In pictures: The most expensive Rolls ever and a Bentley legend
Toys for big boys with big budgets (and egos) made the headlines during Britain's Goodwood Festival of Speed when a pair of bidders dug deep to come up with $16-million to acquire the most expensive Rolls-Royce sold at auction and a legendary racing Bentley that commanded the highest price ever paid for a British built car.
The 1912 Rolls, which sold for £4.7-million, is famous as the car on which was based the Corgi Silver Ghost die-cast models that 1960s British schoolboys played with.
The 40/50 model chassis provided by RR was a massive affair with solid axles front and back, powered by a 7.0-litre inline-six that produced 50 hp at 1,50 0rpm, and came with a four-speed gearbox.
The two final battling bidders engaged in their own version of schoolyard braggadocio bumping bids by £50,000 and £100,000 a time to more than two-and-a-half times the pre-auction estimate.
The car that became known as “The Corgi” was acquired from Rolls-Royce in 1912 by Londoner John Stephens who had purchased the first vehicle sold under that soon-to-be-famous name established in 1906.
It could reach a top speed of 60 mph (97 km/h), but its steam-engine torque allowed top gear flexibility between three mph and that top speed.
Stephens turned it over to coachbuilders Barker & Co. for its bodywork
Barkers, which had been around since 1710 and built coaches for British royalty, created a luxurious Double Pullman Limousine body, inspired by the luxury railway coaches of the period.
The 1929 4-1/2-litre “Blower Bentley,” which went under the hammer for few thousand quid over £5-million ($7.85-million), was the favorite toy of Sir Henry Ralph Stanley “Tim” Birkin.
Baronet Birkin was one of the racy “Bentley Boys” who brought the marque's name to fame in the 1920s with wins at Le Mans and on the Brooklands circuit.
Nicknamed Tiger Tim after a comic book character of the day, Birkin was a fighter pilot in the First World War, began his racing career in 1921 and, after a hiatus, resumed it in 1927, at the wheel of a 3.0-litre.
A year later, he got his hands on one of Bentley's new 4.5-litre racers and finished fifth at Le Mans, and a year later won it with co-driver Barnato in a larger-engined Speed Six.
Engine designer Bentley was a displacement enthusiast and his 4.5-litre made a respectable for the day 130 hp, but Tiger Tim felt some forced induction puff would liven things up and keep the smaller engine competitive.
Over Bentley's protests, but with backing from Barnato, he began developing what became a series of 50-plus supercharged cars known as the “Blower Bentleys” whose engines produced 240 hp.
Birkin's blown-Bentleys never won at Le Mans as he intended but the single-seater track racing special he created made a name for itself at the notorious Brooklands circuit, an Indianapolis 500-style rough concrete bowl.