Yahoo Autos What it's like to drive a brand-new, 92-year-old Bentley Blower
“Vivid” doesn’t even begin to describe this; neither does “damn cold.” The throttle is pinned to the firewall, the needles behind the glass in the dashboard’s 10 dials are twitching and dancing, the supercharger boost gauge is nailed to the lock stop, and the dark-green scuttle is shuddering with the ripples of the concrete banking. Think World War II airplane over the storm-tossed North Atlantic – I even slid a picture of my wife into my breast pocket this morning …
I’d be grinning, but the freezing blast over the leather-strapped bonnet gives me a rictus grimace. There’s a lot to do in this 92-year-old supercharged Bentley as its fish-tail exhaust blares seal-honk indifference at a shoal of insignificant super cars fluttering in its wake; at 100 mph this is motoring at its zenith.
They don’t make ‘em like they used to and I used to think that was indubitably true of this car: Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin’s Blower Bentley. This was his favorite out of the five Blowers built at the Welwyn factory between 1929 and 1930. It was bank rolled by Dorothy Paget, the Whitney family heiress, and serial race-horse owner and gambler.
How famous? This car, known as Number Two, was entered in the 1930 Le Mans 24-hour race. Birkin drove it like a bat out of hell in the initial stages of the race with the tacit approval of the Bentley factory, which had entered a team of "6 1/2 litre" naturally aspirated cars and was looking for its fourth-consecutive Le Mans victory and the marque’s fifth overall.
They used Birkin and this lovely old machine as “the hare,” testing the potential and reliability of the astonishing Mercedes-Benz works supercharged, 7-liter SSK driven by Rudolf ‘Rudi’ Caracciola (ironically Paget also owned one of these rare and exotic beasts). The fast and courageous Birkin was sent out to poke a stick at the German ace – it was like poking a wasps’ nest. Twice Birkin overtook Caracciola at over 120 mph at the end of the Mulsanne/Hunaudieres straight, with one wheel on the grass and the rear tire down to its canvas. By all accounts Caracciola was so startled simply because he couldn’t believe that anyone would be actually overtaking him.
Legend has it that in pursuing Birkin, Rudi Caracciola damaged the engine by over using the supercharger, which could be clutched in and out, but the truth is more nuanced. Birkin drove his car so hard he twice lost a tire’s tread and had to pit early. He continued the assault on the Mercedes, but other Bentleys ultimately took up the challenge. After a thrilling battle into the night, the Mercedes’ lights started to flicker and die as a wire worked lose from the dynamo and with a flattened battery, on its 85th lap, the big car was eventually retired. The two Blower Bentleys, including the Birkin car, were also retired with engine problems, at tea time the following day, it was the Woolf Barnato/Glen Kidston Bentley 6 1/2 litre that took the checkered flag for Bentley’s fifth Le Mans win.
So, did Birkin make a difference? Almost certainly, though perhaps not quite as much as the stories would have it.
What a ripping yarn. It so inspired Ian Fleming that he gave his super spy hero James Bond a Blower Bentley in his books. Finished in elephant’s-breath grey, Bond crashes his Blower in an ambush set by villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker (1955). In more modern times, Bentley wanted to call one of its colors elephant’s-breath grey in tribute, but was warned that American buyers might think it was actually painted with real elephants.
The Bluemels steering wheel is twitching as Birkin’s Quixotic steed registered UU5872 is …
Stop! Stop this now ...
This car might look like Birkin’s Blower, but it’s actually a modern replica. A copy. A fake. It’s the engineering prototype for a batch of 12 £1.5 million ‘continuation’ cars reverse-engineered by VW-owned Bentley Motors, from the original Number Two Birkin Blower pictured above in all its genuine glory, which it owns.
Controversial? You betcha. In May 2020, a group of high-profile owners of some of the original 55 Blower Bentleys signed a letter of protest to Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark. You see, back in the 1930s, the Bentley factory built the other 50 Blowers to comply with the racing rules of the time.
“We urge you to please not squander time, funding, energy and the Bentley brand’s reputation upon the recently-announced batch of 12 facsimile cars, cars that would serve only to dilute that special admiration and awe that can only come from viewing and embracing the genuine article. To do otherwise would be to pervert a glorious history,” wrote the signatories including Ralph Lauren, Lord Bamford, Peter Livanos, Evert Louwman and William ‘Chip’ Connor.
