Vintage Thing No.169 - Bentley Mk VI James Young saloon

Despite an interest in light cars (and medium-sized ones I suppose) I also like lumbering great beasts. This is a particularly fine example that belongs to some friends of mine.

Gravitas in metal

For many years, this Bentley Mk VI James Young saloon languished in one half of a two-car garage, a mournful shape without front wings or radiator. It had been left to my mate's grandmother by the old man for whom she had once kept house. Jerry’s grannie was not a large lady but could still see over the steering wheel and reach the pedals. However, one day the handbrake cable snapped and the Bentley went into a supermarket plate glass window. It then sought retirement at the back of his parents’ garage for remedial work. Time passed – as it always does – and more remedial work began to mount up.

I couldn’t really make out the Bentley’s shape properly where it stood. There was just enough room in the garage to squeeze behind the wheel, make engine noises and pretend you were a “Bentley Boy” at Le Mans but Bentleys hadn’t been racing cars since 1931. Bentleys of the 1950s were really badge engineered Rolls-Royces, more of a gentleman’s Grand Tourer before the initials GT meant a mildly souped-up mass-produced saloon. They are a tweed jacket and flat cap gentleman’s carriage, not a track suit bottoms and hoody hatchback.

If I’d ever been in the happy position of ordering a car like this back then, I would have chosen a Bentley over a Rolls. The Bentley grille is more streamlined than the Greek temple of the Rolls and on vintage Bentleys the imposing radiator reminds me of a Gothic arch. Both are icons but aesthetically the Bentley mask pleases me more. 

This Bentley Mk VI with James Young coachwork puts me in touch with the engineers, designers and craftspeople who’d made it. They had entered into a collaboration with their customer and produced a bespoke solution to that person’s transportation needs, turning a dream into a reality of metal, wood and leather – and that wood and leather interior still smelt wonderful even if the dream had become a little tired.

That front wing line resembles a tear drop more than a rolling wave

The Bentley Mk VI had much in common with the pre-war Mk V but had an F-head engine with overhead inlet valves and side exhaust valves, ostensibly a backward step in terms of sophisticated powerplant architecture. However, the materials and fit and finish were in the best traditions of Henry Royce himself. 

W. A. “Roy” Robotham was the chief engineer at Rolls-Royce during the war years and he conceived a range of 4, 6 & 8-cylinder petrol engines for post-war military use. It was a 6-cylinder version of that family of engines that ended up in the Bentley Mk VI and Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn. Known as the Rolls-Royce B-series, it included the four-cylinder B40 version that powered a sophisticated Jeep competitor – the Austin Champ – while the eight-cylinder B80 was used in the amphibious Alvis Stalwart six-wheeled truck, immortalised in a Matchbox model. I had one. Didn’t you?

The six-cylinder B60 was used in light trucks and armoured cars as well as (whisper it) the cheaper sort of Rolls-Royce and the Bentley Mk VI. Rolls-Royce never called the engines in their cars a B60, though. With an imperial bore size of 3½ by 4½ inches, these engines displaced 260 cubic inches or 4257cc from 88.9 x 114.3mm. Using the same dimensions machined on equipment still set to the bore centres Henry Royce had chosen decades earlier, the equivalent B40 and B80 engines displaced 2838cc (as used in the Austin Champ) and 5676cc (as used in the Alvis Stalwart).

The contemporary Rover 90 also had an F-head or ioe (inlet over exhaust) 2.6 litre engine but this design featured angled exhaust valves. In his classic work, The Design and Tuning of Competition Engines, Philip H Smith extolled the virtues of the Rover design, applauding its cross-flow layout and capacity for large inlet valves.  However, the Rolls-Royce/Bentley design had perpendicular valves so didn’t have such efficient gasflow. Robotham and his team selected the F-head design because it conducted exhaust heat directly into the cooling passages of the cylinder block, instead of sending them up into the cylinder head, which is the case with overhead zorst valves. It was also compact and allowed the spark plug to be located close to the exhaust valve in the side of the cylinder block. This had the effect of the spark igniting the hottest part of the intake charge first and shortening the flame path across the combustion chamber.

It may seem strange to adopt a range of petrol engines for military use instead of diesel ones. From lessons learned during WW2, the British Army wanted a rationalisation of power. Fuel economy was not a concern. Getting there “fastest with the mostest” was the simplest strategy and getting there fastest with reliability was a campaign winner. Robotham knew that and, having convinced the men from the ministry, did his damnedest to meet their stringent requirements to the best of his company’s abilities.

Rolls-Royce developed an overhead valve diesel version with the Ricardo research organisation but the petrol B-series range fulfilled the Ministry of Supply brief, especially with regard to reliability. They were very expensive engines, however.

Derek Wright, Rolls’ engineering manager of the time, said these engines cost “a pound a pound” – and they were very heavy engines for their size but what price national security?

Rolls-Royce countered criticism by pointing out that running costs should be judged as horsepower-hours delivered against the initial outlay and not just purchase price but commercial fleet operators preferred diesels, which were rapidly developing in terms of power, flexibility and fuel-efficiency, especially when turbocharged.

Rolls-Royce subsequently introduced the C-series of diesels, which were of more massive proportions and typically for locomotive and marine applications. However, in researching the B-series engines, I came across mention of a double-overhead camshaft version of the all ally short-stroke 6-cylinder FB60 engine found in the Farina-bodied Vanden Plas Princess R. In the mid-sixties, BMC were considering using this in an updated Austin Healey 3000 – the 4000 – but instead we got the MGC, a six cylinder MGB with an updated version of the pushrod big Healey’s cast iron engine.

All those military virtues also suited the Bentley Mk VI and Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn. These cars were offered as “standard steel saloons” in a hesitant step towards mass-production for the owner/driver market i.e. Rolls and Bentley owners who didn’t have a chauffeur. However, customers who wanted bespoke coachbuilding could still order a chassis and have it clothed to their requirements. In truth, though, the days of coachbuilt motorcars were coming to an end.

Standard steel saloons were derived from a Gurney Nutting design refined by one of their old draughtsmen, John Blatchley, who had joined Rolls-Royce in 1940. The Pressed Steel Company made the bodyshells and were initially perplexed by the low annual volume of 2000 units that Robotham envisaged. Later standard steel saloons had bigger boots and bigger cylinder bores. Colloquially known as the “big bore, big boot” version, these enjoyed a longer wheelbase and the 4667cc engine.

James Young was a member of the Institute of British Carriage Makers and acquired the coachbuilding firm of J. K. Hunter of Bromley in 1863. He made his name with the horse-drawn Bromley Brougham but it wasn’t until 1908 that the first James Young bodywork appeared on a Wolseley chassis for a local Member of Parliament. The firm subsequently built bodies on many chassis and pioneered parallel-opening doors and anti-drumming construction for roofs. In 1937, Jack Barclay Ltd bought the company and after being blitzed twice in WW2, James Young built about sixty bodies a year once hostilities ceased. Rolls-Royce and Bentley were the principal mounts for their bodywork – the non-gender specific “they” term also covers the issue of whether a company is a single entity or a group of people. However, when Rolls-Royce introduced chassis-less construction in 1967 with the monocoque T-series, James Young ceased coachbuilding and resigned itself to be the posh part of the Dutton-Forshaw automotive servicing and distribution network. 

This particular Bentley Mk VI was built in 1951, so must have just missed out on getting the larger bore engine, and carries body style C10 BM, similar to designs C10 AM and C10 M. So far, I haven’t conclusively found any images of these variations so if anyone can provide them, please do get in touch.

My immediate thought was – of all the people who contributed to the design and construction of this car, who styled it? Who was the industrial designer or the draughtsman with “flair”?

The answer is A. F. “Mac” McNeil (1891-1965) who began his career with Cunard before starting work with coachbuilders Gurney Nutting. Gurney Nutting also bodied Bentleys and were originally based in Croydon before moving to Chelsea after a fire in 1923. I suppose coachbuilding has lots of flammable materials.

Lightweight Weymann fabric bodies were popular for cars and coaches at this time. They featured a wooden frame with special metal joints that avoided a wood-on-wood join. The result was a light body that didn’t squeak as the chassis flexed. It was Mac’s styling of the Weymann type – which could give a very square-rigged look – that establish his reputation as well as that of his employer, Gurney Nutting.

Jack Barclay was a successful Rolls-Royce dealer and, when he bought James Young in 1937, he persuaded Mac McNeil to join James Young from Gurney Nutting. In the remaining time before WW2, James Young probably had their best coachbuilding years. They made aircraft components and mobile canteens during the war but exhibited Mac’s designs on Rolls-Royce and Bentley chassis at the 1948 Earls Court Motor Show. Gurney Nutting had also been acquired by Jack Barclay in 1945 and exhibited at the 1948 show, too. The two coachbuilding firms pooled resources up to a point with Gurney Nutting concentrating more on coaches than cars before ceasing production in 1953.

Meanwhile, Mac’s protégé, who succeeded him at Gurney Nutting, was none other than John Blatchley (1913-2008), by now Rolls-Royce’s chief draughtsman or designer. The two men remained good friends in later life and I really like the idea of them consulting on which way the styling of Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars should go.

McNeil explored several variations of the traditional razor edge styling. This had evolved in the 1930s as a way of providing a tautness to vast limousine bodywork. Sharp edges and creases could be employed to great effect to disguise the bulk of grand automobiles but by the 1950s it was becoming a little dated. More streamlined forms were in vogue and Harley Earl at General Motors’ studios in the USA openly adopted aeroplane motifs from contemporary aircraft.

Mudguards were already on their way to blending into the doors, body and bonnet. The chief question for Mc Neil in 1951 was, should the front wing line be convex as in the Bentley belonging to my friends or should it be a concave one, mimicking the rolling outline of a wave.

The long-term answer was that the top of the wing would merge with the belt line of the body either at or just below the window level.

I caught up with Jerry and his parents at a show recently. This was the first time I had seen the Bentley restored to life and we had a quick waft around the showground. As on all righthand drive Bentleys of this type, the gear lever is on the righthand side of the driver’s seat, and this always posed an additional challenge to squeezing behind the wheel to make appropriate noises when this car sat in the garage. Lefthand drive cars had a column change.

I also got to have a ride in it at last, albeit on a showground. It fully lived up to expectations.

Truly, Bentleys like this are the Rolls-Royce of motorcars. (Smiley face)