About the Book
W.O. Bentley's first car appeared at the London Motor Show in 1919 - an imposing 3 Litre sports, the prototype of a style evocative of the 1920s and the Bright Young Things. Rolls-Royce created Bentley Motors (1931) Ltd, eventually to be transformed in 1997 by VW, which kept the louche glamour, returned Bentley to racing and won Le Mans. The combination of German engineering and British tradition produced a European car with a dazzling international reputation. There were eventually around 100 distinctive Bentley models, hundreds of variations of bodywork, and special individual cars like the Blue Train Bentley or the Queen's Bentley, as well as concepts like the Azure, Java, and Hunaudieres of 1999. Walter Owen Bentley wasted no time in getting into car production after the First World War. His first appeared at the London Motor Show in 1919, an imposing 3 Litre sports, the prototype of a style evocative of the 1920s and the Bright Young Things. Bentley started racing in 1922, yet the foundations of the Bentley legend were laid the following year at the Le Mans 24 Hours race in France, which it won five years out of seven in the 1930s.
Bentley won the 1929 and 1930 Double-Twelve at Brooklands, the cars' combination of speed and strength creating a formidable reputation. Bentleys were manufactured in Cricklewood north London from 1919-1931 but the company was chronically insecure. It was subsidised by wealthy drivers such as Woolf Barnato, who regarded the money poured into it as merely paying for his motor racing. In 1930 on the eve of liquidation WO produced his masterpiece, the grandiloquent 8 litre. Rivals such as Napier were so impressed they tried to buy the company, but in the event it was Rolls-Royce, by a stealthy stratagem for which they have been upbraided ever since, who picked up the pieces and created Bentley Motors (1931) Ltd. WO Bentley was forbidden to work for anybody else, and in 1933 Rolls-Royce announced the Derby-built Silent Sports Car. Bentleys were based on Rolls-Royces yet managed to keep their racy reputation. Production moved to the former Merlin aero-engine shadow factory at Crewe after the war and there were memorable cars, such as the splendid Continentals of the 1950s.
In 1970 Rolls-Royce went bankrupt following the Lockheed aero engine debacle, and Rolls-Royce Motors was floated off as an independent company until 1980 when it was bought by Vickers. When it was again put up for sale in 1997 BMW ended up with Rolls-Royce and the VW group with Bentley. Bentley was transformed. VW kept the louche glamour, returned Bentley to racing and won Le Mans. The combination of German engineering and British tradition produced a European car with a dazzling international reputation. Production more than trebled. There were around 100 distinctive Bentley models, hundreds of variations of bodywork, and special individual cars like the Blue Train Bentley or the Queen's Bentley. These along with concepts like the Azure, Java, and Hunaudieres of 1999, are detailed in The Complete Bentley.
About the Author :
ERIC DYMOCK Editorial Director Dove Publishing Ltd 1962-1965 road test staff of The Motor. Grand Prix Correspondent of The Guardian, and The Observer 1966-1980. Motoring correspondent Town (Haymarket), 1966-1968, The Observer, 1980-1982, The Sunday Times 1982-1995. Winner of four Jet Media Excellence Awards. Writer for TV motoring programmes 1970s, 1980s. Contributor to The Times, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, classic car magazines, Scotland on Sunday 2002-2006 and The Business 2007. In 2004 he was presented with the Jim Clark Memorial Award by the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers honouring Scots who have achieved excellence in the field of motoring. Author of: Champion Year with Jackie Stewart (Pelham, 1970), The Guinness Guide to Grand Prix Motor Racing (Guinness Superlatives, 1980), Postwar Sports Cars (Ebury, 1981), BMW, A Celebration, (Pavilion UK and Orion USA, 1990) and Ecurie Ecosse, (PJ Publishing 2007). Under Dove Publishing's imprint, Rover The First Ninety Years, Saab Half a Century of Achievement, which gained the Guild of Motoring Writers Montagu Award for 1997, and Honda the UK Story. Dove's series of Eric Dymock Motor Books (File books) include definitive histories of Audi, Renault, Vauxhall, MG, Jaguar, Ford in Britain and Land Rover, published from 1997 to date. Dove started Ebook publishing with its first e-title Jim Clark, in March 2011.
