In June of 2012, the 1929 Bentley 4 1/2 Liter supercharged single-seater – once piloted by Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin to a Brooklands Outer Loop record-breaking speed of more than 137 MPH – sold for 5,042,000 British pounds ($7,907,530) at Bonhams’s Goodwood auction. The price set a new record for the most expensive English car ever sold at auction, and little is known about its anonymous buyer except for this: He or she is not a resident of the United Kingdom. Now that latter fact has led the United Kingdom to block the car from leaving the country.

Bonhams will offer a significant vintage Bentley automobile at its upcoming Quail Lodge sale in Carmel, California on Friday August 16th, 2013. The car, a 1931 Bentley 4½-Litre Supercharged Le Mans Roadster, known by aficionados as a “Blower Bentley,” is considered the holy grail of Bentleys among well-heeled collectors. Just 50 production versions of the seminal classic were built in order to meet criteria required to race at the fabled circuit more than 80 years ago.

The export of the world's most expensive Bentley has been put on hold by the UK government, which has described the 1929 car as of "outstanding significance". But what do we know about the legendary "Blower" and the enigmatic aristocrat, Sir Henry Birkin, who spent his fortune developing it? Sir Henry, who was known widely by the nickname Tim, was famed as a top racing driver, always dapper in his trademark silk neckerchief flapping in the wind as he tore around Brooklands, the Nurburgring or Le Mans. Using the family fortune made through Nottingham lace, Sir Henry travelled the world, living the glamorous life of a 1920s racing hero as one of the "Bentley Boys". But he did not drive to win - he raced for the love of speed and to improve the standing of British motorsport, according to his great-great-nephew Sir John Birkin - a filmmaker who worked on a 1995 drama starring Rowan Atkinson as Sir Henry.

We bring you an extract from the book The Spirit of Competition, By Dr. Frederick A. Simeone outlining the history of serial no. MS3926. "I wanted to fill in some information on our blower car, MS3926. Reason I think I should do this is because, through your site, I was amazed at how few cars have original engines, transmissions, and most notably, bodies..." says Dr. Simeone, renowned neurosurgeon, automotive historian and museum owner.

Just 35 miles away from the fabled Brooklands race circuit where it astonished thousands of spectators eight decades ago by sprinting its way into the record books, Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin’s dramatic 4½ Litre Supercharged ‘Blower’ single seat racing machine returned to record-breaking form by reaching a sale price of £4.5 million when auctioned by Bonhams at the Goodwood Festival of Speed today.

A record-breaking British car from the 'tween-war years has broken another record at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed sale this Friday 29 June. It is now the most expensive Bentley ever sold at public auction. The ex-Sir Henry 'Tim' Birkin 1929 4½-liter supercharged 'Blower' Bentley single-seater, which when new raised the Brooklands Outer Circuit record to 137mph, sold for £5,042,000. The Bentley was sold as part of a collection once owned by famed watchmaker George Daniels of seven cars, two motorcycles and assorted automobilia.

Bentley Blower No. 1 (Chassis No. HB3402) is a racing car developed from the Bentley 4½ Litre by Sir Henry "Tim" Birkin to win the Le Mans twenty four hour race. The car came second in the 1930 French Grand Prix, and held the Brooklands circuit speed record at 137.96 miles per hour (222.03 km/h), from 1931 to 1934. This car could sell for £5M at the Bonhams June 29, 2012 auction -- making it the most expensive British-built car ever sold publicly. It would smash the £3.5million paid in 2007 for a 1904 Rolls-Royce, with inflation adjustments making it around £4 million today.

When the first supercharged Bentley debuted at the 1929 British International Motor Show, Charles Noble was only eleven years old, but he was already obsessed with Bentleys, spending countless hours with his nose pressed against the window of Jack Barclay's London dealership admiring the cars within. "His heroes were the great drivers of the day," recalls his son, Roger. "Woolf Barnato, Tim Birkin — all the Bentley Boys. He would say, 'I'm going to have one of those cars one day.' When he died, he had seven."

Read Brian Strong's experience with Birkin Blower Bentley chassis HB3402 driven by Bill Mason one day in 1966... "Bill opened the garage doors and there was a Blower Bentley, British Racing Green and enormous. 'Would I like a ride?' There was only one possible answer to that question..."

In 1964 'Rusty' Russ-Turner acquired the car of his boyhood dreams. Looking at the car today, one can appreciate just how vivid an impression it must have made when bounding round Brooklands at the height of its fame. It is Captain Sir Henry 'Tim' Birkin's Blower Bentley single-seater... Russ-Turner vividly recalls how he was first attracted to both car and driver over 50 years ago: "I think I first saw the car at Brooklands in 1930 and thereafter it was the only reason I went to Brooklands again...

At the height of his career, Birkin's biggest regret was the lack of interest shown by British teams in Grand Prix racing. As none were forthcoming after Sunbeam withdrew, he optimistically tried to make a Grand Prix machine out of a 4 1/2-litre Bentley by adding a supercharger. And he very nearly succeeded, in the French Grand Prix of all races!

A Vintage Bentley is a pretty impressive car to look at and to sit in; a Blower 4 1/2 is even more so. Having absorbed the large steering wheel close to the chest, the mass of instruments and drip-feeds on the dashboard, you look up the road — hopefully a dusty ribbon vanishing into the distance like the Mulsanne straight back in 1930; at the end of the long louvred bonnet you see the rounded shoulders of a polished radiator with a vast quick-action filler cap silhouetted on top.

In those days when we were driving the famous Bentleys it never occurred to any of us that the great green battle-cruiser-like machines of which we were so fond would achieve an almost legendary fame years and years afterwards. Yet so it seems today. Take this small tale, for instance...

The blown 4 1/2-litre Bentley is so strongly associated in most peoples' minds with the racing team backed by the Hon. Dorothy Paget and led by Sir Henry Birkin that one is apt to forget the fact that it was a standard production model...

Resolved: to get to the end of this page firmlv resisting the temptation to wamble off about the Great Green Cars at Le Mans and, if possible, without committing more than a score or so of the great green clichés that bewitch one's typing finger at the very thought of a Blower 4 1/2.

When Bentleys first introduced the supercharged edition of their famous 4 1/2-litre model, a number of prospective owners of this type of car held back from purchase until they had seen how the car performed in the chief racing events of the season...

A novel angle on a vintage Bentley is given by a Canadian enthusiast's description of how he found a supercharged 4 1/2-litre in the U.S.A. a year or two before the war and thoroughly reconditioned it with the assistance of a number of equally enthusiastic friends. This Canadian, W. K. Johnson, is known to a good many members of the sporting fraternity here. He has been in England for the greater part of the war years, and has been present at most of the enthusiasts' gatherings held at the Rembrandt Hotel.

Birkin himself described his drive at Pau as "'the last of all the big races in which I had any success with the old green Bentleys and the most enjoyable." Furthermore, he said that it was the most interesting and thrilling race in which he had ever taken part.

There arrived in the office one grey evening some time last February a young man (relatively speaking) whose chief interest in life for the moment seemed to consist in "genuine" supercharged ex-Dorothy Paget-Birkin blower Bentleys. He was here quite a long while, delving into past volumes of The Autocar for information about these cars of the 1930s. We got chatting after he had finished his research work — he was hot on the trail of two of these machines that I gathered had been offered to him, and his quest was partly concerned with unearthing sufficient data to establish, if possible, that they were genuine "Birkin cars". It wasn't that he doubted the good faith of those who, apparently, had described them as such, but he wanted "gen" first hand from historical record.

When the war came along I entered into various negotiations, which finally resulted in my finding myself in Central Canada. Here I found the attitude to the sports car somewhat remarkable and almost amusing. In fairness, I must say that so far as I know there are only two examples on the road in the whole Dominion of Canada of a good type of sports car and interestingly enough, both of these models were built in the same year and had a very similar performance. One is a 1930 Mercedes-Benz; the other a 1930-1931 4 1/2-litre blower Bentley… The latter I was able to acquire at a very moderate price, for despite its good qualities, this type of car has practically no appeal on the American continent. The average American-Canadian buys a car almost completely for its appearance, its height (so that the owner can always look down on others), and the number of extras and gadgets, which it may boast.

Prominent amongst the few cars, which have really captured the affections of the Brooklands crowd, stands Sir Henry Birkin's great blue single-seater Bentley. Encouraged, no doubt, by the deeds of the supercharged 4 1/2-litre Bentley cars at Le Mans and in Ireland, and inspired by his own traditional role of pacemaker to the opposition, Birkin's obvious choice in his search for a worthy Brooklands mount, able to beat Kaye Don's lap-record of 134.23 m.p.h., was the Blower Bentley.

A car such as the supercharged Bentley is a distinctly unusual subject for a used-car test, but this model was suggested by H. M. Bentley and Partners, 3 Hanover Court, London, who specialise in this make, for they have confidence in what is generallv termed the blower car… Clearly, it was a machine, which would appeal only to a certain limited type of owner, and the car must be approached from that angle, which to some extent is bound to shape one's judgment of it.

A great deal is expected of any Bentley, simply and wholly because of the name and because of the manner in which that name has been gained. But it is interesting for a moment, in dealing with the supercharged 4½ litre, to regard the car from an angle quite apart from the speed, and see what its advantages are in other directions.

The recipe is as follows: Take a sturdy chassis, install an engine rated at 25 h.p., add a supercharger, fit an open body, wings and windscreen, and make the complete vehicle have a speed range of from 9 m.p.h. to 103 m.p.h. on top gear. Do all these things and you will have arrived about half-way towards the achievement which the 4½ litre Bentley represents. Only half-way, because you have yet to make your car its equal as regards other important attributes, such as road-holding, gear-changing, steering and braking...

It is additionally interesting that so big a machine as the 44-litre Bentley, already capable of a high performance, should be provided with even more performance by supercharging. It is obvious, of course, that the demand for these cars lies at present more in the sports world than with the average motorist, which is not to say that future experiments will not disclose the value of the supercharger in some form or another for the needs of everyday motorists. It is no secret that experiments have been carried out for a very long time with 4½ litre Bentleys and a supercharger, and it is no new and untested machine, therefore, which is taking its place in the range of models.

A smile spread across Bill Hardy's face as he talked about buying one of the most coveted of all vintage cars. The year was 1943. There was a wartime ban on non-essential private motoring in Britain, so the supercharged Bentley had been languishing in an orchard. It had been listed at £1720 — an enormous price for a car — when new in 1930. Mr. Hardy bought it for £140.