Bentley 4½ Litre

four seat coachwork Bentley at the 24 Hours of Le Mans The 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race is a 24-hour race around the Circuit de la Sarthe. The inaugural race was held 26–27 May 1923, and attracted many drivers, mostly French. There were two foreign competitors in the first race, Frank Clement and Canadian John Duff, the latter winning the 1924 competition in his personal car, a Bentley 3 Litre. "Made with precision and the finest material," and with recent success, the luxurious Bentley cars attracted attention. After two years without success, Bentley convened a group of wealthy British men, "united by their love of insouciance, elegant tailoring, and a need for speed," to renew Bentley's success. Both drivers and mechanics, these men, later nicknamed the "Bentley Boys", drove Bentley automobiles to victory in several races between 1927 and 1931, including four consecutive wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and forged the brand's reputation. It was within this context that, in 1927, Bentley developed the Bentley 4½ Litre. Two cylinders were removed from the 6½ Litre model, reducing the displacement to 4.4 litres. At the time, the 3 Litre and the 6½ Litre were already available, but the 3 Litre was an outdated, under-powered model and the 6½ Litre's image was tarnished by poor tyre performance. Tim Birkin and the Blower Bentley 's Bentley Blower No.1, shown at the 2009 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance Sir Henry "Tim" Birkin, described as "the greatest British driver of his day" by W. O. Bentley, was one of the Bentley Boys. He refused to adhere strictly to Bentley's assertion that increasing displacement is always preferable to forced induction. Birkin, aided by a former Bentley mechanic, decided to produce a series of five supercharged models for the competition at the 24 Hours of Le Mans; Mercedes-Benz had been using superchargers for years. Thus the 4½ litre Blower Bentley was born. The first supercharged Bentley had been a 3-litre FR5189 which had been supercharged at the Cricklewood factory in the winter of 1926/7. The Bentley Blower No.1 was officially presented in 1929 at the British International Motor Show at Olympia, London. The 55 copies were built to comply with 24 Hours of Le Mans regulations. Birkin arranged for the construction of the supercharged cars having received approval from Bentley chairman and majority shareholder Woolf Barnato and financing from wealthy horse racing enthusiast Dorothy Paget. Development and construction of the supercharged Bentleys was done in a workshop in Welwyn Garden City by Amherst Villiers, who also provided the superchargers. W.O. Bentley was hostile to forced induction and believed that "to supercharge a Bentley engine was to pervert its design and corrupt its performance." However, having lost control of the company he founded to Barnato, he could not halt Birkin's project. ==Specifications==

Although the Bentley 4½ Litre was heavy, weighing , and spacious, with a length of and a wheelbase of , it remained well-balanced and steered nimbly. The manual transmission, however, required skill, as its four gears were unsynchronised. The robustness of the 4½ Litre's lattice chassis, made of steel and reinforced with ties, was needed to support the heavy cast iron inline-four engine. The engine was "resolutely modern" In December 2020, Bentley Blower Car Zero, the first example of the Blower Continuation Series was presented. The car was built in Crewe according to the historic specifications and based on the production processes of that period. "Blower" Bentley 4 litre (6315547301).jpg|Supercharged engine MS3948, a late 1931 replica-bodied car in the Beaulieu National Motor Museum (see external link below) 1929 Bentley 4½ Litre Blower.jpg|alt=Photograph of the dashboard of a Blower Bentley|S/c engine MS3948 dashboard Bentley bw 2.JPG|S/c engine MS3948 Another view of the grille, supercharger, and inlets 1929 Bentley front 34 right.jpg|A Blower Bentley from the collection of Ralph Lauren.|alt=A Blower Bentley from the collection of Ralph Lauren ==Competition performance==

Between 1927 and 1931 the Bentley 4½ Litre competed in several competitions, primarily the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The first was the Old Mother Gun at the 1927 24 Hours of Le Mans, driven as a prototype before production. Favored to win, it instead crashed and did not finish. Its performance was sufficient for Bentley to decide to start production and deliver the first models the same year. Far from being the most powerful in the competitions, the 4½ Litre of Woolf Barnato and Bernard Rubin, raced neck and neck against Charles Weymann's Stutz Blackhawk DV16, setting a new record average speed of ; Tim Birkin and Jean Chassagne finished fifth. The next year, three 4½ Litres finished second, third, and fourth behind another Bentley, the Speed Six, which possessed two more cylinders. The naturally aspirated 4½ Litre was noted for its good reliability. The supercharged models were not; the two Blower models entered in the 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans by Dorothy Paget, one of which was co-driven by Tim Birkin, did not complete the race. In 1930, Birkin finished second in the French Grand Prix at the Circuit de Pau behind a Bugatti Type 35. Ettore Bugatti, annoyed by the performance of Bentley, called the 4½ Litre the "fastest lorry in the world." The Type 35 is much lighter and consumes much less petrol. Blower Bentleys consume 4 liters per minute at full speed. Despite the Blower's record of poor reliability, Mildred Bruce, a British female racer, achieved a 24-hour distance record at Montlhéry in one, attaining an average speed of . In 1930, the Daily Herald offered a trophy for the fastest driver at an event at Brooklands. The first year, Tim Birkin and Kaye Don competed and Kaye Don won with a speed of . In 1932, Tim Birkin won driving his red Blower "Monoposto," clocking . ==End of production==

In November 1931, after selling 720 copies of the 4½ Litre – 655 naturally aspirated and 55 supercharged – in three different models (Tourer, Drophead Coupé and Sporting Four Seater), Bentley was forced to sell his company to Rolls-Royce for £125,175, a victim of the recession that hit Europe following the Wall Street crash of 1929. ==Current status==

, Bentley 4½ Litre automobiles from this inter-war period – the "Belle Époque" of the automobile for some – sold for around €1,000,000. Blowers can fetch more than €7 million and are coveted by collectors despite never winning a single race. For many, the 4½ Litre is to automobiles what the Spitfire is to aircraft. == Popular culture ==

James Bond drives a 1930 Blower Bentley in Ian Fleming's first three novels featuring the character, Casino Royale, Live and Let Die and Moonraker. In the books, Bond drives one of the last Blower Bentleys built, a battleship grey Convertible Coupé, with French Marchal headlamps. ==Notes==