1970s Bentley Specials: vintage fashion or folly?

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A vintage Bentley these days seems almost obliged to wear a Vanden Plas Le Mans-style body and be painted racing green, complete with fake weathered roundels, Union Jacks on its tiny doors and a low-burbling fishtail exhaust. Oh dear. The number of Standard Saloons, Sports Saloons, Drophead Coupés and Fixed-head Coupés must surely have thinned dramatically over the past couple of decades to create all these Le Mans-style replicas. Or are we imagining things?

The fact is that Bentley Specials are nothing new. In the late 1960s and throughout much of the 1970s, they were almost as fashionable as flared trousers. Based largely on Mk VI models with rotten bodywork but sound mechanicals, these then-cheap saloons and convertibles were transformed into lightweight sports cars in what was then described as a ‘vintage’ style. Today, however, many look awkwardly dated, with radiator grilles often mounted too far forward to convincingly resemble a genuine pre-war masterpiece. Vintage, yes — but not quite 1920s vintage. ‘Neo-classic’, perhaps.

Key builders included Derry Mallalieu, Harry Rose, Syd Lawrence and Halse Engineering, producing aluminium- or even fibreglass-bodied two-seaters and open tourers for a particular clientele, often on shortened chassis.

The Mk VI’s fine 4¼-litre engine was sometimes modified as well, or even replaced with a Daimler Majestic V8, as engineer and builder John Edwin Thomas famously did. Morgan racer and tuner Chris Lawrence offered his own tuned version of the straight-six, complete with four SU carburettors and a Salisbury differential. Geoffrey Shrive of Harlington also offered coupé variants, while Alan Padgett’s Specials featured V-shaped windscreens and bespoke tourer bodies.

Are these Britain’s answer to the Excalibur and Clénet? And what do we make of them today?

Words: Jeroen Booij
Pictures: H&H, Historic Auctioneers, Bring a Trailer, Graeme Hurst, Trade Classics

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