The 1950 registration book for Syd Lawrence's legendary racing car VMF 944 lists the Chassis no. as '102/50ML'. The chassis is stamped with 102 and an additional '50 ML'. This was added by Southgate Motors (London) Ltd in 1950, a company owned by Syd Lawrence that built this car. The '50 ML' stands for '1950 Modified Lawrence'.

Now 66 years on, it has been declared that the Chassis no. for this car is 708. And no one knew all these years! The car has had many owners since 1950 when Syd Lawrence built this racer. He sold it in 1968 to John Bertram Vickery, London who sold it to Brian Cook, Caldew in 1998. The car went on to the next owner, Joanna Vassey, Huntonbridge in 2005 who sold it to David Dunn, Dublin, Ireland in 2006. Detlef Heyer, Dublin, became the next owner of the Syd Lawrence Special in 2010 and he sold it the present owner in January / February 2016.

Detlef Heyer was to make this 'Chassis-708' discovery recently when H&H inspected the innards of the car before adding it to the October 2015 auction. But still, H&H went 'by the book' and listed it as Chassis 102/50 (view H&H page). H&H noted: "The number stamped into the front engine cross member — 102/50ML is Syd's own but the number stamped within the nearside front dumb iron resembles '708' and looks to be a Cricklewood factory marking (though, the final digit has been abraded)".

The car eventually sold via Stanley Mann Racing in February 2016 who chose to list it as Chassis 708, (view Stanley Mann Racing page) while introducing it as "...a vintage Bentley that is neither a concours contender nor a matching numbers example". But there was neither any mention of the '102/5ML' chassis nor any pictures of number-stamping on the chassis.

Detlef Heyer has been touch with VintageBentleys.org since 2012. Here are some excerpts of our conversations with him: