The Bentley Boys | Playboy Racers of the 1920s | Exhibit at OHTM

The Bentley Boys were the diverse and often-changing team of unpaid - and nearly all amateur - drivers that in the 1920’s helped put Bentley in the forefront of European racing and solidified the marque’s reputation for combining high performance with ruggedness and reliability. They were as well known for their glamorous lives off the track as they were for their skilled driving. In the autobiography of W.O. Bentley, the engineer and designer behind the marque, he writes of the Bentley Boys, “The public liked to imagine them living in expensive Mayfair flats with several mistresses and, of course, several very fast Bentleys, drinking champagne in night clubs, playing the horses and the Stock Exchange, and beating furiously around the racing tracks at the week-end. Of at least several of them this was not an inaccurate picture.” These men were serious about their play, whether that meant flying airplanes, competing at steeplechase, boxing, yachting, skiing, racing speedboats and motorcycles, or playing golf or cricket. Under the leadership of W.O., they were no racetrack dilettantes, but a highly disciplined team. British, French, and Australian, doctors and journalists, heirs and bankers, aviators and aristocracy, they all worked together as a dedicated and tightly coordinated group on the track. The proof is in their race results and speed records, including the glory years of 1927-1930, when the team famously scored four consecutive victories at the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans races.
2016 | Owls Head Transportation Museum
www.owlshead.org
/ owlsheadtransportation...
Special Thanks to the Lang Education Center &
The Richard C. Paine Jr. Automobile Collection Charitable Trust
Select photographs from the book “Bentley Experimental No. 5” by Clare Hay
Special Thanks to the W.O. Bentley Memorial Foundation | www.wobmf.co.uk
Images represented in this video are for educational purposes
Music used under Creative Commons Licenses
“Brooks” by Kai Engel | www.kai-engel.com
“Hot Lips” performed by Bill Brown and His Brownies | composed by Henry Busse 1922

[@arkhsm]

Literal Legends !!

[@gordyl9247]

2:08 in, I'm sure this is entering the lobby of the RAC club Pallmall London for temporary display.

[@gracz24PL]

You are right sir. It indeed is the entering to the lobby.

[@carlcushmanhybels8159]

Yes, they had to take some parts off, etc, to get it through the door. #3 Bentley had survived a crash at LeMans (see bashed headlight). The driver got it back going and came back...

[@adampetten5349]

Fast as F#ck and big as a house. Bentley MO since 1918.Good stuff.

[@knut-hinrichqwalter2463]

Til today Captain Woolf-Barnato has been the only Le Mans driver who won every race he entered !

[@andyjohnson4767]

There was never any doubt on which car was raced against the Blue train as thats how the car got its name

[@carlcushmanhybels8159]

@@deansmith6924 Agree. The swoopy Bentley, named "The Blue Train Special" was not the one that raced.

[@Shootingstarvideo]

Love the little black cat on the shoulder of one of the drivers!
ua-cam.com/video/6q5MuASFtG8/v-deo.html