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Before Formula 1, Ferrari, Red Bull and multi-million pound sponsorship deals, there were the Bentley Boys. In 1923, the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans kicked off a spectacle that would become one of the biggest races on the motoring calendar. Manufacturers were quick to hire their factory teams to compete in the French countryside. By 1931, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin and Bugatti were all on the grid. But throughout the 1920s, it was all about Bentley, who won five of the first eight races. A group of aristocrats, adventurers and war heroes, including Frank Clement, John Duff, Woolf Barnato and Tim Birkin, were responsible for much of Bentley’s early success in motor racing.
When they weren’t staying up late in London’s Grosvenor Square, they were obsessed with winning. Sir Henry Ralph Stanley Birkin, third baronet, was the most inventive. In 1928, halfway through a four-game winning streak, Bentley Following his victories, he came up with the idea of supercharging his 4.5-litre car. The resulting Bentley Blower became one of the most famous Bentleys ever made. It is also, almost a century later, Petersen EngineeringThe best-selling car of
Petersen, based in a small town in Devon, has become the premier destination for classic Bentley enthusiasts. Founded by Bob Petersen and his wife Sally in 1988 as a coachbuilder and restorer, the company continues the work that Birkin and WO Bentley were doing in the 1920s and 1930s. Each car is built to order, starting with a donor chassis before everything is completely overhauled. Petersen’s own archive contains many period parts, but new items are often devised and built from scratch. Everything from the Connolly From leather seats to dashboards, pistons and nuts and bolts are all assembled in their Devon workshops.
Looking at a Petersen carYou might think it took a lifelong dedication to Bentley to get to this point. In fact, the company was founded by accident. Bob trained as a graphic designer, but his passion for mechanics was impossible to suppress. The first vehicle he worked on was a double-decker London bus. The next was a vintage Bentley. “A neighbour used to drive an old Bentley to the pub, but he could never get home because it always broke down,” says his son Jesse. “So my father suggested he could make it more reliable by modernising a few things. This was in the early 1980s, and he restored this man’s Bentley without a second thought. He fell in love with Bentley then, even though he didn’t know much about them before.”
From there, things developed rapidly and, having decided to go full-time, Bob and Sally moved from High Wycombe to Devon. Most of the work is still done on site, but, following expansion, Petersen now has workshops and warehouses on a nearby industrial estate. Bob, 70, is still very much involved, but Jesse is slowly taking over the reins. “At first, it was just Dad,” says Jesse. “Now we have 16 lads working for us full-time. Dad notices he’s not getting any younger, but he’s still in charge of everything. My sister and I are partners in the business and she does all the upholstery.”
Petersen has built more than 100 cars to date, and currently produces, at best, six cars a year. “We’ve had a few that we’ve pulled from fruit orchards and one that we pulled from a lake in America,” says Jesse. Each one takes between 18 months and two-and-a-half years to build, with prices ranging from £350,000 to £600,000, depending on the model and customisations requested. Each one is built to the client’s specification and almost anything is possible – we’ve built a replica Mercedes ‘Trossi’ on a Bentley chassis before.”
In 1930, Woolf Barnato raced across Europe in a Bentley train, which would become known as the Blue Train carriage. “We’ve made six of those, one of them supercharged.” Engines can be interchanged and Petersen often uses engines from the late 1950s, which his engineers have fuel-injected to make them more reliable. And then there are the Meteor-engined cars.
“It’s basically a Volcano Engine. Meteor engines are based on Merlins and were used in tanks, but they come without the supercharger. So we got those instead of Spitfires as there are about half a million of them just for the engine. We built one for a crazy customer in Sunningdale. We had already done a car for him and he said, “How about we put a Meteor engine in it?” A few people had done these Meteor cars before, but this guy wanted a replica of the Bentley Blower with the 27-litre Meteor engine. We managed to get the engine in there somehow. It took us about four years to build it. After we finished the build, Upper gear “He found out about it and made a big show out of it. Chris Evans became the owner of that car. He bought it after the show and then sold it to Jay Leno.”
What about other requests? Anything particularly strange? “We’ve had a few, but nothing too suspicious. Some people want to be able to pull up the carpet and have a little safe in there. They keep their passports in there and things like that. We built a car that went to Mexico. It was a long project that took two years longer than it should have because everything was a nightmare. It had power doors, power windows and air conditioning. He wanted albino alligator skin door panels and little details on the inside of the car. We said, ‘You can have brown leather. ’ I don’t like alligator leather.”
About 90 percent of the models Petersen makes are Bentley Blower “Specials.” If you see a 4.5-liter Petersen Blower next to an original 1920s Birkin, you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. But look closely and you’ll see some differences. Most Petersen cars are equipped with modern disc brakes, which are hidden under covers that look like original drums. Look at the 4.5-liter, six-cylinder “R” type engines and you’ll discover Petersen-designed camshafts, pistons, flywheels, crankshafts and heavy-duty clutches—all upgrades from the original parts. The interiors are practically luxurious. “We have USB ports under the dash and phone chargers,” Jesse says. “Most of our cars now have heated seats.”
How does it drive? “It’s the purest way to drive a car. You don’t have a windscreen or protection like you do in a normal convertible, so you’re out in the open. You have the noise, which is phenomenal. And the best thing is that you see happy faces. You get a smile from ear to ear. If you drive a Ferrari, people won’t let you out at a junction. If you drive something like that, they wave you out.”