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Automotive Lifestyle
VINTAGE: Unique Blower Bentley At Auction
The famed Birkin Monoposto race car of 1929 offered by Bonhams could be one of the most-expensive cars sold at auction during 2012.
The Bentley 4.5 “Blower” Birkin Monoposto was driven in the 2009 Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance. (Photo: Wouter Melissen)
This year's edition of England’s Goodwood Festival of Speed gets started Thursday with The Moving Motorshow, followed by the main event on Friday.
A set fixture of the Festival of Speed is the Bonhams auction that traditionally takes place on Friday afternoon. Having consigned many highly impressive machines, it promises to be one of the major sales of the year.
Headlining the auction is the collection of the late George Daniels. During the past decades, the “Master Watchmaker” had brought together a formidable car assemblage, with the unique Bentley 4.5 “Blower” Birkin Monoposto as the centerpiece. “Monoposto” is the Italian word for single-seater.
This car started life as the very first Blower Bentley, raced at Le Mans and later more famously at Brooklands with the single-seater body that is still on the car today. The spiritual father of the supercharged Bentley, Tim Birkin, ultimately managed to lap the “Surrey Speedbowl” at a staggering 137.58 mph.
Still in very original condition, Blower No. 1 has been raced extensively throughout its life. We captured the car at various events including the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and numerous times at Goodwood as can be seen in our 18-shot gallery.
The unique machine could become one of the most expensive cars to cross the auction block this year.
It is a cruel twist of fate that the most famous Bentley built under W.O. Bentley's reign was the one he did not approve of and was by far the least successful. The naturally aspirated four- and six-cylinder Bentleys dominated endurance racing, yet it is the supercharged Blower Bentley that is best known today.
W.O. Bentley's thoughts on the car were quite straightforward: "To supercharge a Bentley engine was to pervert its design and corrupt its performance." History proved him quite right as the Blower Bentley never won a major race. So why was the supercharged Bentley built in the first place?
The Blower Bentley was the brainchild of Bentley Boy Henry “Tim” Birkin, who was always looking for more power and speed. W.O.'s solution was simply to increase the size of the engine to improve performance, but that was not sufficient for Birkin.
He convinced racing enthusiast the Hon Dorothy Paget to bankroll the supercharger conversion with his great charm. Birkin also received the blessing of a fellow Bentley Boy, Woolf Barnato, multiple Le Mans winner, diamond magnate and part owner of Bentley. Early in 1929, a small shop was set up in Welwyn by Birkin and production of the first supercharged Bentleys commenced.
Birkin got the ball rolling by commissioning Amherst Villiers to build him a supercharger to bolt onto a completed 4.5-liter Bentley. This followed the design of all Bentleys of the day that really only differed by the type of engine fitted, and even these were built along the same lines. All of them had a single overhead camshaft with a beautiful four-valve per cylinder head.
Birkin might have picked the smaller four-cylinder engine so he would not fall in the same class as the Works Bentleys, which used the 6.6-liter six. The blower was bolted to the crankshaft and was prominently visible on the nose of the car.
Birkin's conversion certainly made a difference as the power was up from 100 horsepower to a healthy 175, which was still down from the 200 horsepower of the Speed Six used by the factory team.
The first Blowers were ready in the summer of 1929 and entered by Dorothy Paget in various races. It quickly became clear that the finely tuned internals of the Bentley engine were no match for the force of the Superchargers so that the engines blew more often than not. When they did hold together, the Blower Bentleys were quite competitive with a number of second-place finishes as the best result.
Despite the mechanical problems, Barnato allowed Birkin to enter a team in the 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans. Their effort, not surprisingly, ended early with two “blown” engines. The Le Mans entry came back to bite Bentley as the company now had to build the agreed 50 examples needed for homologation.
A set fixture of the Festival of Speed is the Bonhams auction that traditionally takes place on Friday afternoon. Having consigned many highly impressive machines, it promises to be one of the major sales of the year.
Headlining the auction is the collection of the late George Daniels. During the past decades, the “Master Watchmaker” had brought together a formidable car assemblage, with the unique Bentley 4.5 “Blower” Birkin Monoposto as the centerpiece. “Monoposto” is the Italian word for single-seater.
This car started life as the very first Blower Bentley, raced at Le Mans and later more famously at Brooklands with the single-seater body that is still on the car today. The spiritual father of the supercharged Bentley, Tim Birkin, ultimately managed to lap the “Surrey Speedbowl” at a staggering 137.58 mph.
Still in very original condition, Blower No. 1 has been raced extensively throughout its life. We captured the car at various events including the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and numerous times at Goodwood as can be seen in our 18-shot gallery.
The unique machine could become one of the most expensive cars to cross the auction block this year.
It is a cruel twist of fate that the most famous Bentley built under W.O. Bentley's reign was the one he did not approve of and was by far the least successful. The naturally aspirated four- and six-cylinder Bentleys dominated endurance racing, yet it is the supercharged Blower Bentley that is best known today.
W.O. Bentley's thoughts on the car were quite straightforward: "To supercharge a Bentley engine was to pervert its design and corrupt its performance." History proved him quite right as the Blower Bentley never won a major race. So why was the supercharged Bentley built in the first place?
The Blower Bentley was the brainchild of Bentley Boy Henry “Tim” Birkin, who was always looking for more power and speed. W.O.'s solution was simply to increase the size of the engine to improve performance, but that was not sufficient for Birkin.
He convinced racing enthusiast the Hon Dorothy Paget to bankroll the supercharger conversion with his great charm. Birkin also received the blessing of a fellow Bentley Boy, Woolf Barnato, multiple Le Mans winner, diamond magnate and part owner of Bentley. Early in 1929, a small shop was set up in Welwyn by Birkin and production of the first supercharged Bentleys commenced.
Birkin got the ball rolling by commissioning Amherst Villiers to build him a supercharger to bolt onto a completed 4.5-liter Bentley. This followed the design of all Bentleys of the day that really only differed by the type of engine fitted, and even these were built along the same lines. All of them had a single overhead camshaft with a beautiful four-valve per cylinder head.
Birkin might have picked the smaller four-cylinder engine so he would not fall in the same class as the Works Bentleys, which used the 6.6-liter six. The blower was bolted to the crankshaft and was prominently visible on the nose of the car.
Birkin's conversion certainly made a difference as the power was up from 100 horsepower to a healthy 175, which was still down from the 200 horsepower of the Speed Six used by the factory team.
The first Blowers were ready in the summer of 1929 and entered by Dorothy Paget in various races. It quickly became clear that the finely tuned internals of the Bentley engine were no match for the force of the Superchargers so that the engines blew more often than not. When they did hold together, the Blower Bentleys were quite competitive with a number of second-place finishes as the best result.
Despite the mechanical problems, Barnato allowed Birkin to enter a team in the 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans. Their effort, not surprisingly, ended early with two “blown” engines. The Le Mans entry came back to bite Bentley as the company now had to build the agreed 50 examples needed for homologation.
Goodwood Festival Of Speed
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