My only complaint about vintage Bentleys is that by the time you can afford one, you’ve got a lot older and a lot less nimble at climbing into high cockpits. But once in them, what a real blast from the golden era of automobiling (new word, feel free to use it). A vintage Bentley really does thunder down the Queen’s Highway, long bonnet stretching out before you, aero screens shovelling the wind above your face so the dandruff is blown out of your hair, and behind you the bellow of the exhaust rivalling a WWII Lancaster bomber.

Penn sneaks in under the tent flap and salivates over some very fine classic machinery brought in by visitors.

About 3400 cars were made by WO Bentley during the ’20s. Cars that so rivalled Rolls-Royce that the iconic marque knew it had to buy Bentley out when the Great Depression, combined with under-capitalisation, forced WO to sell up. Thereafter, Rolls Bentleys became known as Derby Bentleys, and embodied Rolls-Royce’s concepts of how such a car should look and perform rather than WO?Bentley’s.

The Derby Bentleys were, and are still, very fine motor cars indeed, but they aim at a different ideal, one that doesn’t include the kind of raw performance that enabled Bentley to score repeated successes at Le Mans. The Derby Bentleys from the ’30s are lower and cruisier and not so hairy-chested as WO’s awesomely fast lorries – as they were allegedly termed by Ettore Bugatti. That said, the Derby Bentleys are usually much more affordable (relatively) at the lower end, and still bloody expensive at the highly desirable end. Importantly, they have all, without exception, remained totally driveable and utterly reliable, decade after decade – even with Lucas electrics!

Touring Bentley-style
It rather seems that possession of a Bentley is pretty well concomittant with a sound cash flow. Although it also seems to me that it’s mainly the capital cost that gets serious, Bentley drivers actually do drive their cars and the 40?cars that have made a recent trip to New Zealand from the UK, USA, Switzerland, Scotland and Australia (here to find out how to succeed at rugby, netball and league, I suspect) demonstrated this need to drive by touring nearly 4830km from Christchurch to Northland and, as I understand it, without any maintenance problems.

This was a month-long trip taking in pretty well all of an exceptionally dry February. Consequentially, I’m likely to die never have seen a vintage Bentley with the top up, ’cause these Bentley Drivers’ UK certainly never bothered to hoist their rooves. Interestingly, about 30 of the visitors were vintage Bentleys, and the total value of these alone is a reputed $15,000,000.

I talked to another old UK pensioner, Tony Lang, who used to have a factory filling cosmetic aerosol cans with cosmetic materials such as hairspray. He’s very much in favour of women looking after themselves, and in so doing it seems that they also look after him, because it turns out he has three of these cars and is on his second NZ Bentley tour. This time he brought his biggest one – to accomodate the wife’s baggage, he said – naturally I pointed out to him that he should be careful of what he says, since we are a nation obsessed with making politically correct statements, unless they’re said about men, in which case it doesn’t matter.

Joining the tour
I joined the cavalcade in Takapuna, getting a lift from Guy King, who exercises a very interesting Peterson Blower for the owner, John Blair. It’s a difficult car to categorise and, typically of the old car game, there are those who like to put it down as not being a ‘real’ Bentley, but it wears the trademark badges at each end and I’m assured that they’re Bentley approved. However, I think that it’s such a wonderful car, whatever it is, that you’ll read the details elsewhere in this issue.

I joined Guy at about 7.45am as he swung along Esmonde Road and went to a Takapuna Hotel, where the tour had stopped for the night. I was suffering from getting up at such an early hour. Unbreakfasted and blinking in the dawn light. I came alive when I first saw the cars – collected together were an amazing set of high-end collectables. There were also a large number of Asian businessmen displaying that national penchant for being photographed with local colour, and as far as lots of these smartly dressed gentlemen were concerned the Bentleys were perfect props for their NZ trip.

The initial briefing was about pointing the tour in the direction of Richard Izard’s personal airfield just out of Wellsford. Now consider this, these cars were about to join Auckland’s working weekday car-jam. No problem for these behemoths, all the rice rockets ducked to one side, ensuring they weren’t crushed by the considerably bigger chassis and tall wheels of the thundering Bentleys. North Shore Aucklanders are about as sophisticated as it gets in New Zealand, so everybody tried to pretend that these cars were in the traffic flow every day, and thank heavens that favourite trick of slowing in front of a vintage to read the badge wasn’t a problem here, because all these Bentleys have been equipped with big brakes front and rear.

Bentley bellow
Once on the Northern Motorway, heading for Wellsford, I was able to simulate nonchalance as I leaned back while Guy kept the boot buried as close to the limit as was permissable. No radio! That was great, because there was nothing to compare with the bellow of the seemingly completely open exhaust. Not a true Bentley? I’d settle for this any time, what a great road car. The torque in all gears means the car is monumentally long-legged – up Orewa Hill in top cog revelling in the passing lane.

However, essentially I’m a devout coward, especially in the passenger seat, and I’m sure that my bum was picking up quite a bit of understeer on some of the long curves where Guy gathered speed wearing a maniacal grin under his Biggles helmet and goggles. However, the exhaust bouncing back off the rocky walls on our left, opposite the plunging drop on the right, soon set me at ease! Right? Nothing like a bit of a scare to titilate the senses, I’ll swear I regained quite a lot of my diminished testoterone.

When we finally arrived at Patience and Richard Izard’s version of Croydon, I was ready for a superb breakfast masquerading as morning tea. One foreign gentleman said to another, “Och aye, if I’d known abart this wee feast I could have saved the baubees I spent on that breakfast!” This from a Bentley owner who thinks that money is something the accountant handles for him? Richard Izard has a Bentley that’s been in his family for many years. I think he also has the latest Bentley too, in fact I saw two of them there, so I suspect that one was Patience’s shopping basket.

Richard used to have a large collection of classic and vintage cars housed in a purpose-built building, but he’s lost interest and released most of them to new and grateful owners, and is into his and her aeroplanes these days. Yes, he and Patience each have a plane. I did hear it said that she was the better pilot, but that’s barely possible because it would go against nature. It was a fabulous morning, here we were on a windless day with the sun shining down on a line-up of stunning cars, several vintage aeroplanes, a proper hangar and clubrooms, and whilst we were there a couple of mates dropped in, including one in a vintage Gypsy Moth.

They must be an idle lot in Wellsford, I felt a glow of virtue as I slaved away at my journalistic trade – the only worker there. Another UK visitor, on departure, laughingly complimented Richard on his magnificent toy shop.

Prestige visit
The next time I caught up with the Bentley Tour was the following Saturday at Independent Prestige in Great North Road. It’s significant to me that, despite gloomy statements about the economy continuing to fly around our ears, this very up-market agency, selling only Bentley, Aston Martin and Lamborghini, is under the direction of a couple of smoothies including a friend of long standing – Mike Clarke. Mike has the remarkable ability to take large sums of money off people when selling them a car and have them actually enjoy the experience, enjoy him, and come back for more! I know, I did several times – but not here, I’d have to wear a jacket and a tie.

Buy a car here and there’ll be lots of noughts following the prime numbers. It was natural, of course, that this, the home of Bentley, would host these cars on their last Saturday in New Zealand. Another excellent breakfast accompanied by a couple of French chanteuse warbling frog songs – at a British car collection, talk about true entente cordiale.

Again the public crowded in to have a look. I did enjoy one switched-on young father. His small boy stood on his pedals as he raced across on his precariously wobbling bicycle, heading for some million dollar car. Dad leaning casually across swiftly grabbed him and disbiked him, not even interrupting his conversation with a friend. Observe, mothers, dads do know where the priorities are.

Bentleys on the Green
The last day saw the Bentleys gathered at St Heliers on the village green, a big turn-out of cars including Auckland members with some very beautiful Derby Bentleys. I couldn’t help but notice that the Peterson Blower attracted a great deal of attention. Built with the benefit of hindsight, and to a very high standard indeed, it struck a solid note with everybody. In the end it’s all about loving cars, especially the significant ones.

One highlight for me was the incredibly original 1926 3.0-litre car. It had been bought in 1936 – second hand – by a Major Turner, who put it into storage in 1939 in Edinburgh, no doubt he was off to work. Finally in 1972 he sold it to the present owner, John Watson, who got it running despite the 33?years of hibernation, and has used it ever since. I love originality but ownership of this car would be pure torture for me, as I fought off the temptation to refurbish the unique example.

Are there any unattached, Bentley-owning ladies out there who would be appreciative of an altruistic pennsioner’s companionship?

George Sharp
At 96?years young, George Sharp (now an Auckland resident) enjoyed being reaquainted at St Heliers with a 1927 4.5-litre Bentley he worked on when he was a 17-year-old at the WO?Bentley factory.

Later in the ’30s he met the car again when he was a radio operator in the Police Flying Squad in London, and it was a car he frequently travelled in. Later still, after WWII, and still in the police force, George met this car once more on the police Advanced Driving Course in Hendon. Clearly, anything to do with Bentleys is tough and long-lived.

Rationalisation
At Independent Prestige in Great North Road I was talking to a Kiwi Bentley owner who commented that he’d bought his older, early ’70s Bentley for $35,000 in 1998, and frequently drove it as his everyday car (likes to see serfs tugging at the forelock as he sweeps past). Some years he spent $3K on general servicing, other years a lot less. Currently it was probably worth about $45K to sell. Try that sum on an everyday modern.

Now, if you buy a modern Bentley you’ll be writing a very fat cheque (in my case it’d be a criminal offence), and for a few years you’ll take a slugging – probably deductible for such customers? But eventually it’ll get to a sizeable residual value and start to climb again – and the way things go, inflation will probably return your original expenditure.

The Bentley Driver’s Club
Kerston Pelmore, as a young man, bought a 3.0-litre Bentley in 1933, and became captivated by ‘real motoring.’ He had a flat in Sloane Avenue, and by the usual method of putting cards under wipers lured 26 people, in 1936, to an inaugural meeting of a proposed Bentley Owners’ Club. Some very famous Bentley names, including WO himself and also Woolf Barnato, Benjafield, and Kensington-Moir all joined. By 1939 there were 110?members, but of course, war then stopped everything.

In 1945 the Bentley club reconvened, alas no Kerston who had been a casualty of war. By 1950 there were over 1000?members, rising steadily to today’s 3500 and with ‘regions’ all over the world, including New Zealand – which organised this highly successful summer rally.