W. O. Bentley

Bentley was born on 16 September 1888, in Hampstead, London. He was the youngest of nine children. His father Alfred Bentley was a retired businessman and his mother Emily (née Waterhouse), daughter of T. G. Waterhouse, was born in Adelaide, Australia. As the son of a prosperous family he was privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol from 1902 until 1905, when at the age of 16 he left to start work as an apprentice engineer with the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster Works. Locomotives Atlantic express locomotive No. 251 The five-year premium apprenticeship with the Great Northern, which cost his father £75, taught Bentley to design complex railway machinery and also gave him practical experience in the technical procedures to cast, manufacture, and build it. He later recalled: "The sight of one of Patrick Stirling's eight-foot singles could move me profoundly." While with the Great Northern, he came close to realising his childhood ambition to drive one of their Atlantic express locomotives, when at the end of his apprenticeship he acquired footplate experience as a second fireman on main-line expresses. "My longest day", he said, "was London to Leeds and back, on the return journey doing Wakefield to King's Cross non-stop for 175 miles. This was a total day's run of 400 miles, entailing a consumption of about seven tons of coal, every pound of it to be shovelled. Not a bad day's exercise." and as a member of Indian's factory team in 1910. He did not finish in either event; Dissatisfied with the performance of the DFPs, but convinced that success in competition was the best marketing for them, Bentley was inspired by a paperweight to have pistons made for the engine in aluminium alloy. Fitted with the alloy pistons and a modified camshaft, a DFP took several records at Brooklands in 1913 and 1914. Aero engines At the outbreak of World War I, Bentley knew that using aluminium alloy pistons in military applications would benefit the national interest: they improved power output and ran cooler, allowing higher compression ratios and higher engine speeds. As security considerations prevented his broadcasting the information to engine manufacturers, he contacted the official liaison between the manufacturers and the Navy. That man, Commander Wilfred Briggs, would be his senior officer throughout the war. Commissioned in the Royal Naval Air Service, Bentley was sent to share with manufacturers the knowledge and experience he had gained from the modifications to the engines of the DFP cars he sold in Britain. Following his first consultation, which was with the future Lord Hives at Rolls-Royce, the company's first aero engine, named the Eagle, was designed with pistons of aluminium instead of cast-iron or steel. Bentley next visited Louis Coatalen at Sunbeam, with the result that the same innovation was used in all their aero engines. Bentley also visited Gwynnes, whose Chiswick factory made French Clerget engines under licence, and he liaised between the squadrons in France and Gwynnes' engineering staff. When they proved unwilling to implement Bentley's more important suggestions the Navy gave him a team to design his own aero engine at the Humber factory in Coventry. Designated the BR1, Bentley Rotary 1, the engine was fundamentally different from the Clerget except in the design of the cam mechanism, which was retained to facilitate production. A prototype was running in the early summer of 1916. The bigger BR2 followed in early 1918. In recognition, Bentley was awarded the MBE. After he was invited in 1920 to make a claim, which the Clerget licensees contested unsuccessfully, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors awarded him £8,000. ==Bentley Motors==

After the war, in early 1919, Bentley founded Bentley in small premises in London with Frank Burgess (formerly of Humber) and Harry Varley (formerly of Vauxhall). Clive Gallop joined the team as an engine designer to help develop their straight-4 engine. The 3-litre engine ran for the first time in New Street Mews, Baker Street, London. A plaque marks the building in what is now Chagford Street. Bentley's first complete Bentley 3 Litre car began road tests in January 1920 and the first production version, made in Cricklewood, was delivered in September 1921. Its durability earned widespread acclaim. Bentley's motto was "To build a good car, a fast car, the best in class." His cars raced in hill climbs and at Brooklands, and the lone 3 Litre entered by the company in the 1922 Indianapolis 500 mile race and driven by Douglas Hawkes finished thirteenth at an average speed of 74.95 mph. Bentley entered a team of his new 3-litre modified and race-prepared cars in the 1922 Tourist Trophy, driving himself in Bentley III; the only team to finish, they received the Team Award, thereby launching Bentley's reputation; Jean Chassagne (later himself a 'Bentley Boy') on a 1921 Grand Prix Sunbeam winning outright. Bentleys set many records at the Le Mans 24-hour races, with "Bentley Boy" Woolf Barnato the only driver to win all three times he entered. In 1923, when a rather sceptical Bentley was persuaded to attend the inaugural Le Mans race, he saw John Duff and Frank Clement's private entry take fourth place. Bentley's company had accumulated losses of £136,220 and had worked through three fortunes including Barnato's. With an intention of reentering the luxury motorcar business Napier & Son entered negotiations as prospective purchasers. Cricklewood production 's 3-litre • 506 of the 3-litre cars were 'Speed Models' and 15 '100 mph Models' • 54 of the -litre cars were supercharged • 171 of the short-chassis -litre cars were 'Speed Sixes' ==Rolls-Royce Limited, Derby==

However, Bentley's arch rival Rolls-Royce had been disturbed by the 8 Litre's encroachment upon the market segment of their Phantom II. To prevent Bentley continuing as a competitor Rolls-Royce's agents made an offer, posing as the British Equitable central trust to avoid alerting Napier and inflating the price. As a result Rolls-Royce was able to buy the company, topping Napier's bid at the last minute. They announced the acquisition on 20 November 1931. Bentley described in his biography how he found out about the purchase by Rolls-Royce. His wife had returned from a cocktail party, where she overheard a man saying something which she understood to mean that his company had recently taken over Bentley. Later in the party she managed to find out from her hostess that the man’s name was Arthur Sidgreaves. “Who is he”, she asked her husband. “He’s the managing Director of Rolls-Royce”, Bentley replied. The old business had not troubled to register their Bentley trademark; Rolls-Royce took immediate steps to remedy that omission. Bentley had hopes that he would be assigned his own design team within Rolls-Royce. The first meeting between Bentley and Henry Royce put an end to this illusion when Royce said “I believe you are a commercial man, Mr Bentley?” with Bentley replying “Well, not really – primarily I suppose I’m more a technical specialist.” Royce continued “You’re not an engineer then, are you?” to which Bentley reposed “I think you were a boy in the GN running sheds at Peterborough, a bit before I was a premium apprentice at Doncaster.” Around that time he managed to begin to report in person to the design teams at Derby making friends in the process, among them Harry Grylls and Stewart Tresilian who did some design-only work on a short-stroke replacement for the V12 engine for their Phantom III. Bentley had been effectively sequestered from the design team of the new car bearing his own name, but he did admire their achievement. Bentley left Rolls-Royce at the end of his contract in April 1935 with a sense of freedom. ==Lagonda, Staines, Middlesex==

A Lagonda M45R Rapide with a Meadows engine won the 1935 Le Mans 24-hour race, and a week later Lagonda was saved from receivership by Alan P Good. Bentley joined the new board as Technical Director and moved to Lagonda with the majority of Rolls-Royce's racing department staff. Bentley again went racing. Unable to persuade Harry Grylls to join his engineering staff at Staines, Bentley obtained Stewart Tresilian's services from February 1936. Tresilian brought Frank Stark and Reg Ingham with him and Donald Bastow joined them. Bentley made Tresilian chief designer of the V12 project, and the engine was launched in 1937. Displacing 4480 cc, it delivered 180 bhp (134 kW) and was said to be capable of going from 7 to 105 mph in top gear and revving to 5000 rpm. Tresilian left in early 1938 for a Hawker Siddeley subsidiary. During the war Bentley worked on armaments at Lagonda. ==David Brown, Feltham, Middlesex==

A month later, in mid-September it was announced that the Lagonda specification had been bought by David Brown & Sons (Huddersfield) Limited, gear-wheel manufacturer, which would combine production with Aston Martin bought earlier that year. Production was moved to Feltham, Middlesex. Brown had purchased Lagonda largely to gain Bentley's engineering expertise, and immediately placed Bentley 's newest creation, his 2.6-litre Lagonda Straight-6 engine, under the bonnet of Brown's other new acquisition, the Frank Feeley-designed Aston Martin DB2. This durable DOHC engine would continue in Lagondas and Aston Martins until 1959 and, Bentley noted, important design details were carried on through to their V8. ==Armstrong Siddeley==

Bentley moved from Aston Martin-Lagonda to Armstrong Siddeley, where he designed another twin-overhead-cam 3-litre engine before retiring. His team included Donald Bastow. According to one report the team's responsibility for the Sapphire project extended to the car's chassis, but by the time their work ended in 1949 they had contributed little more than detailed inspiration for the production version of the car that was announced in October 1952. Although Bentley's particular engine design was judged too costly for production, it was because of his involvement that the final Sapphire product received the respect of contemporary designers. ==Personal life==

Bentley married three times and had no children. In 1914, he married Leonie Gore, daughter of Sir St George Ralph Gore, ninth baronet of Magherabegg. They divorced soon after the business was sold in 1931. In 1934 Bentley married Margaret Roberts Hutton, née Murray; Margaret survived him by some 18 years. Bentley died on Friday, 13 August 1971, shortly before his 83rd birthday, in Woking, Surrey. The 82 year old was, from 1947 until his death in 1971, patron of The Bentley Drivers' Club. Bentley was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1995. ==Obituaries==

The Times printed a lengthy obituary on 16 August 1971. The same newspaper then printed two more contributions over the following week:"... In the eyes of those who own, have owned, or aspire to own, one of the 3,040 Bentley cars designed and built by the 'old' Bentley company under the leadership of "W. O." he was admired and respected—indeed, I think, loved is not too strong a word—for to know his cars was to know him. During his working life "W. O." suffered a series of ups and downs which might have broken a lesser man. It certainly marked him and it was a disillusioned "W. O." I first met 25 years ago [1946]. ... "W. O." has said that the pleasure he derived in the post-war years from Club activities; from making new friends among its members; and from seeing the loving care bestowed upon 'his' cars has more than compensated for all his earlier disappointments." -- S. S.The six years during which I worked for "W. O." were a period of education and pleasure. His modesty, lack of pretension, mental honesty and reasonableness endeared him to those in contact with him, and his over-riding interest in the improvement of the car provided the education in a period which included the post-war -litre Lagonda development, schemes for 4 and 8 cylinder derivatives, for the pursuit of shorter strokes in engines, for a small transverse-engined front wheel drive car and for a performance engine for the Morris Minor in place of the 850cc side valve engine it then endured. Though normally of reflective habit his experience showed him when swift action was necessary, and he could be very determined in pursuing it. Big enough to admit mistakes when they had occurred, he also knew when to modify and when to start afresh in remedying them. It is a pity that circumstances prevented his influence on car development from being greater than it was. Though motoring and motor cars were his life he retained a keen interest in locomotives." :-- Mr Donald Bastow. ==The Bentley Drivers' Club==

Woolf Barnato (1895–1948) served a term as president. Bentley agreed to become patron in 1947. Founded in 1936 the club now has nearly 4,000 members throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, US, Canada, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. A new website was set up, www.wobentley.club, that contains the archive of all current data related to known (and unknown) Bentleys in existence, with photographs and documents about each car's history. ==Notes ==