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Rétromobile – Always Bet on Bentley

2015 Retromobile There was a lot of evidence of the pace of motor car development in the 30's at Rétromobile when you look at the famous Bentley 6½ Litre Speed Six with Gurney Nutting coachwork from 1930. This car has become immortalised as "The Blue Train Bentley". The full story is told by Bentley: "In 1930, Captain Woolf Barnato, Chairman of Bentley Motors, and also a true “Bentley Boy” having entered and won the Le Mans 24 hours three times, was staying in Cannes at the Carlton Hotel with his golfer friend, Dale Bourn. He accepted a wager that he could not only beat the Blue Train to Calais, as had been done before, but could be at his club in London before the train reached Calais... 2015 Retromobile ...On the day of the race, he finished his drink in the bar at the Carlton hotel when he heard the train had departed at 17.54. He had arranged for fuel stations to remain open through the night in Aix-En-Provence and Lyon, and a tanker lorry in Auxerre, and despite a puncture near Paris, he reached Boulogne with an hour to spare. He arrived at the Conservative Club in St James, London for a celebratory drink having passed the clock at Victoria Railway Station at 15.30 the next day, four minutes before the train was due to arrive in Calais, having averaged 43.43 mph driving on pre-motorway roads. He won the £100 wager, although the Automobile Club de France attempted to fine him £200 for an un-authorised race in France." Of course with legends like this there are always doubts and it now appears that the original Bentley that actually completed the run had coachwork by HJ Mulliner and that a second Speed Six delivered a couple of months later to Barnato was in fact the Gurney Nutting coupé that has erroneously been given the credit down the years. Tomorrow I will talk about a pair of Renaults that you can definitely tell apart, in fact they stand out amongst all the others we have gone through already.
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