About Mr Bentley

Walter Owen Bentley was one of nine children, and was fascinated by steam from an early age. He was apprenticed to Great Northern Railways at Doncaster in 1904, and while at GNR he bought his first vehicle, a 3 hp Quadrant motorcycle. By 1909 he was racing motorcycles at Brooklands. He left GNR and spent time with the Unic taxicab people, and then joined a firm selling French DFP sporting cars. During WW1 he designed the successful BR1 rotary aircraft engine.

In 1919 he set up Bentley Motors, producing the design for a 3-litre 4-cylinder single overhead cam sporting tourer, the Bentley 3-Litre, and an elegant polished chassis was on show at the 1919 Motor Show at Olympia. In new premises at Cricklewood, production of the car began in 1920. It was expensive, of high quality, and fast. It achieved almost instant success with the wealthy young sports of the time, and was soon the centre of a famous long-distance racing programme. The famous Bentley Boys won le Mans several times in succession, using the 3-litre and 4 1/2 litre 4-cylinder cars, and the 6 1/2 litre Speed Six model. Bentley always disapproved of the Blown 4 1/2 litre model sponsored by the Hon Dorothy Paget for racing, believing that the supercharger reduced reliability (he was right: the Blower Bentley never won le Mans).

The depression hit Bentley Motors hard. It was always financially marginal, largely propped up by millionaire Woolf Barnato. A move towards the Rolls-Royce market with an 8-litre luxury car added further strain, and a desperate attempt by the Board of Directors to stave off the inevitable with a relatively cheap mass-market pushrod six cyclinder 4-litre Bentley failed. The company was taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1931.

Bentley stayed with the new management for a couple of years, and then moved on to Lagonda, where he produced an impressive new car with independent front suspension and a 4.5 litre overhead cam V12 engine. Two were raced at Le Mans in 1939, placing 3rd and 4th. After the War he designed the new 2.6 litre twin-overhead-cam all-independently suspended Lagonda, and tycoon David Brown, who had taken over ailing Aston Martin, was so impressed he bought up Lagonda so he could have the engine, not to mention W O Bentley's services, for Aston Martin.

The Lagonda twin cam 6, Bentley's last great engine design, went into the Aston Martin DB2 in 1949, and stayed in production, with considerable development, until the Aston Martin DB4 was introduced in 1958 with the all-new Tadek Marek 3.7 litre engine. The Bentley-designed 6 cylinder engine also powered the successful DB3S sports-racing cars of the mid-50s, one of which was raced for several years in Western Australia.

Bentley died in 1971.

Bentley cars built before Rolls-Royce bought the Company in 1931 are popularly known as "W O" Bentleys after their designer, or "Vintage" Bentleys, because they were all built in the British "vintage" period (to end of 1931), to distinguish them from Rolls-Royce manufactured Bentleys.