Robert Malcolm Bell's Chassis XF3517

 

Oct 17, 2012 archive: My father, Robert Malcolm Bell, owned this car from 1936 to 1948. My father's brother-in-law George Hugh Barclay Dodd acquired the car on behalf of my father from Jack Barclay following my grandfather George Morton Dodd trading it in in part exchange for a Lagonda Rapide which is now owned by GHB Dodd who is now 98 and drove the Lagonda up to 2010.

 

'Benjamin' outside my grandfather George Morton Dodd's house - Ridgewood Manor Uckfield East Sussex

 

In 1948 my father sold the car in running and original condition to John Norris who owned the car for a number of years and ran it in the Nairobi Nakuru race and raced it against an Aircraft on Malindi Beach. John Norris sold the Bentley to an Agricultural officer in Tanganyika who died in the mid 1960s and it was following his death that the car was found rotting at the Iringa Auction Mart at Iringa Tanzania. It was acquired from the estate of the Agricultural Officer by someone from Suffolk whose name unfortunately I cannot recall who was responsible for restoring the car in the late 1960s/early 1970s. He subsequently sold the car to Mr Tim Watson an auctioner from Heathfield in East Sussex, who lived not more than 10 miles from where my grandfather had lived when he bought the car from the Paris Motor Show in 1929.

 

Mr Watson or possibly his wife following their divorce sold the car to someone who I believe lived at that time in Switzerland, I have since lost track of it but would be fascinated to find out where it is. My parents used this car as their daily vehicle from 1936 to 1948 in Tanzania where it was first in Kilwa or Lindi then Songea then Kilwa again Liwale Mpwapwa and finally in Dar-Es-Salaam where my father sold it to John Norris, who, I believe became a multiple Bentley owner after returning to the UK.

 

The Bentley which my parents called Benjamin was not found rotting in Dar-Es-Salaam in 1948 (as stated in Michael Hay's book).

 

Oct 2012