Bentley to build 12 exact 1929 Blower Bentley recreations

It is the first time Bentley has looked to its hero models from the past and made a continuation version, joining a trend made popular by companies like Aston Martin (the DB4 GT Zagato Continuation will be at the 2019 Revival), Jaguar and Lister. Bentley, along with recent continuation convert Alvis, are the only firms to offer a pre-war continuation model.

What else could a reborn Bentley be but a Blower? And in particular one of the four Team Blowers made for Birkin to show that supercharged power could dominate the great endurance races of the 1930s, something it never actually achieved (the unsuperchaged Bentley Speed Six won Le Mans in 1930).

Despite not winning a blue riband race the Blower was acclaimed as the fastest car of its day with its Roots-type supercharger boosting the 4.5’s power from 130 to 240bhp. As well as the four extant (originally five) competition cars, Birkin persuaded Bentley chairman Woolf Barnato to make a run of 55 customer cars; Ian Fleming saw his James Bond character driving one, in his novels (if not the films).

That the Blower is today revered as a British racing icon is something we have often been reminded of at Goodwood when Birkin’s own 1929 car (the one photographed above) has taken on the hillclimb at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard.

Twelve works recreations are to be freshy minted – three times as many as the number of works cars that survive – by Mulliner in a run that will take two years to complete. A run of 12 was chosen to reflect the 12 races that the four Birkin cars participated in.

Bentley says they will be identical to the original bar safety upgrades. Bentley bespoke division Mulliner will hand-craft each car to be a mirror image of the Birkin chassis number two car, owned by Bentley Motors since 2000. The famous old warhorse will be disassembled into its individual components. Each part will be scanned in 3D to make a digital model of the car. Twelve sets of parts will then be  created using original 1920s moulds and tooling jigs alongside the latest manufacturing technology. The original car will then be reassembled.