Bentleys by Bentley: Designed by the Man Himself

In our ongoing series on how to go bankrupt making racing cars (or really, any cars), we are moved to present the Bentley saga. Engineer William Owen Bentley was not alone in being convinced that racing cars was the best way to sell them.  As it turned out, racing was a good way to publicize Bentleys because they won a lot, but in order to win Le Mans 5 times between 1924 and 1930, Bentley had to sink more cash into building the cars than he could get out of selling them.  The first Bentleys appeared in 1921, and while it took awhile for W.O. to adopy four-wheel brakes, he adopted overhead cam, multi-valve engines from the start.  This 1926 Super Sport was guaranteed to hit 100, and featured a single-overhead cam 3.0 liter inline four with four valves per cylinder.  A sister car would win the Le Mans 24 Hours the next year...

This Surbiton-bodied boat-tailed roadster was one of only a dozen and a half Super Sports built, out of over sixteen hundred Three Liters in all. The radiator was specially ordered in a profile that tapers inward towards the base, an attractive and rare option. 

Generous use of wood trim, inside and out, relates to the nautical theme of the body design, which was named "skiff" by the builders..

Bentley chose long-distance races like Le Mans because they could make best use of his car's strong points: durability and speed on long straights. His team, later nicknamed the Bentley Boys, avoided races on tight, twisty courses. Bentleys tended to have weight to match their stoutness. The Super Sport, on the short 9 foot wheelbase, is the lightweight of our featured cars, at just over 3,400 pounds.  Bentley introduced a 6.5 liter inline six in 1926, and the next year, shaved two cylinders off the new engine design to produce the 4.5 Liter.

A 4.5 Liter roadster in the hands of Woolf Barnato, one of Bentley's funders, and Bernard Rubin won Le Mans in 1928.  Attractive touring versions of the 4.5 were produced on the long wheelbase variant, like the 1929 tourer by Thrupp and Maberly above.  Meanwhile, the pressure to keep winning prompted a debate about Bentley's next racer.  W.O. preferred to make a racing version of the big 6.5 liter six, while drivers Henry Birkin and W. Barnato liked the idea of superchaging the 4.5 liter four. The firm tried both approaches; a 4.5 liter supercharged "Blower Bentley" in touring guise is shown below...

…and a short-chassis Blower Bentley from 1930 charges up a hill here.  But as it turned out, despite later mythologizing of the Blower Bentley by the likes of Ian Fleming (007 drove one in the early stories), the Blower Bentley lacked the reliability of the unblown 4.5, and 3.0, and the newer, smoother 6.5.  Bentley built 55 of the Blower model; a minimum of 50 were required to qualify at Le Mans.  But none of the supercharged cars ever won there.

W.O. Bentley's engineering instincts were proven right when his Speed Sixes won Le Mans in 1929 and 1930. A 1930 version of the Speed Six is shown with expansive (and expensive) touring body below.  The big six shared engine architecture with the other Bentleys, including 4 valves per cylinder, and an iron block cast in one piece with the head to avoid head gaskets...

Note that this car has a fabric-bodied cabin somewhat like the Weymann bodies on some Stutzes and Duesenbergs, while the fenders and bonnet are in metal.  Weight was over two tons...

Because of his expenditures on racing cars, and despite the paticipation of wealthy benefactors like Barnato and Birkin, Bentley's enterprise was already.skating on thin ice when the Great Depression arrived.  He'd wanted to introduce a bigger luxury car aimed at Rolls Royce and Daimler, and at the 1930 Olympia Motor Show he introduced the 8 Liter model to an enthusiastic (but small) public. The 8 liter engine, an inline six, shared its mechanical details with the 6.5, and made 250 horses at a leisurely 3.500 rpm.

The example shown here was bodied by Corsica* in 1932, the year after W.O. Bentley's car-making operation went bankrupt.  Only a hundred examples the 8 Liter would be built by the end. This specimen's owner decided to shorten the wheelbase to a still-whopping 12 feet, and rebody a saloon in the sports tourer style.  It was one of two 8 Liters bodied by Corsica, and also one of the few with performance modifications by tuner L.C. McKenzie... 

How fast was it?  Well, in 1950, a Bentley 8 Liter like this one, with the McKenzie tuning, set an official record for the flying mile at 134.75 mph.  For a brief while, then, a 20 year-old car was officially the fastest sports car in the world.  

There were, of course, other Bentleys built after the Rolls Royce takeover, after that summer of 1931 when W.O. Bentley's dream came to an end.  But they were more sedate, and without the eccentric mechanical details Bentley the man prized. Many racing seasons later, W.O. Bentley's engine designs would show up again at Le Mans, but they would be in cars made by Lagonda* and then Aston Martin*, not in the smooth, silent Bentleys made by Rolls Royce.

*Footnote:  For a close look at another car bodied by the Corsica Body Works, see "Forgotten Classic: Adrian Squire's Namesake Car", in our Archives for April 23, 2018.  The Lagonda history, including W.O. Bentley's involvement, is summarized in "Forgotten Classic: Lagonda—A River Ran Through It", posted September 10, 2020.  And the story of the Bentley-designed Lagonda engine in Aston Martins is reviewed in "Rescued from Obscurity:  Aston Martin in the Fifties and Sixties", posted May 11, 2020.

Errata:  A little while after this piece was first posted, we accidentally wiped out half the first paragraph when attempting to correct something else.  Apologies to anyone attempting to make sense of our essay.  It's fixed now, we think.

Photo Credits:
Top (1926 Bentley Super Sport) :  the author

2nd thru 5th ('26 Super Sport):  Ian Avery-DeWitt

6th (4.5 Liter Thrupp & Maberly);  Wikimedia:

7th (4.5 Liter Supercharged, monochrome):  simeonemuseum.org

8th (1930 4.5 Liter): Wikimedia
9th: (6.5 Liter Speed Six):  Paul Anderson

10th & 11th (Speed Six):  Ian Avery-DeWitt

12th thru bottom  (Bentley 8 Liter):  Ian Avery-DeWitt

Forgotten Classics: Allard JR and Palm Beach

Sydney Allard founded his specialist car firm right after World War II in London, and while he was not the first of his countrymen to use American engines (there had been the Railton and Atalanta in the 30s) he had early success with the flathead Ford V8 (sometimes with Ardun OHV heads) in hillclimbs and soon after its 1949 debut began to export his stark, cycle-fendered J2 road racer across the pond. The J2 below finished 3rd at Le Mans in 1950 (the roll bar is a later addition) and the resulting attention prompted Allard to send cars to America without engines, to be outfitted with the new Cadillac OHV and later, the Chrysler Hemi.

The J2 featured a De Dion back axle with inboard drum brakes (seen in photo below) and an odd split front axle with transverse leaf spring which acted like the swing axles on VWs, only on the wheels that were supposed to steer. Along with the close-to-firewall engine placement that caused Allard's first racing team to be called the Tail Waggers, this feature led to sometimes dramatic behavior on the road...

By 1952 Allard had introduced the J2X prototype at Le Mans, with the same suspenseful suspension layout, but with the engine moved forward tp approach 50-50 weight distribution  and reduce tail-wagging…the "X" was for "extended."  Owing to American sales, 90 J2s were produced, and 83 of the J2X. The J2 & J2X made up in personality what they lacked in predictability, and inspired replicas even before replicas were trending.  My friend John liked his Allard (below) so much that he made his own replica of it…without the split front axle.

Allard's efforts at more practical vehicles than the '53 J2X above had mixed success.  The P1, a Ford V8-powered saloon introduced in 1949, won the Monte Carlo Rally, driven by Sydney Allard and Guy Warburton, in its final year of production, 1952.  Despite the odd styling (front and rear seem to have been drafted by blokes unaware they were working on the same project), the P1 was, by Allard standards, a sales champ, with over 550 produced...

Allard followed the P1 with the P2 Monte Carlo to capitalize on the rally win, and possibly let the designer of the P1's odd but modern cabin extend the envelope body to the front, where design efforts appear ot have been interrupted by a long break for tea…or something stronger.  The public responded by purchasing a total of eleven (11) Monte Carlos between 1952 and '55... 

The company did a bit better job with the K3, a restyled and more civilized version of the J2X, which was also introduced in 1952.  57 of the 62 cars built were sold in the United States, powered by the 331 cubic inch Chrysler Hemi V8 as well as the trusty Cadillac...

The Palm Beach introduced alongside the K3 shared that car's full-width envelope body format, but with simplified details.  The 96-inch wheelbase chassis design did not share the J2's inboard rear brakes, but the odd swing-axle front remained.  Courting a more cost-conscious clientele, Allard equipped the Palm Beach with 1.5 liter English Ford fours, with the option of the 2.6 liter Ford Zephyr inline six.  Perhaps due to the uninspired styling, sales amounted to only about 75 cars...

Allard's racing efforts concentrated on the envelope-bodied JR by 1953, as the cycle fenders of the J2X had been regulated out of racing. Sydney Allard raced a JR at that year's Le Mans, and led the race for awhile before the rear suspension failed. Another JR at that year's 24 Hours was driven by Zora Artkus Duntov, father of the Corvette, who criticized the Allard's handling…it still retained that split-axle front suspension as well as the De Dion rear.  

Trunk space on the JR was completely occupied by the spare tire and fuel tank...

In 1955, Allard built a Palm Beach roadster powered by a 4 liter Dodge V8.  The resulting car, called the Allard Red Ram, was proposed by a US Allard dealer as a potential competitor for the then-new Thunderbird, but apparently the idea was not cost competitive, and the car remained a one-off...

In 1956, Allard, still searching for a car that would sell in big enough numbers to save the company, introduced the Palm Beach Mark II in roadster form.  Engines announced for the car included the 2.6 liter Ford Zephyr inline 6 as well as the 3.4 liter Jaguar XK.  Styling was completely revamped with a nicely contoured alloy body whose contours recalled the Austin Healey, and had more visual distinction than the previous Palm Beach.  Most important, the split front axle was replaced by a conventional independent layout with torsion bars, while coils suspended the rear.

Despite attrractive prices, only half a dozen of these roadsters were built, in both right hand drive (above) and left hand drive versions.  

By 1958 Allard was exhibiting a glassy and well-proportioned fastback GT Coupe version of their Palm Beach Mk. II at the Earls Court Motor show.  Price at the factory was listed by Motor Trend as $4,780, which compared favorably with fastbacks by AC and Aston Martin, and may prompt some musings about Allard's profit margin. The first car had right hand drive and a 3.4 liter Jaguar engine under the bonnet, and was Sidney Allard's personal car...

Only one other copy of the GT coupe would be built, this time with left hand drive, and a 5.4 liter Chrylser V8 engine, for an American customer.  This car still exists... Allard suspended car production after 1959, and began to provide superchargers and performance accessories for English Ford products. By the current era, at least two efforts to offer replicas of Allards had been attempted, but these centered on the iconic J2X.  Oddly, the most recent effort was mounted by a Canadian man named Allard with no relation to Sydney's family. That family, perhaps out of traditional British reserve, or a lack of interest in lawsuits over intellectual property, has embarked on a program of restoring old Allards and reintroducing the JR as a certified vintage racer...

Allard Sports Cars, reconstituted recently by SIdney Allard's family, has restored the Palm Beach Mark II roadster below as one of its first projects, and has decided to offer new versions ot the JR sports racer tailored to individual customer specifications, with engines sourced from Chrysler and GM. They seem to be betting the success of this enterprise on the nostalgia of wealthy car enthusiasts for a model that few remember.  Production of the original JR, unlike the J2 and J2X, amounted to only 7 examples, and the JR had less success on the track than the J2, as by the mid-Fifties it was competing with more advanced, and better-handling, competition from Jaguar, Ferrari and Maserati. An effort to revive the Connaught*, another arcane British make from the Fifties, appears to have been shipwrecked on the shoals of forgetting, and even the effort to revive the better-known Italian OSCA (with Subaru power)* resulted in just one car hitting the road. So one can ponder the Allard revival with a bit of skepticism while wishing the participants luck, and at the very least, an enjoyable run down the road...

*Footnote:   The story of the original Connaught appeared in these posts for July. 24, 2016, under the title "Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught Ended the Longest Drought in Grand Prix Racing."  The OSCA revival saga was told in "The Etceterini Files Part 16——OSCA Dromos and Jiotto Caspita: Subaru's Distant Cousins", posted October 28, 2018.

Photo Credits:  

Top:  wikimedia

2nd:  Dirk de Jager

3rd:  Denée Foti

4th:  the author
5th & 6th:  wikimedia

7th:  the author

8th:  wikimedia

9th:  allardsportscars.uk

9th:  autocar.co.uk

10th:  bonhams.com

11th:  allardsportscars.uk

12th & 14th: classiccarcatalogue.com

13th:  wikimedia

15th:  allardregister.org

Bottom:  allardsportscars.uk

Roadside Attraction: The American Alley

Alleys have always had some kind of appeal to city planners and architects…to this architect, anyway. They not only permit delivery of goods and supplies (especially construction supplies) and removal of refuse and recyclable stuff, but they provide a less-traveled path for cyclists and pedestrians.  To understand the importance of alleys, you need only visit a city that lacks them, say San Francisco or New York, and witness the daily crises of delivery, removal and parking that result.

At another level entirely, alleys provide a glimpse into the inner workings, and the inner lives, of our cities.  In Everett Shinn's "Alley Cat" from 1938, a needy feline experiences the human touch...

When Charles Sheeler painted "MacDougal Alley" in 1924, his focus was not on the inhabitants, but on the way light revealed form, color and space...

John Register's paintings of American alleys give attention to light and form, but also manage to convey a sense of loneliness and abandonment that he also captured in cross-country surveys of empty diners and forgotten motels*.

Register's "Inner City" from 1994 is one of those almost hidden, corner-of-the-eye cityscapes that urban dwellers miss in the daily rush of activity on city streets.  Register takes out the streaming traffic and human figures, and leaves us the stillness revealed when the first light hits the alleyways...

In the Seventies, not long after John Register started painting alleys, architects and urban planners started taking an interest in alleyways. Printers Alley in Nashville was an early example of reconfiguring an alley that once warehoused an industry into a pedestrian space lined with restaurants, bars and music venues.

Similar efforts are under way across the country.  The example below shows what can be done with more emphasis on greenery, and a bit more restraint in the signage department.

Cady's Alley, in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., has been renovated into a lively area of shops and restaurants, with a glazed pedestrian bridge adding spatial and structural intrigue. Plantings and patterned pavers add human scale.  Places like these may experience a boom when crowds return after the pandemic, if small businesses can hold on that long...

In towns like Boulder, there's been a growing interest in residential spaces on alleys as well. As real estate prices escalate, there will be pressure on cities to allow more density, and on architects and builders to create energy-efficient, small scale dwellings along our streets and alleys. Unlike most alleys in town, Turner Alley now has a street sign and a couple of modernist alley houses. The one shown here has a south-facing greenhouse space.

Under a standing-seam metal roof, it also features bands of clerestory windows bordering a "light shelf" surrounding an open, sunny interior.

In my own neighborhood, about a mile north of downtown, I found this cleverly articulated cube. A studio perches above concrete walls, with full-height glazing facing south for solar gain, and west for the mountain views. 

A wood rain screen wall encloses the space from the middle of the west-facing garage, and around the north side of the structure, with its small windows, clearly intended as the "utility and storage" side of the living space...

Part of the appeal of this alley house is the privacy and quiet it provides by facing an alley that has less than one-tenth the traffic of the streets that border the block.  It's hidden in plain sight, like those fleeting, light-filled glimpses of alleys sketched by artists like Charles Sheeler and John Register.  And alley houses like it offer the possibility of providing our towns and cities with more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly streetscapes, as well as more affordable housing.

*Footnote:  For a visual essay on John Register's paintings, see our post for February 24, 2018, entitled "Roadside Attraction: John Register's Abandoned Diners and Sleepy Motels". 

Photo Credits:  

Top & 2nd from top (alley near Union Station, Denver 1980):  the author

3rd from top: Everett Shinn, posted at en.wahooart.com

4th:  Charles Sheeler

5th & 6th: The Estate of John Register

7th:  Wikimedia

8th:  mjarchitecture.com

9th:  From "The Hidden History of D.C's Alleyways", at dcist.com

All other photos: the author

Forgotten Classic: Alpine Renault A310

I happened to be on an off-season, low-budget vacation in Southern France when the 1974 Tour de France Auto* ended in September on rain-drenched streets edging the blue Mediterranean.  When I found these photos it reminded me I'd always wanted an Alpine Renault coupe, especially an A310.  But wait, you ask, isn't this metallic blue car an A110?

Well, it is, but it's helpful to remember that if Jean Rédélé's tidy little rear-engined Renault-powered A110 coupes had not been so successful on European rally circuits during the late 60s and early 70s, there probably wouldn't have been an A310.  The fiberglass-bodied A110 with its rigid backbone chassis (think of a Lotus Elan with the engine at the wrong end) was developed from the similar-looking A108 and appeared in 1961. Available in a variety of engine sizes (1300s and 1600s were popular) and with disc brakes all around, the A110 filled a need for a GT car with a good perfomance / price ratio, and one that was small enough to be fuel-efficient and escape the punitive French taxes based on engine size. The car hit some kind of sweet spot, and stayed in production for 16 years, winning the French Rally Championship in '68 & '69, the European one in 1970, the International Championship in '71 (beating the new Porsche 914-6 even at Monte Carlo), and winning the first World Rally Championship in 1973, with another win at Monte Carlo.  Not bad for a design a dozen years old. The sleek Michelotti-designed coupes were finally dethroned by the new mid-engined Lancia Stratos in 1974...

By then Rédélé's Dieppe-based firm had introduced the more modern-looking, slightly larger A310 with 2 + 2 seating at the Geneva show in 1971. The A310 was  based on the same backbone chassis design, but now with fuel-injected 1.6 liter inline fours making 122 to 125 hp. For a modern comparison, the car made about the same power as the first Mazda Miata, but weighed about 300 pounds less.  The 89.4 inch wheelbase matched that of the Porsche 911, and was nearly 7 inches longer than the A110.  Still, it had some rally success, making the zero to 60 run in just over 8 seconds, with a top speed of 131.  The A310 below finished that rainy Tour de France in 1974... 

The body design, with its creased flanks, tapered ends, and dropped side window sills, reflected the influence of Italy's Giorgetto Giugiaro, but the most similar car visually was the mid-engined Monteverdi 450SS*. This was not a coincidence, as both body designs were the work of Englishman Trevor Fiore.  The six lights marching across the nose under transparent covers signalled that Alpine Renault was still catering to the needs of rally drivers, and made the car unmistakable from the front.  Unlike the Citroen SM that appeared the previous year, none of the lights turned with the front wheels.

Prototypes and early cars had the louvered engine hatch shown above, while most production A310s were outfitted with the curved glass over a separate interior lid, as shown below.  

On early cars one, and later two, NACA ducts were mounted on the cowl ahead of the windshield.  Later versions of the Series 1 four-cylinder cars had the twin ducts mounted closer to the nose, as below...

The instruments and controls were neatly arrayed around the driver, with added space for  the adjacent passenger, and room for children, or uncomfortable adults, in the rear.  

Despite the aluminum block fuel injected engines and the available 5-speed gearbox, the  A310 was not as nimble or competitive in rallies as the A110.  Still, there were successes, and Renault took a 55% stake in Alpine during 1973.  During the fuel crisis a lower cost, carbureted version of the 4-cylinder car was introduced, and then in 1976 Alpine Renault released a Series 2 with the new PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) 90 degree, 2.7 liter V6 with 150 hp initially.  Acceleration and top speed improved, but the prow design lost the distinctive six lights while gaining an air dam...

From the side, the new V6 could be identified by the new wheel design, with 3 radial slots. At the rear a spoiler spanned the backlight.  Despite the added expense and the upward trend in fuel prices, the V6 cars outsold the 4 cylinder models, with production overlapping in 1976 and the V6 ending production after 1984.  There were 2,340 four-cylinder Series 1 cars, and 9,276 V6s.  Before the transition to the new GTA, a few cars were offered with GT Pack body kits for wider wheels, and 27 cars were built with 3 liter engines.  Some cars in this late style were imported to the USA by a privateer; in the meantime Alpine Renault won Le Mans in 1978 with the A442.  But that's another car, and another story...

*Footnote: That '74 Tour de France Auto was won by Gérard Larrousse and J-P Nicolas in a Ligier JS2, a car featured in this blog in "Forgotten Classic: Ligier JS1 & JS2" posted November 15, 2020.  Monteverdi and MBM automobiles were featured here in "The Etceterini Files Part 20:  Monteverdi and MBM---Outsourcing and Branding", posted on July 9, 2019.

Photo Credits:
Top and 4th from top:  the author

2nd & 3rd: Wikimedia

5th:  youtube.com
6th thru 9th:  Alpine Renault, posted on lotusespritturbo.com
10th & 11th:  bringatrailer.com
Bottom:  Wikimedia