Bentley Speed Six

Bentley 6½ Litre & Speed Six
Speed Six Mulliner drophead coupé 1930 original body, chassis LR2766, engine KR2698, registration GH 1517. First owner a Miss Bingham
Overview
Manufacturer	Bentley Motors Limited
Production	1926–1930 544 produced
Assembly	Cricklewood, London
Designer	Walter Owen Bentley
Body and chassis
Class	Luxury car
Body style	as arranged with coachbuilder by customer
Layout	FR layout
Powertrain
Engine	6.5 L I6
Dimensions
Wheelbase	132 in (3,353 mm) 138 in (3,505 mm) 140.5 in (3,569 mm) 144 in (3,658 mm) 145.5 in (3,696 mm) 150 in (3,810 mm) 151.5 in (3,848 mm) 152.5 in (3,874 mm)
Chronology
Successor	Bentley 8 Litre

The regular Bentley 6½ Litre and the high-performance Bentley Speed Six were sports and luxury cars based on Bentley rolling chassis in production from 1926 to 1930. The Speed Six, introduced in 1928, would become the most successful racing Bentley. Two Bentley Speed Sixes became known as the Blue Train Bentleys after their owner Woolf Barnato's involvement in the Blue Train Races of 1930.

By 1924, Bentley decided to build a larger chassis than the 3 Litre, with a smoother, more powerful engine. The new chassis would be more suitable for the large, heavy bodies that many of his customers were then putting on his sports car chassis, and the resulting car would be more refined and better suited for comfortable general motoring.

Bentley built a development mule with a 4¼ L straight-six engine derived from the 3 Litre's four cylinder engine. To disguise the car's origin, it had a large, wedge-shaped radiator and was registered as a "Sun". The car had a large Weymann-typetourer body built by Freestone and Webb.

W. O. Bentley combined one of his road tests of the Sun with a trip to see the 1924 French Grand Prix in Lyon. On his return trip to the ferry at Dieppe, W. O. encountered another disguised car at a three-way junction. W. O. and the Rolls-Royce test driver recognized each other and began racing each other along the routes nationale. This street race continued until the Rolls-Royce driver's hat blew off and he had to stop to retrieve it. The Sun's tyres were heavily worn when W.O. got to the ferry at Dieppe.