Wheels on fire
The secret behind the roaring success of Bentley: a name that is still synonymous with luxury and reliability in the motoring world
WHEELS ON FIRE
No one could ever have foreseen what the 1927 Le Mans race would do for Bentley’s reputation
IT WAS DURING the latter half of the 1920s that Bentley’s reputation grew as the conveyance of choice of the rich, decadent, gilded youth of the Jazz Age. The reputation and success of the car was founded on the engineering genius of the marque’s eponymous founder, Walter Owen Bentley, who preferred to be known as WO, and the on- and off-track adventures of a glamorous cadre of wealthy amateur racing drivers, collectively known as the Bentley boys.
In 1926 the firm came under the ownership of Woolf Barnato. Barnato’s money was derived from his father’s activities in the diamond mines of South Africa. Barney Barnato was a remarkable man. Born into poverty in London’s East End, he overcame the disadvantages of his birth and the anti-Semitism that was regrettably a widely-held characteristic of British life in the 19th century, to rise to prominence in South Africa. He could have been an even mightier character than Cecil Rhodes, the British pioneer in South Africa, but died in mysterious circumstances when Woolf was a baby.
Woolf Barnato inherited his father’s tenacity and will to succeed. He was determined that Bentley would win at the prestigious 24-hour race of Le Mans competition in central France, the most exacting test of a sports car’s mettle.
The first time a Bentley had entered Le Mans – in 1923 – it had finished fourth. The following year, Bentley returned and won the coveted “Grand Prix d’Endurance”. But 1925 and 1926 had not been good years for the marque, and by 1927, it was desperately in need of another victory. Preparation for the race had been almost military, and seemed to be paying off. As the correspondent for The Motor newspaper put it: “There is no doubt that, given reasonable luck, all three Bentleys would have held to the end and covered the greatest distance in the 24 hours.”
As dusk fell, the four-and-a-half-litre Bentley had twice beaten the lap record and was running so smoothly that you could have set your watch by its progress as it roared round the course.
Then, some time after 9.30, something happened. The four-and-half-litre Bentley was overdue. Hesitating to tell WO, the timekeeper eventually turned round to see Bentley’s face ash-white. But then it was the same all along the pit lane; not one of the 22 cars which had entered the race could be heard or seen. For the first time at Le Mans that day, the croaking of frogs could be heard.
It was 9.30pm on Saturday 18 June 1927 and Sammy Davis, a respected motoring journalist, cartoonist, racing driver and all-round good egg was at the wheel of his Bentley, No.7, coming downhill to the White House Corner at Le Mans. An experienced driver who had competed in many motor races at the wheel of all sorts of cars, he noticed a small amount of debris in the road and slowed from 100mph to around 80mph, just in case.
What happened when he turned the corner was to become one of motor racing’s most legendary and oft-told stories. As the car swung round the White House corner, Davis’ headlamps picked up a barrier of twisted metal. Three cars had crashed. Two of them were Bentleys.
The four-and-a-half-litre engine had come round the corner, found another car across its path, swerved to avoid it but could not stay on the road, and the car had rolled over, half blocking the road. George Duller’s was the next Bentley to join the pile-up, missing the first car but smashing into his team-mates, finishing up on top of them. Duller, who was a seasoned jockey as well as a motor racing driver owed his life to his jockey training, as he jumped clear of the wreckage just before the impact.
Davis was round the corner and, although he had slowed fractionally, he slid sideways into the Bentley sandwich at the roadside – raising his arm to shield himself from the vehicles he thought would topple onto him. The noise was variously described as the “rending crash of riven metal”1 or like “a lot of dustbins falling off a roof”.2
HE GOT OUT of the car and looked for his team-mates in the wreckage. Miraculously, they were not seriously injured and Sammy’s thoughts returned to the race. He managed to restart his car and reversed it from the pile of wrecked vehicles, the car disentangling itself with more rending and screeching. He drove away, just as another car slammed into the wreckage. Including Davis’, seven cars were involved in the pile-up. He nursed the stricken vehicle back to the pits, while all the time turning over in his mind what he might have done instead and how he would face WO.
Back at the pits he worked like a maniac. In those days drivers had to work on their cars during pit stops. The front of the car (axle, frame, crossmember, mudguard, one front wheel – the lot) was distorted. Only one headlamp could be made to work, the battery dangled off the running board and had to be tied into place, the brakes were not all they might be, but “could be controlled”3 and although there was steering, it was “odd and without return action”.4 However, the “engine fired at once”5 and ignoring the entreaties of his team, Davis set off in a car patched up with tape, string and with a pocket torch lashed to the windscreen. “Of course, to win was hopeless now,” he said, but he was determined to finish. Matters worsened after the crash, when the rain came down in an epic fashion characteristic of Le Mans. But all the time Davis and his co-driver Dudley Benjafield, who, when not racing high-speed motor cars, was one of the most respected medical men on Harley Street, were slowly gaining on the car in front.
Shortly before noon, WO heard a change in the engine note of the leading car, and Benjafield, who was driving the wounded car flat out, its mudguard flapping like a broken wing, overtook the leader just as it retired with engine trouble. With the end of the race in sight, Benjafield pulled into the pits to allow Sammy the honour of driving the car, old No.7, across the finishing line.
An arduous 18 hours after the debacle at the White House corner, Davis crossed the finish line, having covered 1,472.527 miles at an average speed of
61.354mph. The second-placed car was over 200 miles behind them. Driving a wrecked car that only a madman (or a man too scared to admit defeat to WO) would have even dared to start up, Davis and the Harley Street medic had won Le Mans in the most spectacular circumstances.
What had seemed like a routine race, turned into a disaster but then became a very British – and very Bentley – triumph. The effect was electric. The motoring press lapped up the drama. According to The Motor, “Even the ‘Paris-Madrid’ – the race which is a classic so far as the number of crashes is concerned – never produced such an amazing sequence of events as last Saturday’s and Sunday’s 24-hour race at Le Mans”.6 The Autocar claimed that the race was “marked by acts of chivalry and good breeding only too often unhappily absent from so-called sporting events today”.7
ON THE TEAM’S return to London a dinner was given at the Savoy by The Autocar to celebrate. During the meal, a formal affair with the men dressed in white tie, the host, Sir Edward Iliffe CBE MP, rose to announce that “a lady who was entitled to be at dinner was outside”, adding that he had invited her to enter. At that, the folding doors swung back, there was a fine roar of engine, and, with her one headlamp blazing, No.7 came into the room.8 Still battered and filthy from the race, the car took her place in the middle of a vast horse-shoe shaped table.
The rest of the 1920s were the golden years of Bentley. Suddenly everyone wanted to be a part of the Bentley story and the marque commanded the attention of rich sportsmen, who thirsted for the romance and glory of the race track.
Had the Bentleys crossed the line in first, second and third place as seemed possible, would the victory at Le Mans in 1927 had such an impact? Probably not. It was the drama of the circumstances, the pluck of the drivers, and the fact that a British team had come back from near certain defeat to see off competition from all over the world, which shaped the Bentley image.
The Bentley Era: The fast and furious story of the fabulous Bentley boys by Nicholas Foulkes, Quadrille (£25)
