This 4½ litre vintage Bentley (Reg UP 2100) was taken apart and kept in boxes for more than 50 years. It has been reassembled to its former state and could now be worth £800,000. The dismantled 1928 4.5-litre Drop Head registration UP 2100 was found at a three-storey house after its owner Stuart Wallace died last year aged 75.

"Reading of other's experiences with vintage cars has filled me with nostalgia for one of my own of long ago — surely one of the most entertaining high performance cars ever made — a supercharged 4½-litre Bentley. I shall always remember my first sight of the 'blower'. I had an ordinary 4½-litre at the time and had driven up to H. M. Bentley's in Hanover Street to discuss some modification — and there in the showroom stood the perfect car, a 4½ with a shining black open four-seater body with screen folded flat and two aeroscreens in position: I had to have it and a deal was struck. 'H.M.' had had the engine stripped and new bearings fitted as well as everything else possible done and I started off with a virtually new car and drove it 75,000 miles with only normal decoking and brake relining having to be done in the course of them." — Owner of JB 1850 in the 1930s

This rebuild story of the Wright family's 1929 Chassis no. UK3285 was received from Donald Wright in March 2009. (Unfortunately, we had misplaced a batch of e-mails around that time due to a server upgrade. Some of them reappeared from our backups recently, and we we are delighted to be able to present this story to you, though, some three years after the event...)

Many people eventually get round to trading in their first car. But not Mike Harrison. He loves his 1931 black Bentley sports coupe so much that he's still driving it, 54 years after he bought it. Mr Harrison was 20 when he paid £150 (about £3,000 now) for the car after passing his test in 1956.

Motorist Mike Harrison is still driving his first car, 54 years after paying £150 for it. The 74-year-old was 20 years old when he bought the black Bentley sports coupe in 1956 after passing his test. Now it is one of only three left in the country and valued at £250,000.

Have you ever known a Bentley by sight over a period of years and then, almost by accident, found you have become its owner? Have you ever worked on and restored and damn nearly lived in a Bentley, and then sold it without ever driving it? Those two experiences, and little else, represent my relations with old XV 6601.

I must start this story from the beginning and that is well before we set out from Rawalpindi in a 4½ litre (1929, chassis RL3431) for England. It will also be noted that, had there been no Bentley Drivers Club, there would have been no journey, at least as far as I am concerned.

In July last year I was posted to the Pakistan Air Force Academy for a one year tour. Naturally, before I went I consulted my B.D.C. List of Members and discovered there was only one member in Pakistan, who, however, lived in Rawalpindi. I was working near Peshawar and, as it turned out, frequently went to Rawalpindi for the week-end. It was clear that before long I would be able to see "member H.18."...

The original purchaser, W. M. Wallace, Jr., then residing at Stirling, Scotland ordered the 10’ 10½” chassis with 15/53 diff. and “C” gearbox. It was also equipped with the Tecalamit one-shot lubrication system fitted by the factory. The centralized lubrication system was a highly unusual feature on a 4½ liter chassis, it being more commonly supplied with the 8 liter chassis. The open sports tourer body created by Thrupp & Maberly (body no. 5187) is unique to this car. The original UK registration mark was MS34.

The 1929 Bentley 4½-Liter Tourer by Vanden Plas enjoyed a macho image based on its Le Mans exploits and no-nonsense engineering.

The Autocar road tested a 44-litre Bentley when the model was current, the account appearing in their issue of February 22nd, 1929. This is what they had to say...

Sammy Davis is something of a legend these days, 86 now, (this article was published in 1974!) and twinkling back through a career in and around racing cars that goes back as far as racing itself... He remembers his first Grand Prix experience in 1924 at Lyons... Two years later he was with the Bentley team at Le Mans and set for second place with 20 minutes to go when he ran out of brakes and plunged into the sand at Mulsanne with the 3-litre Bentley carrying the number seven. It was this same brake problem that sent Dr Benjafield into a tree in a later race after he had bought it from the factory for his personal use...

Of all the designs emanating from the concise and fertile brain of the late Walter Owen Bentley, that quiet and retiring Engineer and Gentleman, the 4 cylinder 4½-litre (actually 4398 cc.) gave the fewest teething troubles and perhaps afforded him the maximum of personal satisfaction. It was also the favourite model of his regular racing drivers, who found it more flexible than the 3-litre, and who appreciated the inherent safety and stability given to it by its understeering characteristics...

The fact that twenty-four old-school Bentleys were present at the recent Bentley Drivers' Club rally at Cobham would seem to show that these cars still retain the affection of many enthusiasts... 

Nothing unique about the title you might say but this trip took place sixty summers ago, just before that last great unpleasantness known as World War 11. It was undertaken in 1939 by four intrepid young men, undergraduates at Clare College, Cambridge. At that time the 4 1/2 was owned by one of them, now retired Brigadier AG Heywood CBE, LVO, MC, who lives today in the beautiful Doverill Valley in South West Wiltshire.

OX 6934 was a 1928 4½ litre Bentley and, although it had no body, petrol was unobtainable, and he didn't know how to drive it, Father forked out £125 and the chassis was pushed round into The Lane and into our garage...

Whether it happens to be their ideal or not, enthusiasts cannot overlook the satisfaction of a drive in a Bentley of the old school. Recently we were able to cover rather less than 100 miles in a rather unusual 4 1/2-litre and definitely the appeal was there...

The present Bentley description deals with a 4 1/2-litre owned by J. Northway, at Bristol. He still has the car, up on blocks for the rest of the war. As usual, modifications have been made, the engine having been expertly rebuilt not long before the war, and fitted with special pistons, plus tuning. It seems to have had as a result useful extra performance over an ordinary 4 1/2. The production car, nicely run-in, was good for about 92 m.p.h., but this example, the owner tells us, could get within sight of the 100 on a recalibrated speedometer. Again as usual, he would like to know more than he does at present of its past history.

It was a coincidence I could not help remarking that a year to the day from meeting Mr. Forrest Lycett and sampling his 8-litre Bentley, I met him again and saw and briefly tried his almost equally well-known 41/2-litre; it had so happened that we had not met in the meantime. The invitation to renew acquaintance with the 4 1/2 — "renew" because, of course, it is a car one has seen competing — was of some standing. That machine had stood in London since September 1939, and was indeed fortunate to have come unscathed through last winter.

After nearly four years, and probably hard years at that, the "4½ litre" Bentley which is the subject of this report had lost none of the marque's very real personality, and power developed by the four-cylinder engine, combined with the general feeling of sturdiness, seemed to give the car complete and easy mastery over other machines met with in a run.

While the 4½ litre Bentley is of the sports class, it is tractable and quiet; in acceleration it fulfils the driver's wishes at once… The engine is like that of the former 3-litre model. There are four cylinders and each has four valves. Thus the seating area is increased by half and the cooling surface is greater, while the hammering effect is reduced by two valves with lighter springs than could be used were the valves single. The camshaft is overhead and is driven vertically with adjustment for the gear-mesh. The lubrication is forced, except to the pistons and gudgeon pins, which are oiled by splash.

To convey in words the precise charm of the 4½ litre Bentley without using an unconvincing wealth of superlatives is a difficult matter; it is a car which must be driven to be appreciated. The way in which it endears itself to the driver after a few hundred miles on the road is due to many remarkable attributes, such as a rocket-like acceleration, a well-nigh perfect driving position, excellent brakes, delightful steering and road-holding extraordinary.

There's nothing quite like reading the auction results to deflate your hopes of ever owning that collector car you've always longed for and thought that maybe, somehow, if you leveraged yourself to the brink of insolvency, you might just be able to afford someday. Take the Bentley 4½ Liter, for example. If you were watching the Gooding & Co. auction in Monterey last August, you saw a 1931 4½ Liter supercharged roadster sell for a jaw-dropping...

The first 4 1/2-litre car to be produced was the famous old No. 1 "team" chassis, ST 3001, immortalised in motoring history as a participant in the epic crash at White House Corner on the Sarthe Circuit in the course of the Grand Prix d'Endurance at Le Mans in 1927. It will be remembered that hopes of a runaway victory, on this occasion, were dashed to the ground by the unfortunate triple crash involving the entire Bentley team.