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| J.Ernst, Blower Bentley, Le Mans Classic 2016. |
For more photos of the pre-war cars at the 2016 Le Mans Classic, click on the link above.
Bentley, Cricklewood, England. Tim Birkin, the famous Bentley driver, came up with the idea of supercharging the 4.5 litre Bentley as a way of beating the supercharged Alfa Romeos of the time. The idea did not meet with the approval of W.O.Bentley who favoured building a bigger engine to keep the reliability that had proved one of Bentley's strong points. Nevertheless, Tim Brikin persuaded the Bentley chairman Woolf Barnato to build over fifty super-charged examples so that they could enter the 1930 Le Mans. The supercharged or blower Bentleys had a top speed advantage of about 12mph over the non-blown versions. The blower bentley's did as, W.O. had predicted, prove unreliable. Neither of the two blown cars finished the 1930 Le Mans 24 hours. However, Tim Birkin did finish second in that year's French GP in the blown Bentley behind a Bugatti Type 35.
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