A recent blog post talked about high end luxury car manufacturers producing “designer ” homes. Well in that theme we have another car story. This one is firmly lodged in Historic Charleston and connected with our now completed renovation of the Gadsden House into an event and Charleston wedding space. I’ve always wanted a pre-war racing Bentley. A huge thunderous beast but they typically carry an equally thunderous price. But I was lucky to get one and in the end – not at such a great cost.
Growing up as a child in Wales in the 1960’s I had a small collection of Matchbox and Dinkey toys. Saloons and police cars, trucks, tanks , tractors …… all kept in an old biscuit tin under my bed. My two favorite were a racing Speed 6 Bentley of 1930’s era and a Type 35 or 37 Bugatti of 1920’s fame. They formed my mental mold of what a racing car looked like and it’s pretty much stuck.
I’ll speak to the Bugatti in another blog but let’s talk about the Bentley. This things are huge and rare meaning they are hugely expensive if you want one with pedigree. Restoring the Gadsden House into a premiere Charleston wedding venue was my motivation as we need a high class wedding car to compliment it. A contact in Louisville, Kentucky was my prompt when he offered me a deal for cash that I forgot to tell my long suffering wife about.
He had a very rusty 1947 MK VI Bentley for sale with a good chassis and gearbox but no engine. I found an old military engine on Ebay from a British Army Saracen light tank. We found switches from World War 1 biplanes and a few other nuggets on the internet. Everything was shipped to a contact of mine in Wales who specializes in Bentley restorations with instructions to “cut and shut ” the chassis, make a new body and make it look like a 1930’s pre-war design. Well, there was a bit more discussion than that but let us keep it simple for now. The end result arrived a few weeks ago to be displayed at the Concourse de Elegance in Pebble Beach, CA before shipping to its final home in Charleston. Now this is where the fun can start but I’ll let you all be the judge of the end result.
We push the boundaries around here from time to time … but by “daring to be different, ” it’s possible to achieve a result that would ordinarily be beyond your budget. That is what we achieve in our homes, in our restorations and in our hobbies.
Note – for those interested, you can find a log of the restoration as it progressed – look HERE.
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