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Retro drive: Bentley R-Type Continental. Image by Richard Pardon.

Retro drive: Bentley R-Type Continental
Don’t crash it, don’t crash it, don’t crash it, don’t crash it… was pretty much all we remember of driving this glorious old £1m Bentley.

   



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1952 Bentley R-Type Continental

4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5

Good points: stunning appearance, lovely interior, elegant manners

Not so good: the biting point of the clutch... oh, and driving it is utterly terrifying because it's so bloody expensive

What is it?

Beautiful, isn't it? This is the 1952 Bentley R-Type Continental, which - in its day - was the most expensive car in the world and also the fastest four-seater machine, too. The Continental was the sleeker coupe version of the R-Type saloon, which - in turn - was a Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn with Bentley-specific details. But while the R-Type saloon outsold its Rolls analogue by almost three-to-one in a three-year production run that saw more than 2,300 examples leave Bentley's factory, the Continental was a much rarer beast. With all but 15 of the bodies for this car made by H. J. Mulliner, only 208 of these breathtakingly pretty vehicles ever saw the light of day. And one of those was a prototype called Olga. No, really.

Anyway, this is a classic car from the depths of your mind's eye. If someone asks you to think of a thoroughly stunning vehicle from days gone by, chances are you'll conjure up something like the R-Type Continental in your head - a graceful form, long and sensuous, complete with flowing lines and elegant detailing. Honestly, we're really not much into cars from much before 1965, if we're honest, but the R-Type ought to make even the staunchest, Apple-obsessed Millennial accept that not everything is better in the 21st century. Cars don't come as supermodel attractive as this any longer.

Or as near-priceless. This is, comfortably, the most expensive thing we've ever driven, but more on that anon. Anyway, its outlandish worth is fitting because it hails from 1952, the year that Elizabeth II ascended the throne, and 68 years ago there was no car in the world which would relieve you of more cash for the privilege of owning it. Specifically, £6,928 for an R-Type Continental by Mulliner, which might not sound that much when inflation-adjusted to 2019 rates and a £200,000 figure, but it's a number which is put into more startling context when we tell you that the average price of a house in London in 1952 was £2,650. So you could have bought two decent homes and a tatty rental property in the capital, for the price of just one of these exquisite cars.

It was also the fastest four-seater vehicle available in the early 1950s, capable of up to 120mph and supposedly happy cruising at 100mph with four occupants and all their luggage onboard. Power came from a 4.6-litre straight-six shared with the R-Type saloon and the Silver Dawn, and in the case of this wonderful example belonging to the Bentley heritage fleet then drive was sent to the wheels via a four-speed manual gearbox. Rather incredibly, this makes it the last Bentley ever to be sold with a clutch pedal, too.

The interior is a masterpiece of its day, with a walnut dashboard studded with plain but legible dials, and an upside-down speedometer which reads to 220km/h, befitting the car's three-figure-speeds status. It's weirdly unergonomic in that way old cars often are, so the seats won't adjust for the 95th percentile of the population, there are no safety belts at all and the short, stubby gearshift is mounted in the footwell where the driver climbs into the car. Also, the handbrake is a lever situated low to the right on the dash, and operating it is not the most intuitive process in the world. Still, it's a phenomenal thing, all told, and the anticipation of driving it is high, until the cheerful bloke who serves as JAS 949's guardian tells us that the car is worth anything from three-quarters of a mill to the full £1,000,000 in today's market. GULP.

Why are you driving it?

It was part of the Classics and Motorsport section of the Bentley Toy Box event in Northamptonshire earlier this year, at which a varied array of machines were available for testing - in order to better understand this hallowed marque's development over the years. Drives in the R-Type were necessarily serene and brief, in order to preserve it as best as possible, but we weren't going to turn down the chance to have a go in it on the basis that we otherwise wanted to take it for a proper 'thrash'. Not when it easily predates even the legendary L-Series six-and-three-quarter V8, which we'd tried in the Continental R Mulliner Final Series and Mulsanne Speed already. And, apparently, as a further incentive to clamber aboard this precious 1952 collector's item, the stylists at Bentley who were working at Crewe in the early Volkswagen Era years used the R-Type Continental's lithe form as the inspiration for the shape of the first Continental GT. Hence why Bentley's modern-day grand tourer is called the 'Continental' in the first place. So it's not only abnormally expensive, it's the car which, loosely, set the template for the modern Bentley today.

Is it any good these days?

Let's be clear, we didn't take this beyond 40mph once on a journey that lasted all of four miles and which was conducted with a friendly yet thoroughly essential Bentley chaperone in the passenger seat. Therefore, if you've come here to listen to wildly exaggerated stories about how the R-Type Continental can 'oversteer with the right coercion' or that 'heel-and-toe downshifts are the work of a moment', you've come to the wrong place entirely. We pootled in it. We ambled along at very genteel pace, keeping it away from anything that might look like it would damage the captivating bodywork. We were as mechanically sympathetic with it as we could possibly be, save for the fact the biting point on the clutch was basically in the last 2mm of pedal travel, so just getting the R-Type rolling smoothly from a standing start was tricky, to say the least.

But what we could ascertain on what must have been 15 of the most terrifying driving minutes of our life ('oh god, there's a car coming the other way... watch out for those sheep that are several fields away... CRIPES, MIND THAT TWIG, WILL YOU?!') is how majestic this thing must have felt to those rare few who could afford to own it when it was new; of how they must have marvelled at the cushioned ride, at the smoothness and muscle of the straight-six engine, at the sybaritic qualities of the cabin architecture. So while we'll say that 2020 showed the steering up to be slow and exceedingly heavy, and that the brakes were practically non-existent when you pressed them, and that the gearshift was as recalcitrant as you'd imagine a septuagenarian manual 'box to be, and that we never once got the hang of the clutch's biting point, and that we were utterly petrified of doing some irreversible damage to either the R-Type's mechanicals or its immaculate metalwork during the few precious seconds it was in our care, we nevertheless enjoyed having the privilege of sampling 1952's worldwide halo car in the cut and thrust of the modern age. We're not sure we could ever bring ourselves, if those lottery numbers came in, to buy one and then drive it without a care in the world today, but as something to be sampled every once in a while - like a bottle of fine and incredibly dear wine - it would be fantastic to have an R-Type Continental in the collection of dream and exotic cars.

Is it a genuine classic, or just some mildly interesting old biffer?

It doesn't matter that we didn't expose the R-Type Continental's chassis to the rigours of an absolute on-the-limit dynamic work-out, this is about as classic as classic cars can be. Astonishingly rare, freakishly expensive and likely to elicit covetous behaviour in affluent car collectors around the globe, there are plenty of shining reasons why this magnificent old Bentley will rightly command a seven-figure asking price in this day and age. We're honoured and also delighted we drove it, even for a very short and exceedingly gentle jaunt. But we're even more delighted we didn't ding it, mind.

The numbers

Model tested: 1952 Bentley R-Type Continental (Mulliner)
Price: when new in 1952, £6,928 (circa £200,841, inflation-adjusted for 2019); approximately £750,000-£1 million today
Build period: 1952-1955
Build numbers: 208 (specifically Continentals, of which 193 were bodied by H. J. Mulliner)
Engine: 4.6-litre straight-six petrol
Transmission: rear-wheel drive, four-speed manual
Body style: two-door fixed-head luxury coupe
Combined economy: N/A
Top speed: 120mph
0-62mph: approx. 13.2 seconds
Power: c.130hp at unknown rpm
Torque: N/A
Weight: 1,700kg



Matt Robinson - 23 Oct 2020



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2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.

2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.2020 Toy Box Bentley R-Type Continental 1952. Image by Richard Pardon.








 

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