by David Finlay (08 Dec 09)

"Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr Gibbon?" (Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh) "Life is just one damned thing after another." (Elbert Hubbard)

Eric Dymock is fond of repeating the first of these quotes, largely I think because it describes his career quite well. Although possibly best known for his work as a journalist (he has written for a large number of regional and national newspapers as well as quite a number of specialist motoring titles) he has also been the author of several books, some of them on the subject of racing drivers such as Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart, but most relating to car manufacturers including Audi, BMW, Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, MG, Renault and Vauxhall.

His latest work is The Complete Bentley, a comprehensive guide to the company which was formed by Walter Owen Bentley in 1918 (and recreated the following year) and has been building one damned car after another ever since. Each model from the EXP1 prototype of 1920 to the 2009 Continental Flying Spur gets its own double-page spread, with at least two accompanying images, a wealth of technical information and a few hundred words of explanatory text, so if nothing else the book is a superbly comprehensive reference work.

But it is much more than that. The first 80 pages or so are devoted to a history of W O himself, his company, and the various successes and failures it has experienced over the best part of a century. Here you will find, if you didn't already know, that for most of its existence (from 1931 until the Volkswagen takeover in 1998), Bentley was owned by Rolls-Royce, which at first didn't know what to do with it, later simply put Bentley badges on cars otherwise almost indistinguishable from its own, and later still found that Bentleys were selling considerably better than its own-brand models.

Of the two, Bentley was always the more sporting. W O was himself an experienced racing driver, and in the early 1920s, according to Dymock, he "often found his upper-crust customers frustrating. A lot of them were more interested in silence and flexibility than speed, they kept insisting on heavy bodywork that turned the sporting car to a town carriage, and wanted to drive everywhere in top gear."

W O much preferred spirited driving, but he briefly had what now seems to be a curious blind spot regarding the Le Mans 24 Hour race, for which the London Bentley agent John Duff requested support in 1922. "I think the whole thing's crazy," said W O at the time, and he decided only at the last minute to attend the event. Before midnight he was hooked, and Bentley went on to become the dominant manufacturer at Le Mans for the rest of the decade. That largely explains the enormous British interest in Le Mans, which has continued to this day, and the organising club has never forgotten Bentley's contribution to the great race's history and popularity.

If you are as sporting-minded as W O was, you will find enough of this sort of thing to delight you. If not, there is much else to keep your attention, including some rather splendid trivia (I especially like the story that a single Bentley version of the Rolls-Royce Camargue was produced, because then boss Sir David Plaistow would make such a thing available "if anyone wanted one, an offer one customer was pleased to take up"). All in all, if you are a Bentley owner, or a Bentley enthusiast, or if you would simply like to know about this often troubled but undeniably resilient marque, this book is a must.

The Complete Bentley, by Eric Dymock, is published by Dove Publishing at £55.00. ISBN 978 0 9554909 1 0. More details at www.dovepublishing.co.uk.

Comment on this story on Facebook or Twitter.

Back to Books index
Back to main Features index