkin, who was convinced his Blower Bentleys would win through in the end. He was wrong, but his magnificent if temperamental Brooklands Battleship did raise the British circuit’s lap record to 137.96 mph in 1932. Birkin also raced his Blower Bentley in the Grand Prix of France at Pau, where he came a highly creditable second to Philippe Etancelin’s nimble Bugatti T 35. Sir Tim also drove the supercharged car at Brooklands, Le Mans again and Ulster, never winning but finishing up among the leaders. He did win Le Mans again, though, co-driving Earl Howe’s Alfa Romeo 8C.
Photo: Bonhams
Birkin was probably the Bentley Boy. All the kids of the day knew as much about him as they did their comic book and radio serial heroes, and that’s saying something. They idolized him for his absolute fearlessness in a racecar, the figure he cut in that wind helmet of his with his goggles perched high above his forehead in that devil may care way. He continued to race and did the Mille Miglia with Bernard Rubin in one of the MG K3s in April 1933 and co-drove Rubin’s Maserati 8C at the Grand Prix of Tripoli the following month. Trouble was, he severely burnt an arm on the car’s glowing exhaust pipe and the wound turned septic. That, mixed with another bout of malaria, killed him six weeks later, a month short of his 37thbirthday.
Some of the other Bentley Boys died, others took new challenges by the scruff of the neck and shook them for all they were worth. Glen Kidstone, who had survived being torpedoed as a submariner in WW1, crashed and died in a little Puss Moth aircraft while making a tour of South Africa. Clive Dunfee smashed the ex-Barnato “old number one” Bentley at Brooklands and was killed. Bernard Rubin married in 1936 and settled down in Britain, but died of tuberculosis that same year aged 39. Canadian John Duff fared better: he opened a fencing school in Los Angeles and was Gary Cooper’s double in the sword fighting sequences of the film “Beau Geste.” After that, he returned to Britain and bred horses, but was thrown from one of them, in 1958, and died after breaking his neck.
Sammy Davis had become a motoring writer for the Financial Times when I met him back in the ’60s; Benjy Benjafield continued his medical practice and raced an ERA in the ’30s before he died in 1957.
The girls? Mary Bruce successfully completed her round the world flight in 1930 and then became the first person to fly from England to Japan. Back in Britain, she joined a flying circus, flew helicopters and won numerous horse show ribbons. At 79, she test drove a Ford Capri Ghia at 110 mph, at 81 she looped the loop in a De Havilland Chipmunk. She died in 1990, aged 94.
Dorothy Paget became a serious race horse breeder and backer. She lived and worked at night and ate backwards: she would eat lashings of breakfast in the evening, a heavy lunch at 10 pm and then a large dinner in the early hours. Grossly overweight, she died of heart failure in 1960.
The Bentley Boys and Girls. There was nothing like them before, and there has been nothing like them since.
