Bentley 4½ litre

This car is about to be shown the starting flag in Manchester's Exchange Station car park at the start of the LAC's  Manchester to Blackpool Veteran and Vintage Car Run in May 1992.

It's a 4½ litre Bentley, and the only information about it in the programme of the event is that it's a 1927 Bentley 4½ litre Le Mans and was entered by Martin W Ingham of Harwood, Bolton. The Vintage Bentleys site though says that the car - chassis number RN3044 and engine number RN3048 - was originally delivered to its first owner, in Australia, with a 4-seat open touring Vanden Plas body and was given the registration number BPB 908. It subsequently went to the USA then to the UK, where it  appears to have been given its Le Mans replica body and registration number SL 9705, and the last record of it is at the Technik Museum Speyer in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Bentley 4½ litre

I took this photograph at the Silverstone Historic Tribute meeting in June 2004.

It's one of Stanley Mann's cars and is shown in the programme of the event as a 1929 Bentley 4½ litre Le Mans VDP. It apparently started off life as a 3 litre Vanden Plas 4 seater which was delivered to an Air Commodore Webb Bowen in December 1924. It was later rebuilt as a 4½ litre.