If it weren’t for Bentley’s continuation challenge, the final Speed Six roadster would’ve rolled out off the manufacturing facility flooring 93 years in the past. The firm, nevertheless, has set upon the trail of constructing a handful of its historic fashions as brand-new automobiles, constructed within the UK utilizing authentic processes and supplies.
It began with a dozen of the basic 4.5-liter “Blower’ Bentleys, accomplished final 12 months, now the automaker is recreating the identical quantity of 6.5-liter Speed Six fashions. The course of requires tens of craftsmen nonetheless acquainted with basic strategies to assemble the automobiles as they’d have within the pre-war interval.
Before you seek for the tens of millions buried in your sofa cushions, the entire new Speed Six continuation automobiles are pre-sold. Bentley does not title a worth, anyway. That could be ghastly.
In order to make these automobiles, the automaker has assembled a crew of artisans and engineers tasked with recreating each single a part of the reborn vehicles, however not from scratch. Bentley nonetheless has a couple of Speed Sixes in its stock used as a blueprint for brand new elements. This makes the method simpler, however the elements nonetheless need to be forged, machined, bolted, stretched, and sewn. Bentley claims it has needed to manufacture over 600 new bespoke elements only for the engine of the brand new automobiles, that are at the moment testing on the dyno.
The first prototype automobile is already finished, present process sturdiness testing to make sure the entire new elements will maintain up. The 205-horsepower engine ran for 40 hours on the dyno, the automobile was pushed over 6,000 miles, and it was taken as much as 112 miles per hour, identical to the originals.
A complete of 182 Speed Sixes have been made between 1928 and 1930. By the tip of 2025, there can be 194.
