Concours d’Elegance translates from French to Competition of Elegance. In my opinion cars built prior to the Second World War are some of the most elegant and majestic to be produced. Today we’ll be having a look around the cars built between 1886 and 1945 at the Hampton Court Palace Concours of Elegance.
We’ll start with some of the cars from a fascinating character in British automotive history – W.O Bentley.
Bentley Motors was founded in 1919. Through the 1920s he produced luxury touring cars, but understood that motorsport was the ultimate proving ground for the reliability of his cars.
The 24 hour race at LeMans was the biggest race of the season for Bentley. In 1927 a 4.5 litre and two 3 litre cars were entered by the factory. They were named ‘Snitch’, ‘Witch’ and ‘Bitch’.
At 9:30PM Pierre Tabourin in a Theo Schneider entered the Maison Blanche (White House) corner too quickly and spun into a barrier. The resting place of the Schneider was obscured by the white house that the corner got its name from. This, mixed with the growing darkness, meant a pileup ensued involving 7 other cars, including the three Bentleys. ‘Snitch’ and ‘Bitch’ were both written off. Sammy Davis with ‘Witch’ helped his injured competitors before limping the car back to the pits.
Rules at the time stipulated that the car had to be fixed by the drivers, with the tools in the car. Davis and his co-driver Benjafield were able to jerry rig the car’s broken lighting and went on to not only finish the race but win it!
‘Bitch’ was repaired and changed hands several times over the years. It now belongs to Mike Dacre who takes the car to lots of events – including this one!
The most famous of the racing Bentleys was of course the ‘Blower’. One of Bentley’s works drivers, Tim Birkin, saw the success the Germans were having with supercharging. Birkin approached W.O Bentley with the idea of building a supercharged car but Bentley refused, saying that supercharging perverted the design of the engine.
Birkin was, however, able to convince heiress Dorothy Paget to invest £40,000 (£2.5 million today) into the Blower project.
This story comes to a head at LeMans in 1930. Birkin’s 4.5ltr supercharged Blowers would go up against W.O Bentley’s 6.5ltr naturally aspirated Speed Sixes.
As much as I love an underdog story, this sadly isn’t one. All three of Birkin’s Blowers retired with mechanical failures. The works team’s big Speed Sixes actually took first and second place.
I’ve made a couple of models of Birkin’s own car – UU 5872.
The first is the 1/12 scale Airfix kit: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2021/12/17/airfix-112-bentley-blower/
The second is a Penelope Pitlane slot car: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2018/01/30/penelope-pitlane-bentley-blower-build/
This particular Blower was prepared by Stanley Mann Racing who specialise in vintage Bentleys.
Outside of racing – it’s hard to deny the beauty of W.O Bentley’s road cars:
In 1931 Rolls Royce purchased the financially struggling Bentley Motors. The 8-Litre Bentley was a threat to the Rolls-Royce Phantom II, Rolls Royce took the opportunity to buy out their direct competitor.
This is a Bentley Derby, named as such because it was built at the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby. You can really see the family similarities between this and the Rolls-Royces of the era!
Here are some contemporary Rolls-Royces:
As lovely as the 1930s Rolls-Royces are, it’s the earlier Rolls-Royces that really capture my imagination. The brass-era cars especially!
There were a couple of cars from the 1920s. This 1923 20hp was originally commissioned by the Nawab (a title comparable to Prince) of Pahasu (a city in North-Western India). Sadly the Nawab passed away before he could take delivery of the car.
I love this serpent’s head air intake!
This next car has featured on this blog before, but it’s such a lovely story I feel compelled to tell it again.
This is a 1926 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp Phantom I commissioned by Clarence Warren Gasque, the financial director of F.W Woolworth UK for his wife Maude.
He essentially gave the coachbuilder – Charles Clark & Son Ltd – a blank cheque to build his wife a car inspired the Palace of Versailles and Marie Antoinette.
The cost of the completed car was £6500 (£516,000 today). A nice 3 bedroom semi-detached house in the U.K at the time would have cost £500 (£39,000 today). That means the car cost as much as 13 family homes! As romantic gifts go, that’s pretty extravagant!
Going back to the brass era for a minute with this beautiful 1904 Fiat!
I’ve built a few of George Turner Models’ Edwardian slot cars. This 1914 Humber would be a lovely candidate to be replicated.
Pre-War Bugattis are another love of mine. At this event there was a 1926 Type 35A race car.
Having the distributor mounted in the dashboard is a rather unusual detail.
The Type 57 Atalante. I’ve seen this car in person a few times now, and every time I find it spectacular! Bugatti’s road cars always seem to draw a mixed opinion from people though – some people love them and some people hate them. I’ve definitely in the love camp, but I appreciate that these cars are more like rolling art pieces and that the beauty of art is subjective.
I realise this article is getting a little bit long. I love this era car so I could happily write about each and every one. I’m gonna have to make a little gallery of some though to save on space and time.
This is a 1926 Amilcar CGSS. With a 1074cc engine this would have been perfect for ‘Voiturette’ (or small car) racing which had a maximum displacement of 1100cc. Voiturette racing was a very popular way for novice drivers to get into motorsport in the 1920s.
An Austin 7! I love these! I’d love to have one these, as they are a brilliant way to get into pre-war motoring and there’s a large online community of owners. However, where I live it would just be squished by an Audi being driven by someone texting.
A beautiful pair of Alfa-Romeos!
This is a 1939 Voisin C30 Saloon. Gabriel Voisin was an aviation pioneer and turned his hand to streamlined automobiles following the First World War.
The C30 saloon was the last model to be made prior to the Second World War. Voisin wanted to make luxury cars, but the economy in France in the 1930s simply meant the business was unviable. Following the war they did try to make a tiny commuter car called by Biscuter, but unfortunately the business folded in 1946.
The winner of the coveted Best of Show award was the 1928 Mercedes-Benz 710 SSK Rennwagen.
The SSK was a shortened version of the Mercedes S-Series (Super Sport Kurz, ‘Kurz’ translating to ‘short’) Rennwagen translates directly to race car.
This particular one raced in period in Argentina, before moving to the United States in the 1960s before returning to Europe in the 1990s.
My personal favourite car at the show though was the replica Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
The original run of cars was built between 1886 and 1893 and was the first commercially available internal combustion powered automobile.
As an automotive history nerd it was really cool to be able to spend some time up close with one of these.
The steering is rack and pinion!
However to steer you actually use a tiller like a boat rather than a wheel.
The drive train is a single cylinder unit that’s laying flat. To start it you spin the big flywheel that’s attached to the piston’s connecting rod (that’s what it would be on a modern car anyway.). The differential looking bit above the flywheel turns a leather belt (more on that later), which in turn spins a shaft in the centre of the car that’s connected by chains to the rear wheels.
Here’s a better shot of the horizontal piston assembly.
The leather belt between the engine and centre shaft acts as the clutch. There’s a big lever on the left hand side of the car that when pushed forward, tightens the belt and engages the drive wheels, then as you want to come to a stop you pull the lever back and it disengages. When the lever is right back it engages a second, smaller, brake belt to slow the car down.
Here’s a little video of it starting and idling.
Thanks for reading! I really hoped you enjoyed this look around the pre-war cars of the Hampton Court Palace Concours of Elegance.
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By Richard Francis
