Colin Scrivener's 1927 3 litre Bentley PN 148

Contributed by Colin Scrivener (Former owner)

On a weekend leave from the RAF training camp at Melksham, where I was doing my National Service in June 1956, I learnt that the Jones brothers, who had previously sold my brother Bryan and I their 3 litre truck, had decided to close down their building business. Their jointly owned saloon car was now for sale. If I remember correctly the pric was £110. It had previously been owned by Roy Norton, an industrial photographer and had done a large mileage in recent years but it had been well cared for and regularly maintained by Sid Cooper, the local Bentley wizard.

PN 148 with Doug Jones and his son, May 1955

There was much discussion about how I could acquire this beautiful car and somehow I managed to arrange for the finances and unbelievably the car was mine.

PN 148 is a 1927 3 litre, chassis No. ML1522 that had been fitted with tall saloon coachwork by H.J. Mulliner, made in aluminium and having a fabric covered roof. The sumptuous interior had polished mahogany dashboard and door trims and the seats were calf leather cushioned on deep upholstery bases, the driver's seat holding one snugly in position. The coach paint was very deep blue with a fine red coach line separating the black above. The wings were black while the wheels, including the two spares which were mounted each side of the bonnet, were deep maroon. With the bodywork and radiator polished and gleaming, it looked stunning and certainly caused a stir when I drove back to Melksham camp.

At last I had the kind of Bentley I had always wanted.

Colin Scrivener in PN 148, May 1956

In November I finished my training and was posted to Aden for the remaining 12 months of my service. PN 148 was taken to a garage at my grandmother’s house for safe storage while I was away. Twelve months later in November 1957 I was demobilised and returned home. As soon as I was settled, Bryan took me over to my Grandmother’s house where I opened up the garage to see how PN 148 had fared during the last year. Apart from looking rather grubby, all seemed well. We fitted the battery that Bryan had charged up in preparation and she started readily enough, so thankfully I was mobile again. A day's work spent cleaning and polishing made her look her old self once more.

PN 148 Melksham Camp, June 1956

Meanwhile my old employers, BSA Tools, had suffered a slump in business but I learnt that a friend of my old boss wanted a toolmaker. Edgar Peregrine was a consulting engineer and inventor who ran his business from offices in the old Manor House in Royston, Hertfordshire. To make some of the prototypes he had a small workshop with two employees. I arranged an interview and drove down to Royston. When I had introduced myself to the secretary and had met Mr. Peregrine he asked how I had travelled. When I said by car, he asked what it was. I told him and found that he was a fellow member of the Bentley Drivers Club, having a 1929 Speed 6 and a 1949 Mark VI, which helped the interview along very well. Before the day was over I had become the third member of the workshop staff, had arranged lodgings on the edge of the town and was to start on January 1st 1958.

PN 148 Melksham Camp, June 1956

I set off on December 31st for Royston, to be ready to start on the new job the next day. For the only time during my ownership, PN 148 let me down on the road. Shortly after leaving home I noticed a power loss and checking the magneto switches showed that one of them had failed. I decided to carry on but when I came to restart after my lunch break the engine was dead. I checked out the magnetos and found that one had a burnt out H.T. pick up caused by the spark tracking over the insulator, while the one which had been working had a lot of oil round the points. Once I had stripped down the contact breaker, cleaned out all the oil, reassembled and reset the points I thankfully had sparks again to one set of plugs. I decided it was safer to drive back to Birmingham and got to see Sid Cooper. He soon fitted two spare magnetos to keep me running while he had mine overhauled. This problem was probably the legacy of twelve months storage. This delay meant I had to leave home at 2.30 A.M. the next morning in order to arrive in Royston in time to start my new job.

PN 148. Royal Crescent, Bath, July 1956

During 1958 I met my future wife and in 1959 we decided to get married. Unfortunately to raise the deposit on our new house it became necessary to sell the car. In May 1955 I advertised PN 148 in Motor Sport and the Bentley Drivers Club Review but with no success. At this time the firm was installing some test equipment in Imperial College and I was driving to London every day. When I parked the car in Exhibition Road it displayed a For Sale notice. Before long this produced a note from a chap called Jeremy Bacon with a contact telephone number. We arranged a meeting and haggled over the price, finalising at £100 cash, rather lower than the price I had wanted but time was against me. The next night I met him outside South Kensington tube station to conclude the sale. The only problem was that he had only £90 pounds in cash and a post dated cheque for the remainder drawn on a bank in St Leonards on Sea! As the house agent was pressing hard for the deposit I had no choice but to accept and the deal was done. I dashed down the steps to the station, not wishing to see the car drive off, and thought rather sadly about the way things had transpired and the loss of PN 148 during the train ride back to Royston. Talk about a kerb side deal! Next morning it was a great relief to be able to pay the deposit on the new house. I was very relieved three months later when I presented the cheque to my bank that it was honoured.

It transpired that Jeremy Bacon was a bit of a dealer in old cars. A few years later a friend in the Bentley Drivers Club showed me an article in the Review about PN 148 being retrieved from a scrap yard (!!) in the home counties and how the new owners planned to carry out a complete restoration. I did hear that this was done and the car was well used.

In about 1975 while watching a television programme about a vintage car event at Silverstone I was overjoyed to see a gleaming PN 148 driving into the car park and I thought she looked as lovely as ever.

PN 148, Bath July 1956