The man on the other end of the phone seemed quite adamant, “You really can’t fully appreciate the complete history of the Bentley Motor Car Company without driving our new R420.” Well… who am I to argue with sound logic like that?
About two weeks later, a man knocked on my door, handed me a clipboard and asked me to sign on the bottom line. I signed the proffered piece of paper and he in turn handed me a set of keys and disappeared into a waiting car. The only thing he left behind to show he’d been there was one of the world’s fastest and most exclusive luxury cars, the Bentley Continental R420. Painted in a dark metallic green, the car looked big and menacing, with big, fat tires, stainless steel mesh grilles and a pair of chrome tail pipes, big enough to irrigate a cotton field. Make no mistake, this is not your grandpa Rockefeller’s Bentley. While sleek and stylish, with the expected amenities like supple Connelly leather, wood dash and deep sheepskin rugs, under the skin this Bentley boasts a 6.75-liter, turbocharged V-8 with 420 bhp and a brainstem crushing 645 lbs./ft of torque! I won’t mention all the performance details here, you can read about them in a new companion to the Racecar Profile section that we call “Blood Lines.” In future issues, where appropriate, we will continue to look at and test drive some of the “spritual descendants” of our featured racecars. While I found this month’s Bentley a truly remarkable car, what was almost as remarkable was the effect the car had on other people.
After first climbing behind the wheel, turning the key to the “On” position and pressing the bright-red starter button on the center console of the dash, I drove “my” new Bentley down to the local bagel shop for my morning infusion of caffeinated conciousness.
As background, I’ve bought coffee from this store every morning for a long time. The folks behind the counter are always pleasant, but aside from, “Good morning, the usual?” we’ve never shared too much conversation. This particular morning, after pulling up in front and walking into the store, you’d swear I was the counter guy’s long-lost brother.
“Dude, nice car! What is it?”
“It’s a Bentley.”
No sooner did I utter the words than his apron was off and he was leading me back outside to the car – much to the chagrin of three or four other morning zombies who weren’t going to get their fix until he was done ogling the Bentley.
“This thing is awesome,” he said, while settling in behind the wheel. “How fast will it go.”
“It’s supposed to be able to do 170,” I responded. “But I just got it this morning, so I can’t speak from personal experience.”
“This is yours?” he asked incredulously.
I laughed, “I wish. We’re doing a test drive of it for our magazine. At $328,000, I’d have a hard time swinging this one.”
At this point, my newfound friend (who, by the way, seems to go out of his way to talk with me now), looked at me in wonderment and said, “Dude! Someone just gave you a $300,000 car to drive around in?!?!” Nobody ever said the magazine business was supposed to make sense.
Over the course of the next five days, I got a lot more of the same. Neighbors, friends, people in the Home Depot parking lot, they all got a glassy-eyed look and wanted to know what it was, as if some alien spaceship had deposited it in the middle of a Nebraska corn field.
One thing I can tell you though, you really haven’t lived until you’ve pulled up to a McDonald’s drive-thru in your Bentley and ordered a happy meal – replete with daughter in her car seat.
However, perhaps the most thought-provoking experience came as racer Davey Jordan (whose recollections of the 1967 Trans-Am season can be read on page 30) and myself were driving back from a race meeting. We had been blasting along California’s long-and-fast Highway 5, marvelling at the smooth ride, incredible speed and surprising agility of Bentley’s latest flagship, when a car abruptly pulled up even with us. We both looked over at the same time to see a young, very attractive woman twisting around in the passenger seat to get a better look at the Bentley – all the while making some of the most obscene gestures with her tongue that I’ve ever seen! I wonder if this is what it was like to be a “Bentley Boy” in the roaring ’20s?
Do you think it’s possible to get a 30-year, variable rate car loan?
