Bentley Motor Cars, that purveyor of posh and pricey modern cars and SUVs, debuted its newest model, the Speed Six, at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. It’s been about 93 years in the making.
Well, 93 years plus one. The Speed Six continuation, an exacting recreation of the car that brought two consecutive victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1929 and 1930, represents Bentley’s second go at reliving a bit of its storied past. The first being the Blower continuation car of a few years back. The company announced last year that it would build 12 examples of the Speed Six, each of which would cost around $2 million. Now, after a year of testing and development the first example, “Car Zero” is complete. It turns out that history takes a bit of time.
Bentley
In addition to period engineering drawing and notes, Bentley used its own original Speed Six as well as a one of the 1930 Le Mans competitors as templates for the new version. As in 1930, the new car is powered by a 6.6-liter inline-six engine. More than 600 new parts were required to create the new engine which produces 205 horsepower, five more than the original race-prepped engines.
While Bentley will offer five historically correct paint color options, it’s hard to imagine anyone will choose something other than the Parsons Napier Green paint that bathes Car Zero. Many of the materials used for the Blower continuation series are used again for the Speed Six, including much of the trim.
Bentley
Bentley is not alone in the recreation business. Jaguar and Aston Martin have over the last several years rolled out recreations of their greatest hits of the 20th century. At about $2 million each, the 12 Speed Six continuation cars should represent a decent little profit for the company. But Bentley stresses that part of its motivation for creating this and the earlier Blower series is to keep alive traditional coachbuilding skills and techniques and pass them on to a new generation of craftsmen.
Production of the customer cars will begin in October and Bentley anticipates that all 12 will be complete by the end of 2025. Each car is estimated to take 10 months to finish. According to the company, every one of them is already spoken for. In fact, they were all spoken for a year ago when Bentley announced the model.
That’s fine. We will begin saving now for Bentley’s continuation copies of its 2003 Le Mans-winning Speed 8. If it follows the pattern set by the Blower and Speed Six recreations, that would happen in about the year 2096.
Bentley
Daniel PundExecutive Editor
Daniel Pund took the Executive Editor role at Road & Track in 2020 to help re-invent the venerable magazine brand. For nearly 30 years, Pund has toiled away as a feature writer, car reviewer, editor, and columnist for every car magazine that matters (including Car and Driver and Autoweek) and a few that didn’t. He’s also contributed to Esquire and GQ and other general-interest publications.
Keyword: The Bentley Speed Six Has Returned After 94 Years