Keith Schellenberg's vintage Bentley 1930 Bentley Sports Tourer (Car no. 84) was among the 56 car entrants in The 1968 London to Sydney Marathon from Gt. Britain — the oldest car participating, and the only vintage Bentley (in fact the only Bentley). The Schellenberg Bentley covered the following route: London - Paris - Turin - Belgrade - Istanbul - Sivas - Erzincan - Teheran - Kabul - Sarobi - Delhi - Bombay

Left: Keith Schellenberg in the grand old lady of the Marathon. Right: The car at Bombay in India. In the backdrop is the Gateway of India.

Unfortunately, the car was involved in an 'accident' in Turkey, and though it recovered from it, it fell far behind and could not make it in time to Bombay (now renamed Mumbai), on the western coast of India from where the cars were to sail to Australia (Fremantle) for the last leg of the rally (finishing at Sydney).

What happened to Chassis no. YM5027 in Turkey
Extracts from various reports written at the time

Car 84. K. Schellenberg, British entry. Turkey claimed the oldest car in the rally, the 1930 eight-litre Bentley Tourer of British adventurer Keith Schellenberg. He stopped his heavy car on the edge of a road, only to have the bank collapse and deposit the Bentley on its side in the gully below... sadly ending its quest in the Marathon, before Erzincan.

In the end there were 100 entrants, 98 of which actually started from Crystal Palace. Unbeknown to the competitors, Jack had been told by P&O, the shipping company, that there was space for only 70 cars on the ferry from Bombay to Perth in Australia. As a result everyone on the organisational side was hoping that there would be serious attrition on the way to Bombay. As luck would have it, 72 cars actually reached Bombay, and with a bit of judicious pushing and shoving, all 72 were squeezed onto the boat. Sadly it did not include the Schellenberg Bentley which had gone off the road, arriving in Bombay after an epic recovery to find that the boat had sailed...

Vintage 8-liter Bentley of Keith Schellenberg had developed a split oil line and was one of the few cars to be penalized on the road. It eventually retired when the dirt road beyond Sivas (a place in Turkey) proved incapable of supporting its weight.

Alan Sawyer describes the incident
This is how Alan Sawyer had described the Turkey portion of the route prior to the start of the rally:

In Turkey, chaotic traffic conditions may exist in the last few miles into Istanbul. The ferry across the Bosporus to Asia runs every 15 minutes and the crossing takes about 20 minutes. Those minutes are vital to drivers who have raced non-stop across Europe to earn them valuable time. The roads for the eastern half of Turkey are reasonably good and, except for heavy lorries, relatively free of traffic. The Turkish truck drivers are unused to cars travelling at faster speeds than they can, so Marathon drivers must use special care overtaking.

The section from Sivas to Erzincan will be a moment of truth for many drivers. The unsurfaced road with ball-bearing gravel should effectively destroy any competitor's illusions that the Marathon route presents no motoring problem.