{"id":65726,"date":"2025-07-08T14:18:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T18:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/racing-legends-reborn-how-bentleys-blue-train-inspires-a-bold-new-era\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T14:18:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T18:18:06","slug":"racing-legends-reborn-how-bentleys-blue-train-inspires-a-bold-new-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/racing-legends-reborn-how-bentleys-blue-train-inspires-a-bold-new-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Racing Legends Reborn How Bentley\u2019s Blue Train Inspires a Bold New Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the story behind the Bentley Blue Train Special?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever wondered why the Bentley Blue Train Special holds such an outsized place in automotive lore, you\u2019re not alone. The story is a blend of daring, luxury, and a bit of British cheek. Back in 1930, Woolf Barnato\u2014Bentley\u2019s owner, a double Le Mans winner, and heir to a diamond fortune\u2014made a wager that would become legendary. Sitting in the bar of the Hotel Carlton in Cannes, he bet \u00a3100 that he could beat the famed Blue Train, a luxury express ferrying England\u2019s elite from the Riviera to Calais, back to London. Not just by minutes, but by a margin that would make headlines.<\/p>\n

Barnato and his friend Dale Bourne set off in a Bentley Speed Six just before 6pm, braving rain, fog, a burst tire, and the logistical nightmare of finding fuel in rural France. Against the odds, they parked outside London\u2019s Conservative Club four minutes before the Blue Train even reached Calais. The result? Pure magic. Barnato pocketed his winnings but paid a heavier price in fines from irate French officials, who also barred Bentley from exhibiting at the Paris Salon that year. Yet, the legend of the Blue Train Bentley was born, cementing both car and driver in the annals of motoring history.<\/p>\n

Which car really raced the Blue Train\u2014and why does it matter?<\/p>\n

For decades, the car believed to have made the run was the stunning Gurney Nutting-bodied Speed Six Sportsman\u2019s Coup\u00e9. Its sweeping lines and imposing presence seemed to fit the story perfectly. But recent research by its owners, Bruce and Jolene McCaw, revealed a twist: Barnato actually drove an HJ Mulliner-bodied Speed Six saloon, not the coup\u00e9. His own notes mention fuel cans in the boot\u2014a feature the coup\u00e9 lacked.<\/p>\n

This revelation didn\u2019t diminish the coup\u00e9\u2019s allure or value (currently estimated at over \u00a36 million). Instead, it added a layer of intrigue to the Blue Train saga. The McCaws even tracked down and restored the original saloon, preserving both cars as icons of Bentley\u2019s golden age. For enthusiasts, the distinction matters. It\u2019s a reminder that legends are often more complex\u2014and more interesting\u2014than the myths we build around them.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like to drive the Blue Train Special through modern London?<\/p>\n

Imagine piloting a three-ton, nearly century-old grand tourer through the heart of London. That\u2019s exactly what Bentley\u2019s director of royal and VIP relations, Richard Charlesworth, did with the Gurney Nutting coup\u00e9. The car\u2019s sheer size is striking\u2014it\u2019s shorter and lower than the standard 6\u00bd Litre, but still dwarfs most modern vehicles. Its massive wire wheels and towering roofline command attention wherever it goes.<\/p>\n

The driving experience is a world apart from today\u2019s luxury cars. The Speed Six\u2019s 6,597cc straight-six engine delivers a deep, torquey rumble, and the controls demand real skill. There\u2019s no power steering, and the turning circle is a generous 45 feet. Every gear change is a deliberate, double-clutch affair, and the brakes\u2014while powerful\u2014require you to plan ahead. Yet, the ride is surprisingly comfortable. The car\u2019s weight flattens out London\u2019s potholes, and the enveloping bucket seats offer a kind of old-world embrace.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most striking is the public\u2019s reaction. Tourists and locals alike are drawn to the Blue Train\u2019s presence, snapping photos and asking questions. There\u2019s a sense of goodwill that follows vintage cars, a shared appreciation for their history and character.<\/p>\n

How does the Blue Train legacy influence Bentley\u2019s future?<\/p>\n

Bentley\u2019s new EXP 15 concept draws direct inspiration from the Blue Train era, signaling a return to bold, high-riding luxury. The company is leaning into its heritage, using the spirit of adventure and innovation embodied by Barnato\u2019s run to shape its next generation of vehicles. This isn\u2019t just nostalgia\u2014it\u2019s a strategic move. According to Bentley\u2019s own market research, nearly 70% of their new customers cite the brand\u2019s history as a major reason for their purchase.<\/p>\n

The EXP 15\u2019s design cues\u2014its imposing stance, luxurious interior, and performance focus\u2014are all nods to the Blue Train\u2019s blend of speed and sophistication. Bentley\u2019s commitment to electrification and sustainability is layered on top, ensuring the brand remains relevant in a rapidly changing automotive landscape. Industry analysts point out that heritage brands like Bentley have a unique advantage: they can innovate without losing their identity, provided they stay true to the qualities that made them iconic in the first place.<\/p>\n

What makes the Blue Train Special more than just a car?<\/p>\n

The Blue Train Special isn\u2019t just a piece of metal and leather. It\u2019s a rolling testament to the power of ambition, the thrill of competition, and the enduring appeal of craftsmanship. Driving it through London isn\u2019t just about nostalgia\u2014it\u2019s about connecting with a time when cars were built for adventure, and the journey was as important as the destination.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a sense of community among vintage car owners. Whether you\u2019re parked outside the Savoy or threading through side streets, you\u2019re part of a living tradition. Even the Savoy\u2019s bartenders keep the memory alive, mixing Woolf Barnato cocktails from a recipe book that\u2019s survived since the 1930s. It\u2019s these little rituals\u2014the stories, the shared experiences\u2014that keep the legend vibrant.<\/p>\n

The big takeaway? The Blue Train Special isn\u2019t about perfection\u2014it\u2019s about smarter adjustments. Start with one change this week, and you\u2019ll likely spot the difference by month\u2019s end. Whether you\u2019re restoring a classic, chasing a dream, or just appreciating a piece of history, it\u2019s the willingness to adapt, to learn, and to savor the ride that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Bentley<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bentley \u2018Blue Train Special\u2019 inspired the new EXP 15 concept \u2013 we experience it<\/p>\n

\n

Bentley has unveiled the EXP 15<\/a>, a new concept that provides a scintillating first look at its new era. A high-riding limousine, it actually takes inspiration from the ‘Blue Train’, a special driven by Bentley<\/a> Boy Woolf Barnato in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

In this feature\u00a0from 2014, Steve Cropley<\/a>\u00a0visits\u00a0some of Barnato’s favourite haunts in the Blue Train.\u00a0This is what it feels like to thread it through London’s side streets…<\/p>\n

The Bentley Boys are back in town<\/h2>\n

The point of owning a special car, owners say, is that you can use it to do special things. However, for Woolf Barnato, 35-year-old double Le Mans winner and owner of Bentley Motors in the spring of 1930, the usual order of things was reversed: he had an activity in mind but needed the car. What he did about that created, over the next 84 years, the curious tale of the Bentley Blue Train.<\/p>\n

Barnato had inherited his father\u2019s South African diamond mining fortune and was a prominent member of London\u2019s car-mad social scene. The task he set himself had already been well publicised. Both a Rover and an Alvis had recently raced and beaten the famous Blue Train, the French express known for assisting England\u2019s wealthy to \u2018winter\u2019 on the French Riviera. However, each had merely beaten the train by minutes, and from the bar of the Hotel Carlton in Cannes, Barnato decided a Bentley could do much better. He bet \u00a3100 that he could leave with the Blue Train and be parked outside his London club by the time it reached Calais. On 13 March, with his friend Dale Bourne riding shotgun, he set off just before 6pm in his Bentley Speed Six to prove it.<\/p>\n

Near Lyons the pair was slowed by heavy rain. At Auxerre they lost time searching for a fuelling point. Further north they encountered dense fog and burst a tyre, but they still made the Boulogne cross-channel ferry at 10.30am and reached London in the early afternoon, parking outside the Conservative Club in St James\u2019s Street four minutes before the Blue Train steamed into Calais station at 3.54pm. Barnato collected his \u00a3100 but was fined considerably more by furious French authorities for racing on public roads. And in a fascinating link between law enforcement and commerce, the French organisers also managed to prevent Bentley from exhibiting cars at the Paris Salon later that year \u2013 but nothing could affect the fame of the legendary \u2018Blue Train\u2019 Bentley.<\/p>\n

\"Bentley<\/p>\n

For decades it was presumed that Barnato\u2019s Cannes-London Bentley was the magnificent Gurney Nutting-bodied Speed Six Sportsman\u2019s Coup\u00e9 you see here, owned by Bruce and Jolene McCaw of Washington and imported temporarily to the UK last year for various anniversaries and re-enactments. As late as 2005, the coup\u00e9 was still being portrayed as the authentic record-breaker, though by then doubts had surfaced.<\/p>\n

New research by the owner revealed the truth: Barnato had raced across France in an HJ Mulliner-bodied Speed Six saloon. His notes had referred clearly to a saloon that carried fuel cans in its boot \u2013 and the coup\u00e9 didn\u2019t have one. In fact, Barnato had taken delivery of the Gurney Nutting two-door two weeks later and christened it, in all innocence, the Blue Train Special in honour of his achievement.<\/p>\n

All this the McCaws established beyond doubt. Then, to complete the job, they found, bought and restored the original Speed Six saloon. Nothing, however, could detract from the Gurney Nutting coup\u00e9\u2019s value (\u00a36 million and counting) or unique appeal \u2013 which is why we came to be driving it by kind permission of the indulgent owners through London\u2019s pitiless traffic.<\/p>\n

Our plan was to do a Barnato heritage tour of London, starting at the famous Jack Barclay dealership in Berkeley Square (the world\u2019s largest and oldest Bentley emporium) and visiting four of the great man\u2019s haunts before arriving at the famous Savoy Hotel, where Barnato and his Bentley Boy friends were regulars. Their fame was such that, to this day, the Savoy\u2019s skilled bar staff can still reach into their famed recipe book and mix you a Woolf Barnato cocktail.<\/p>\n

\"Bentley<\/p>\n

It was spitting when we assembled at 9am, but the dullness outside only served to make the Blue Train Special gleam more brightly under Jack Barclay\u2019s showroom lights. The Gurney Nutting coup\u00e9 is shorter and lower than the regulation sixcylinder 6\u00bd Litre from which it is derived, but it still dwarfed the longest modern in the showroom, with its immense wire wheels and a roof line, despite being \u2018chopped\u2019 in modern parlance, well above my head. Imposing is the word. Roughly a third of 6\u00bd Litres were Speed Sixes \u2013 hotter because of their higher compression ratios, twin SU carburettors and performance camshafts. They were rated at 180bhp at 3500rpm, compared with 147bhp for the standard 6\u00bd. The successful racing versions went well beyond 200bhp.<\/p>\n

Against a modern straight six, this is not a smooth engine, but then you\u2019ll be pushed to find a modern six so big. The enormity of its rotating masses (capacity is 6597cc, or well over a litre per cylinder) and the ultra-long stroke of 140mm, compared with the 100mm bore, give it a healthy rumble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s extremely torquey, though \u2013 one of those engines that seems to develop 100lb ft of torque when merely idling, which it can do very slowly if you set the timing and mixture using the elegant steering wheel levers. Our driver, Richard Charlesworth (whose official position as Bentley\u2019s director of royal and VIP relations meant he wouldn\u2019t be doing much rabbiting about his day job), is perhaps the firm\u2019s foremost expert at driving cars of the \u2018WO\u2019 era, and he took the wheel.<\/p>\n

We headed first for Grosvenor Square, half a mile away, where Barnato\u2019s elegant home at No 50 stands at the south-eastern corner, farthest from the looming US Embassy that occupies the western end 400 metres away. In front of the house there\u2019s an inviting-looking parking apron known in period as Bentley\u2019s Corner, and we were worried as we bumped the mighty car over kerbs on to what today is most definitely a footpath, expecting at any second platoons of machine gun-toting security men to arrive, wanting to know our intentions and political leanings.<\/p>\n

\"Bentley<\/p>\n

No one came. No one, that is, except for curious tourists by the dozen. It went to prove what any vintage car owner will tell you: the general public is interested in and entirely unthreatened by old cars and has an instinctive liking for their antiquity. While they swirled, we took a minute to savour the elegance of the surroundings before heading back into the traffic, peering through the slit screen, over the louvred bonnet, past the dinner-plate headlights and on to the road.<\/p>\n

Driving a car like this in London is something you\u2019d never manage if you hadn\u2019t established familiarity with it in easier-going traffic. First, there\u2019s the ultra-heavy, unassisted steering and 45ft (my estimate) turning circle to contend with. If you only ever drive moderns, you forget what a huge part of driving time is taken up with clutch and transmission management. Sure, the engine is huge and flexible, but any gearchange, up or down, requires a time-consuming double shuffle (one-pause-clutch-clunk-two) that simply can\u2019t be banged through, no matter how many white vans are snapping at your rear. Same for the brakes. They\u2019re powerful, but the car\u2019s a three-tonner. Start slowing before you have to, that\u2019s the rule.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s comfortable. Not exactly spacious, but it has those enveloping bucket seats of the early days of motoring and room enough to stick your legs more or less straight out in front. Despite the lack of independent suspension at either end, the Bentley\u2019s weight simply mashes most bumps into submission, and with such a vast wheelbase, fully a metre longer than some family cars, the big beast simply never pitches.<\/p>\n

We hunted for a while before finding our next landmark, the old Gurney Nutting coachbuilding shop in Elystan Street, behind the King\u2019s Road, where the Blue Train coup\u00e9\u2019s special body was reputedly built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first we saw only blocks of f lats, but suddenly there it was, small, perfectly placed and venerable enough to be a coachbuilder\u2019s shop. Our hearts leapt. Then it was back through Berkeley Square again \u2013 past the Morton\u2019s Club greatly favoured by Barnato and his chums \u2013 and into St James\u2019s Street, where we parked outside the old Conservative Club. Again, the confidence of the old-car owner came to the fore; we must have stood there for 15 minutes, funnelling taxis and tourist buses from two lanes into one while various snappers (moving and still) did their stuff. We were never hassled.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d travelled five or six miles in as many hours, so it was well into the afternoon by the time we turned from The Strand into the unique entrance of The Savoy, greeted instantly by the topper-toting miracle men who have the impossible job of controlling the congested forecourts of places such as this, yet accomplish it for years on end and nearly always with a smile.<\/p>\n

\"Bentley<\/p>\n

They squeezed both our Gurney Nutting coup\u00e9 and our snappers\u2019 Mulsanne<\/a> saloon (which looked rather well beside it) into a specially cleared corner, clucking over the Blue Train as if it were one of the greatest cars in the world and not minding that we deposited some rather horrible coolant on their immaculate floor. It is one of the world\u2019s greatest cars, of course, but these are men for whom the most lurid Bugatti Veyron is merely four wheels and an engine.<\/p>\n

In the Cocktail Bar \u2013 thronged, incredibly, by people who looked perfectly comfortable there \u2013 the head barman produced the venerable Savoy Cocktail Book (which has lived behind the same bar since the \u201930s) and opened it at the right page. We could have had The Bentley or The Woolf Barnato but, after discussion, opted for the former, consisting of half-and-half Dubonnet and extremely upmarket calvados. I\u2019d like to say it was delicious, but the truth is it was an acquired taste and none of us was ever likely to have the time or money to put the work in. Still, it seemed to go perfectly with the quality and grandeur of the two cars outside, new and old, and I\u2019m pretty confident Woolf Barnato would have thought so, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}