Bentley

I have recalled some tales about my love of Jensens. Dad had the two Interceptors back at the beginning of the 1970s and we have had the current car for 24 years now, I don’t think I could ever sell it, as it is so much of my dad. When it was time to move the Jensen on, he went out and bought a low mileage Bentley T1 in a good 70s walnut brown colour, the start of another favourite marque developed. I had my 17th birthday while dad had the car and I remember putting ‘L’ plates on the car and being able to go out in it (can you imagine the insurance companies allowing that today!).

So two years ago I sold some property and the idea of a Shadow started to formulate, over the years I have bought a number of books on Rolls Royce’s and Bentleys, I didn’t need to do much research as having read so many books and magazine articles I was after a Shadow 1, I trawled through eBay and Autotrader and found many for sale. Many were sad rotten tatty basket cases which were discounted straight away, I found four/five at the other extreme topping out at over £70k for a simply magnificent low mileage Shadow, although a few people warned me how Shadows do not like standing unused for long periods of time and then subsequent large recommissioning services.

I ended up speaking to a few dealers and a couple of owners, finally driving up to Moffatt to look at a nice blue Shadow 1 with all lovely chrome, interior was pretty good, but it had a patchy service history and a lot of owners. The owner was such a character, he had been the local GP, in his front garden he had a full-size glass fibre WWII Spitfire and an interesting collection of a few cars. We then went out for a drive in the car and on a straight road it felt nice, but came up to a couple of roundabouts and it just handled terribly, lurching into corners, I soon realised the beautiful chrome bumpers were not enough.

I then decided that a Shadow II would hopefully be a much better drive and found a number of them around the £20/£30k mark, sadly most of them down south. One particular really nice green one in Kent with an electric sunroof that really ticked my boxes, it was a private sale, he sent me lot of pictures and videos of the car, but I could see a number of bad paint issues, poor leather and cracked wood on the car.

Next, I found a garage in Blackburn selling a number of Shadows, they had from the pictures what looked like a really good brown and beige interior with low mileage and from a long-term owner. On the way to test the car I really had thought that if I liked the drive of it, I would be buying the car, I never even took it out, now this was priced at £30k but it just had so many things wrong it. He did have a fantastic white Shadow II with great blue leather interior and in just beautiful condition, but I did not want a ‘wedding’ car in white.

Next I saw a very nice looking two tone silver and blue Shadow in Leeds, I went twice to look at this car, only about 20k miles and not many owners, it did drive so much better but somehow that car did not ring true for the mileage and condition of it, I still wasn’t convinced when the owner turned up at the garage to pick up his Arnage and he told me the car had to be the best Shadow in the country.

A real strange occurrence happened next and the green car from Kent arrived at the garage in Blackburn, I went to look at it, it drove ok, but the paint was a bit iffy, especially with some rust bubbles by the sunroof that really worried me, the leather was scratched and the wood poor in places. The colour also got very mixed reviews, some liked it, and some hated it.
I walked away to go and look at another Shadow outside Preston, this had looked so good in the pictures but in the flesh, it was pretty miserable. The dealer obviously realised I didn’t like it, next to it there was a car under a cover, it looked like a Spirit, he said he had a very nice low mileage one owner car under the cover. He lifted the cover to reveal a bright red Bentley Brooklands from 1995, he asked if I had ever driven one and I said no, so we took it out for a drive, I think within the first 100 yards I knew this was a nice car and it drove just so nicely compared to any Shadows. I didn’t have much time that day to really crawl over it, I went home and just kept thinking how nice the car was. After a few slightly tense phone calls and emails negotiating a deal we agreed on a price and that he would MOT the car, but not service it. Another plus point of this car is that it was something like £10k less than most of the Shadows I had been looking at, I went back a week later to collect the car and just love it to bits. I had the car serviced as I didn’t trust the guy to do it properly, it turned out to have two broken rear springs so was bit amused to how it passed its MOT with him.

In two years I have now driven over five thousand miles in the car, including a trip to Le Mans in April last year with 110 other gay classic car guys. I never thought I would end up with a red Bentley Brooklands, a small part of me wishes it had been a Turbo model, but then really she is fast enough and probably gets another few miles per gallon (or is that miles per smile?), I still look at some Spirits and I am not keen on the subtle differences between them, somehow the grill, colour coded fitted bumpers, centre console just make the Bentley so much nicer.