1926 Bentley Super Sport
Serial No. NR516

Four-cylinder in-line engine, single overhead camshaft, four valves per cylinder, 2996 cc, 80-82 hp at 3500 rpm.

Walter Owen Bentley said he started with “nothing but a few bits of paper and some ideas.” From that modest genesis rose England’s most celebrated sporting car of the twenties. A former locomotive fireman, motorcycle racer and aero engineer designer, Bentley made few concessions to public taste in producing his cars. This was part of his undoing. He was a dreadful businessman. But in the decade before financial ruin forced him to give up his company to Rolls-Royce, W.O. Bentley produced some of the most thunderously memorable go-fast machines the world has ever seen.

Racing was the plan from the beginning. “Competition is the cheapest way of selling cars,” W.O. said. Despite W.O.’s initial reservations about the 24-hour race, Bentleys won Le Mans for the first time in 1924 and famously dominated the race in the second half of the decade. In addition to fielding an official works team, W.O. encouraged British sportsmen to race by building competition cars for anyone who asked. Eighteen asked for the Super Sport, the display car being one of only ten that remain extant. Distinguished by its 108-inch wheelbase (nine inches shorter than the standard 3 Litre), the Super Sport was sold with 100 mph assured. (Ninety was promised for the 3 Litre Speed Model.)

Like many Bentley enthusiasts, Eastbourne butcher Henry Leeson, the original owner of the display Super Sport, was a multi-Bentley owner and a keen sportsman driver who would die careening down the banking into the paddock approach road at Brooklands in an MG in 1932. Leeson chose the tapered radiator and bulkhead that was a Super Sport option and asked Surbico – an obscure Surrey coachbuilder based in London’s commuter-belt – to make the one-of-a-kind boat-tailed body with a front valance lighter and more elegant than the standard fully valanced type.

Five years was the Bentley guarantee for a production model. W.O chose to offer the Super Sport with a one-year guarantee, generous for a competition machine. Confidence misplaced? Perhaps not. There was no more robust car on the road in the twenties than one of W.O.’s Bentleys.

Photos – Peter Harholdt

"Once owned by my great uncle, Harry Leeson, I found NR516 at the Revs Institute in Naples, FL and it wears registration number XV 631, but that is listed by you as a different car. Any thoughts??"

Note: This website has vintage Bentleys with reg. no. XV 631 as two different cars on these pages: Page 1 and Page 2. Any inputs from our readers would be most welcome. - VintageBentleys.org

("My great uncle, owned four Bentleys. One was MS3944, which sold recently at Bonhams.")

"Early British boat tails looked the part, as can be seen on this 1926 3 liter 100 mph Super Sport Bentley, NR516, with body by Surbico (also known as the Surbiton Carriage Company)." — From the article 'Art Deco and the Automobile' (Part I) 1999 by Philip C. Brooks, VA

According to Michael Hay's "Bentley: The Vintage Years" - 1997, this car was sold to Henry Leeson in 1926 by Jack Withers & Co, registered YM 9277. Now (i.e. around 1997) registered XV 631, the property of Mrs Mary Holland.