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A record-breaking British car from
the 'tween-war years has broken another record at the
Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale this Friday
29 June. It is now the most expensive Bentley ever sold
at public auction.
The ex-Sir Henry 'Tim' Birkin
1929 4½-liter supercharged 'Blower' Bentley
single-seater, which when new raised the Brooklands
Outer Circuit record to 137mph, sold for £5,042,000.
The Bentley was sold as part of a collection once owned
by famed watchmaker George Daniels of seven cars, two
motorcycles and assorted automobilia.
Daniels was a huge fan of Birkin, and also on sale at
the Bonhams Goodwood FOS sale was another Birkin car.
The 1932 Alfa Romeo 8C-2300 Long Chassis Touring Spider
which formed part of Birkin's 1932 Le Mans 24-Hour Endurance
Race entry with his friend Earl Howe, sold for more
than £2.5 million.
Malcolm Barber, Bonhams chief executive officer and
auctioneer at the Daniels sale, said: "The prices
achieved for George Daniels's cars today are a fitting
tribute to one of the truly great artist engineers of
the 20th Century.
"George was not only a fantastic craftsman who
hand-made some of the world's most desirable watches,
he was also a car connoisseur held in immense respect
throughout the vintage motoring world."
Doug Nye, Bonhams historian, said: "It is wonderful
to see this iconic car's true appraise recognized by
the world market.
"The Birkin single-seater Bentley was, in effect,
the Concorde of its time, the fastest car around the
high Brooklands bankings. It was driven by a great British
hero in Sir Henry Birkin and was the most glamorous
racing car of the era."
The 'Birkin' Bentley represents both an incredible piece
of British racing and engineering heritage, and a remarkable
achievement, both of which came about through the participation
in a racing project of four top British personalities
of the day.
First there was the fearless and charismatic aristocrat
who was behind the wheel for the record lap. Sir Henry
'Tim' Birkin was a Baronet who became one of the most
famed of the legendary 'Bentley Boys' of the 1920s
30s. For an entire generation of British motor racing
enthusiasts the mustached 'Tiger Tim' in his goggles,
wind cap and polka-dot scarf was the epitome of Imperial
power, speed and daring a very British kind of
hero. Intensely competitive, he was a born sportsman
who raced for racing's sake and was whole-heartedly
committed to making the most of his natural talent.
The engineering might behind the record effort came
initially from Bentley founder and legend of his time,
W O Bentley. Bentley's cars were designed with the motto:
"To build a good car, a fast car, the best in class",
and indeed they won the Le Mans 24-Hour Endurance Race
on a number of occasions and set many records at the
French track. Although the supercharged 'Blower' version
was developed by Birkin with the backing of his financiers,
it was based on the original 1927 design by W O, albeit
against his wishes.
Despite the input of these two British legends in their
fields, the success of the Birkin Bentley would not
have been possible without the significant financial
input of two of Britain's wealthiest people at the time.
Dorothy Paget, the daughter of Lord Queenborough, was
a British racehorse owner who came from a prominent
family of Thoroughbred racers and breeders. Her horses
won a total of 1,532 races in both flat and hurdling,
including seven Cheltenham Gold Cups and a Grand National
in 1934. Living for the most part in Buckinghamshire
and reportedly as eccentric as she was rich, she is
said to have hated the sight of men claiming
they made her feel physically sick and to have
called all her staff by different colors rather than
their names, apart from green, which she also disliked.
British financier and racing driver Joel Woolf 'Babe'
Barnato was, like Birkin, one of the 'Bentley Boys',
and he achieved three consecutive wins out of three
entries at Le Mans. A product of Charterhouse School
and Trinity College Cambridge, Barnato played cricket
for Surrey in the late 1920s and served in the British
Army and RAF during the wars. After inheriting his family's
fortune, made out of diamond and gold mining in South
Africa, he poured cash into the troubled Bentley brand,
pushing through in the meantime the famous 'Blower'
Bentley so disliked by W O.
These four remarkable personalities combined to produce
a monster of a car that proved a real match for the
aging, patched, bumpy and frost-heaved Brooklands circuit,
a circuit Birkin himself described as: "...without
exception the most out-of-date, inadequate and dangerous
track in the world... Brooklands was built for speeds
of no greater than 120mph, and for anyone to go over
130... is to court disaster... The surface is abominable.
There are bumps which jolt the driver up and down in
his seat and make the car leave the road and travel
through the air."
Following its race career, the car was converted into
a two-seater roadster before being acquired by George
Daniels.
Daniels was one of the few modern watchmakers who could
conceive, design and hand-make a complete watch from
blank sheet of paper to finished timepiece. During his
lifetime he created fewer than 100 pocket watches and
wristwatches, each of which would typically involved
2,500 hours of work. Awarded a CBE in 2010, he is the
only watchmaker ever to receive the honor 'Master Watchmaker,
for services to Horology'.
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