1927 Bentley 4.5 Litre Tourer by Vanden Plas – Beauty Of The Beast

It’s not every day you find a prewar Bentley, but this one takes the cake. Allow me to introduce both parties: Bentley, this is CC. CC, this Bentley is otherwise known as “Old Mother Gun.” When cars have a nickname, they usually have a pretty outstanding history that goes along with it, and this one certainly does: it competed in three 24 Hours of Le Mans races.

It was partially a case of sour grapes when Ettore Bugatti called the Bentleys that won the famous endurance race “The fastest lorries in the world,” but you have to admit those were massive machines. Not quite as huge as the 6.5-litre and 8-litre monsters that Bentley also made, but still sizable. Especially compared to a delicate blue Bugatti.

Walter Owen Bentley’s main motivation behind launching his eponymous 3-Litre chassis in 1919 was, in his own words, “To build build a good car, a fast car, the best in its class.” The 3-Litre, whose first production chassis were sold in 1921, was certainly that, but it was bested five years later by the Speed Six, a gargantuan thing with a 6597cc straight-6.

Wishing to find a happy medium between the two, W.O. Bentley created the 4.5 Litre by lobbing off two cylinders from the big six and putting the resultant engine on a LWB 3-Litre chassis. It was a reduced-size Speed Six or an enhanced 3-Litre, depending on your point of view.

The prototype chassis, numbered ST3001, was hastily dispatched to the Vanden Plas coachworks where it came out in early June 1927 fitted with a four-seater tourer body. The new engine was a massive 4398cc OHC 4-cyl. churning out 130hp (street spec cars were tuned down to 110hp) and mated to a 4-speed gearbox. Even with this lightweight body, the car weighed about 1700kg. It could just about manage a top speed north of 100mph which, given the size of the beast and the limited effectiveness of its brakes, would have been quite a feat to achieve.

The brand-new 4.5 Litre Bentley’s green paintwork was barely dry when it showed up at Le Mans, where it competed alongside two 3-Litre sister cars. Bentley had won the trophy in 1924, but had had no luck in the next couple of years. The team was determined to turn things around for 1927, thereby fielding three of the four cars competing in the 2-litres-and-up category.

Bearing a large number 1, the 4.5 Litre was the diva; cars number 2 and 3, the 3-Litre Bentleys, were playing the Supremes to the prototype’s Diana Ross. The cars were given nicknames: number 1 became “Snitch”, number 2 “Bitch” and number 3 “Witch”. From the off, the three Bentleys were leagues ahead of the rest – there were 22 cars at the start of the race, and only eight made it all the way to the next day.

Bentley very nearly did not make the shortlist at all. There was a memorable Saturday evening pile-up at the Maison Blanche curve that took out seven or eight cars in one fell swoop. The three Bentleys were caught up in it – the 4.5 Litre ended up on its side in a ditch, only to be then T-boned by one of the 3-Litres. The other 3-Litre, Witch, was also badly damaged in the accident, but somehow managed to make it back to the pits. As per the rules, the drivers were allowed to make some repairs, using the on-board toolkit and a lot of string.

Despite its bent chassis and smashed body, the Bentley went back into the fray. The crash and subsequent repair allowed the Ariès team to take the lead with their 3-litre “tank” seen above. A major thunderstorm just before dawn slowed the race down to a crawl, but the Bentley was slowly gaining on the leader, lap after lap.

At the 23^rd hour, the Ariès’ distributor gave up the ghost, allowing the crippled Bentley to snatch an epic victory. Miraculously, only one person was injured (not grievously) in the Maison Blanche massacre, so this was the exact opposite of the 1955 disaster in every way – a real-life happy ending.

Snitch, Bitch and Witch were taken back to Cricklewood and rebuilt to full race spec. For the next 24 Hours of Le Mans, in June 1928, the works team fielded three 4.5 Litre cars, including ST3001, by now known as “Old Mother Gun.” The Bentley boys scored again: the car that had crashed in ’27 managed to win outright in ’28, driven (again, almost to destruction) by Woolf Barnato and Bernard Rubin – pictured above just ahead of the Stutz that came second.

Old Mother Gun returned to the Sarthe in 1929 and finished in second place, behind a Speed 6 and ahead of another pair of Bentley 4.5 Litres. Much positive publicity was generated by these successive victories, of course. For 1930, two 4.5 Litre Bentleys were entered as privateers. Those were equipped with superchargers – the famous “Blower Bentleys” – to match the Mercedes-Benzes and Alfa Romeos, but neither managed to finish. The works team fielded a pair of Speed Sixes for one last glorious one-two finish; the firm’s bankruptcy in 1931 and subsequent buy-out by Rolls-Royce put an end to the “fastest lorries in the world” and their domination of the prestigious endurance race.

The problem with these old racers (especially this Bentley, to be frank), is that they have had such a tumultuous life that authenticity can be difficult to ascertain. If you Google “Bentley Old Mother Gun,” most images will return a silver racer that looks nothing like this car. From what I understand, the original ST3001 chassis cracked during the 1928 Le Mans race, so Old Mother Gun go a new frame for 1929.

After 1930, it was sold off and carried on racing, getting rebodied in 1932 and again as an open-wheeled single-seater circa 1934. It was raced at Brooklands, where its 4.5 litre engine broke down beyond repair. The big four was replaced by a Speed Six mill and the car went back to Brooklands in 1936, where it was photographed above, driven by Margaret Allen. So to be clear, before its tenth birthday, Old Mother Gun had a new chassis, a new body and a new engine. And it was further modified later on, of course. Maybe it should be nicknamed Trigger’s Broom (look it up).

Therein lies the issue: what of this lovely green behemoth I found in Tokyo, then? Our feature car belongs to Wakui-san, a famous classic Rolls and Bentley dealer and collector. I think he’s had this car for a couple of decades, and it has been well documented online as ST3001. On the Wakui website, it is claimed that “This car is a faithful reproduction of its appearance at the 1927 Le Mans race, using the original chassis and other original parts.” Make of that what you will…

Maybe this has Old Mother Gun bits in it, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s certainly a 4.5 Litre Bentley. So either way, it’s an impressive and venerable rolling piece of automotive aristocracy.

What is crazy is the way Bentley operated at the time. They just had a Vanden Plas four-seater body slapped on a prototype chassis and fixed to take it pedal to the metal for 24 hours straight on dodgy French roads. And when they crashed it (what a surprise), they just went back at it again and again. With incredible success, too.

Grand prix cars in the ‘20s were epitomized by the straight-8 Bugattis, but as far as rally and endurance cars were concerned, nobody could touch Bentley. It was a perfect mix of top-level engineering, complete seat-of-the-pants production scheduling, incredibly talented and fearless driving and sheer good luck. It resulted in about 3000 chassis being made in ten years, including 720 of the 4.5 Litre sort, all beastly and exceptionally beautiful at the same time. Mr W.O., you certainly showed everyone how it’s done.