For £165
a month you can take out a loan that will make a two-litre
Ford Sierra or Mazda 626 yours in ten years' time. The
car won't be worth much then, and you'll have spent
nearly half of your £20,000 outlay on interest
charges.
Or, you could follow David Wickers' example and channel
the money into the restoration of a vintage Bentley.
Then you'll end up with a car at the upper end of the
classic market that looks like new, is glorious fun
to drive, and would fetch more than £100,000 if
you decided to sell it.
There is, of course, a catch in this financial illustration.
To benefit from it, you need to have bought your Bentley
cheaply, years before the classic boom started.
David Wickers got his 1926 three-litre Speed Model open
tourer in 1960 for just £200. In those days, however,
that was still a hefty sum for a 24-year-old to find.
He sold a vintage 20-horsepower Rolls-Royce to raise
the deposit and paid off the balance by hire-purchase
installments. Then, after driving the car for some years,
David realized that the Bentley needed major attention
if he was to continue to enjoy the old warrior's immense
torque and 90 mph top speed.
Thus began a restoration that was to absorb ten years
and an awful lot of money and patience. But David now
has the car back on the road and is delighted that his
determination to see the project to completion never
wavered.
"Driving it again is like stepping back in time
- it feels just like the same car," he says.
A finance broker in Exeter, Devon, David is obviously
well aware of the fact that the Bentley represents a
blue-chip investment. But he hasn't devoted a decade
of spare time to the car for that reason. How could
he have forecast today's price levels when he bought
the Bentley 29 years ago, or even when he began the
restoration in the late seventies?
"I've never bought a car for its investment potential,"
he insists. "I just love driving old cars and the
challenge of maintaining and running them."
He hasn't even worked out the total bill for the Bentley's
restoration. "I've never added everything up. It
feels like £20,000, but it could be less,"
he says. "Even if the facilities had been available
for the car to be restored in two years, I couldn't
have afforded the expenditure. I just took it steadily
and plodded on, and in that way I kept the bills reasonably
under control."
What his experience proves is that even expensive cars
can be tackled by enthusiasts with only basic mechanical
ability, who have to farm out all the major jobs. "You
don't have to be very skilled at restoring cars to be
better than me," he admits. You do, however, need
unfaltering persistence and a willingness to handle
mundane chores like stripping and cleaning. A nose for
local, inexpensive sources for some of the work also
helps.
Once he had decided on a full restoration, David settled
on a widely accepted policy: inspect every component,
assess its condition, and replace it if it is beyond
salvation. He also wanted to return the car to its original
appearance, although finding out exactly how it looked
when it was first registered on 26 June 1926 proved
impossible. Numerous original parts, including the windscreen
and the wings, had already disappeared by the time he
acquired the car in 1960, when it was painted in several
shades of green.
David actually met the Bentley's original owner, one
Mervyn Rollason, in the late sixties. Mr. Rollason,
from Warwickshire, said it had been his first car and
a twenty-first birthday present. But he had crashed
it in Italy during his first year of ownership, and
the vehicle had had to be shipped back to England for
repair. Meanwhile, Mr. Rollason bought himself a 4½-litre
Bentley; he was on his seventh Bentley, the only make
of car he had ever owned, when David talked with him.
At that time, however, there were no plans to restore
the three-litre car, so David didn't ask about its original
appearance. When he did start the project, he had lost
contact with the former owner; but in any case the car's
registration document revealed that it had been painted
blue. Only when the restoration was well under way did
confusion arise: David bought a book on the history
of Vanden Plas, the coachbuilders, which revealed that
the car had been finished in blue and grey. But which
parts were painted in which colour remained a mystery.
One of the first jobs was to repair the car's wooden
frame, much of which had been attacked by woodworm and
rats. Here a local craftsman came in handy: David found
a young joiner who had never worked with cars, but was
able to replace sections of the frame that had degenerated
beyond rescue. The original wood still makes up more
than 60 percent of the frame, but the discarded sections
were used as patterns for new pieces.
David decided on a simple polished finish for much of
the aluminum bodywork, but this plan had to be abandoned
after stripping of the old paint exposed an assortment
of filler and scratches. He eventually compromised with
a light, non-metallic silver paint on the bonnet to
make it look as much as possible like polished alloy,
but admits that the similarity is not as close as he
would like.
The body paneling from the scuttle to the rear of the
car had oxidized and needed replacing. Here David was
lucky in finding a retired panel beater who relished
the chance to get involved with such a rare challenge
as a vintage Bentley. He provided excellent, inexpensive
craftsmanship, and also advised against David's idea
of having fabric-covered bodywork, a popular choice
in the pre-war period. In the event of an accident,
the fabric would have to be stripped from the underlying
metal before repairs could be made.
The panel beater also made the windscreen and the wings.
The windscreen style is based on a photograph of a 1925
works Le Mans Bentley, while Le Mans cars also provided
inspiration for the blade-type front and rear wings.
David knows that his car - chassis number RT 1550, engine
number RT 1530, body number 1278 - was originally fitted
by Vanden Plas with prominent valences on the inside
of the wings. But he felt the valences were too bulky
and preferred the racier look of the simple blade wings.
These have been made in steel to withstand the pounding
they take on the road.
As an illustration of the problems that can arise during
a wheels-up restoration, the panel beater had to sketch
out on the floor of his workshop the Bentley's tyre
size to obtain the proper wing radius and then make
an allowance for the wheel's bounce height. But the
springs that were ordered for the car have given a ride
height that is too great by about two inches. Fortunately,
this flaw isn't really noticeable unless it's pointed
out to an observer; and anyway, David is hoping that
the springs will eventually settle down to give the
correct relationship between the various components.
A crash at some stage in the car's past - possibly the
one in Italy - had left damage to the chassis and front
axle. A bend in the chassis near the steering box mounting
had been strengthened with a welded-on plate, but an
engineering company in Sussex removed this and straightened
the original pressed-steel members. The front axle was
straightened, and new kingpins and bushes fitted by
the Rolls-Royce/Bentley specialists, Hoffman of Henley-on-Thames,
Oxfordshire.
The engine is an impressive, three-foot high construction
with the extraordinarily long-stroke dimensions that
were fashionable when W. O. Bentley designed his famous
three-litre unit in 1919. The bore and stroke are 80mm
x 149 mm (conrod length is more than 11½ inches!),
and peak revs occur at only 3300 rpm. But there is an
overhead camshaft driven by bevel gears and a vertical
shaft, four valves per cylinder, and twin-spark ignition
provided by two ML magnetos. David's car has a compression
ratio of 5.6:1 - it was as low as 4.3:1 in some earlier
Bentleys - and twin SU carburettors. Output is rated
at 85 bhp.
The five-bearing, forged-steel crankshaft was reground
and the bearings remetalled. New parts were obtained
including piston rings, rockers, valves, valve springs
and guides; but replacement pistons were not available
at that time, and David reluctantly kept the originals.
The engine components were then given to Martin Morris,
a vintage car enthusiast in Devon, best known for his
racing performances in ERAs, for reassembly.
Martin decided that as a safety measure the renovated
crank should be crack-tested, and was told that it had
failed. This meant that David had to buy another crank
and have that reground, a process that must have tested
his dedication to the project.
"You have to be pretty stoic about the expense
when you have to pay to get the same job done twice
during a restoration," he says. "I should
have had the original crack-tested in the first place,
but you don't always think of these things."
Some Bentley owners lighten their cars' flywheels, but
David has left his standard. He also retained the original
cone clutch, simply relining it with Ferodo material,
rather than modifying the car by installing a modern
multi-plate clutch. Fortunately, the components in the
four-speed gearbox required no attention.
Many parts required during the restoration were supplied
by D. H. Day in Wroughton, Wilts, the type of firm without
which the classic movement would founder. From his 25-page
catalogue, proprietor Donald Day offers a vast array
of chassis and engine components for the "W. O."
Bentleys made prior to the company's takeover by Rolls-Royce
in 1931. You can spend as little as 16p on an SU carburettor
float chamber plug washer, or £2850 on a nitrided-steel
crankshaft for an eight-litre, six-cylinder engine.
For David Wickers' car he provided a stream of parts
including a crown wheel and pinion, lynch pins, tie
rods, spring gaiters and bushes, a brass cover for the
starter motor and alloy support brackets for the body.
David particularly remembers Day's response to his telephone
plea for the alloy brackets. "I made those 11 years
ago, and you're my first customer!" Day responded.
Final assembly of the car was undertaken by Fred Gudgeon,
in Ringwood, Hants, an acquaintance David had made through
their common interest in Morgan cars and three-wheelers.
Gudgeon rebuilt the Andre friction shock absorbers and
the rear axle, set up the steering mechanism correctly,
and made running boards and wing irons to accept the
new wings.
Mating the body to the chassis was tricky because there
were areas where the body did not quite fit by perhaps
a quarter or half an inch. Gudgeon's solution was to
prepare some thin splines of ash wood of the correct
shape, Araldite them to the body, and then bolt the
body to the chassis. When the components were separated
a week later, the Araldite had acted as a filler and
made good the inaccuracies between the body, the spline
and the chassis.
There is a network of car craftsmen in the Hampshire-Dorset
area that can handle a variety of jobs, so while the
Bentley was with Fred Gudgeon he sent out parts for
nickel-plating and the upholstery for attention. The
upholsterer, Ken Day of Wimborne, handled the seats
(in Connolly leather), the interior trim, the hood and
its bag, and the tonneau cover, while new Wilton carpets
now line the car's floor. Fettling the Bentley, incidentally,
proved a turning point in Fred Gudgeon's life. The job
persuaded him to use his background in the engineering
industry to become a fulltime restorer. Now his workshop
is full of historic vehicles from Bullnose Morrises
to Aston Martins and motorcycles.
Ironically, after the leisurely pace of the actual restoration,
the car's bedding-in process became a frantic hurry
when David decided to drive it to a Bentley Club function
in Brittany only two weeks after collecting it from
Hampshire. "A universal joint broke up, the autovac
was playing up, there was a noisy tappet and the brakes
needed adjusting," he remembers.
But the problems were solved in time -a UJ from a Jaguar
V12 was fitted into the Bentley housing, and thus is
undetectable from original - and a successful trip to
France was made with three passengers. David has now
completed 2000 miles in a car that is surprisingly practical
in modern traffic, even though it has a central throttle
pedal.
"I've seen an Alvis with a central throttle turn
over when the driver hit the wrong pedal in a panic
stop, but it doesn't bother me at all," he says.
Of the 3051 Bentleys made, 1636 were three-litre models.
The Bentley club believes that less than 700 survive.
Three-litre cars were used by the 'Bentley Boys,' the
factory's colourful team of drivers, to win two of the
five Le Mans victories the marque recorded from 1924-30.
The Speed Model was distinguished by its twin SU sloper
carburettors, sporting camshaft, and 9-foot, 9-inch
chassis; a longer or shorter chassis could be ordered.
David's car is also known as a Red Label model, due
to the backing colour beneath the Bentley emblem on
the radiator shell.
It cruises at 60-65 mph and lugs high gears magnificently
up Devon's innumerable hills. The 400mm drum brakes
stop the 3200-lb car reasonably well, but high pedal
pressure is needed. Bentley had started fitting four-wheel
brakes only two years before this Speed Model was made.
Sitting behind that immense bonnet, you watch the road
reeling in over the winged-B radiator mascot and feel
a gentle thrumming from the big four-cylinder engine.
An exhaust system made by Donald Day provides a civilized
note, but from the smiles and waves the Bentley arouses
by its progress, you feel that the public wouldn't be
offended even if it did rattle their window panes. The
ride is fairly harsh, but David is still experimenting
with damper settings, and reckons the whole car will
continue to improve until 5000 miles of running-in have
been completed.
Meanwhile, this gorgeous reminder of aristocratic motoring
in the twenties returns 20-25 mpg, and under a Bentley
Drivers Club limited-mileage, agreed-value scheme costs
only £250 a year to insure. Many Ford and Mazda
drivers probably pay more.
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