We had never wanted nor looked for a Rolls Royce, though certainly, we knew the quality would be sublime and that for our purposes our lovely Riley 2 ½ RMC which broke something on every journey of any duration: a half shaft, a clutch shaft, a water pump shaft and numerous small and irritating items told us that this was not a car for serious European motoring.
So when the restorers of the Riley told us of a 1935 Derby Bentley 3 ½ Ltr DHC by Park Ward I went straight down to the local library to see what these cars looked like and was seduced: the following day I had bought from a farm barn in Kent a RR product nicely badged up as a Bentley.
There are 3 classifications for the Bentley marque the Cricklewood Bentley (the original) otherwise known as W.O. Bentleys, until they went bankrupt in 1929, and was subsumed into the RR company and these were built at the RR factory in Derby and our car was one of that factory’s production generically known as a Derby Bentley. RR during WW2 moved production for making the Merlin engine to Crewe and car production resumed there after the war these are the Crew Bentleys, such as the 1955 S1 Continental which came into our lives several years later.
It was clear from its appearance that this beautiful Derby Bentley with its flowing wings and boot mounted spare wheel would need a new hood, repair to the wings, some chromium plating and a good tidy up!
Little did I know that the car would require a full body off restoration to every working part of the chassis: this meant from the air inside the tyres, from the oil inside the sumps and from the wooden frame beneath the lovely aluminium bodywork, every item from gauges to electrical components, to wiring, to in fact everything would need complete renovation, if we intended to use the car for which it was designed, as a Grand Tourer!
Fiennes Engineering carried out a complete chassis overhaul, Clanfield Restorations carried out the fitting of a new Ash frame and reskinning it with as much of the original aluminium bodywork which amounted to about 80% and the repainting. Brian Frost retrimmed the car with new Wilton carpet, Connelly leather and Mohair hood material whilst London Chroming attended to all the brightwork.
This Derby Bentley looked dazzling in 2 colours of a subdued green and its elegant chromium plated radiator sitting between the giant Lucas P100 headlamps fronting that long elegant bonnet was pure 1930s elegance!
We set off for France as a young family to receive our first shock as we pulled off the M2 motorway bound for Dover: the steering box had seized: It took all my strength to manage a roundabout! This, a common problem with RR steering boxes of the period, was due to the design of a worm and nut with white metal lining which rapidly wears and when the car gets properly hot it causes the worm to seize in the nut! This was later put right by the fitting of a Marles type steering box as fitted to the later MX series Derbys. Its advantage was it had recirculating balls in an oil bath.
Numerous teething troubles manifested themselves on many Continental journeys: the rebuilt shock absorbers were of the Armstrong design and useless, the clutch, of RR design and manufacture was prone to severe snatching, and this was later corrected by superfine grinding of the pressure plate. The brakes all relined and assisted by the wonderful RR servo of Hispano-Suiza origins, were absolutely useless and dangerous which we experienced as we descended Mt. Ventoux on one occasion! The fettling of these took hours with a horseshoe rasp and sandpaper until we got a concentric mating of the shoes to the drums when they became useable in modern traffic.
As the years went by and the usage we put the car to told us that this lovely engine really did not like sustained high revs as one finds needed on the autoroutes of France or the motorways of England. To improve this we had an overdrive axle fitted and this calmed the engine down, but the heat generated into the cabin was still excessive and required the car to be driven with the hood down: we never did overcome that stifling heat, particularly unpleasant for our daughters in the back seats where we had to fit egg crates under the carpet on the floor for their little feet to rest on as a form of insulation!
It was time to consider moving on from our beautiful Park Ward Derby which could not be expected to keep up with modern traffic and just as the Derby, through somebody in the trade, had found us, so it was that our first Bentley Continental a Mulliner coupe, 1960 S2 found us when Paul Wood said this car would be a real Grand Tourer that could not only keep up with modern traffic but could easily lead it: a new adventure in motorcars had begun.