The Bentley Boys | Playboy Racers of the 1920s | Exhibit at OHTM

The Bentley Boys were the diverse and often-changing team of unpaid – and nearly all amateur – drivers that in the 1920’s helped put Bentley in the forefront of European racing  and solidified the marque’s reputation for combining high performance with ruggedness and reliability.  They were as well known for their glamorous lives off the track as they were for their skilled driving. In the autobiography of W.O. Bentley, the engineer and designer behind the marque, he writes of the Bentley Boys, “The public liked to imagine them living in expensive Mayfair flats with several mistresses and, of course, several very fast Bentleys, drinking champagne in night clubs, playing the horses and the Stock Exchange, and beating furiously around the racing tracks at the week-end. Of at least several of them this was not an inaccurate picture.”  These men were serious about their play, whether that meant flying airplanes, competing at steeplechase, boxing, yachting, skiing, racing speedboats and motorcycles, or playing golf or cricket. Under the leadership of W.O., they were no racetrack dilettantes, but a highly disciplined team. British, French, and Australian, doctors and journalists, heirs and bankers, aviators and aristocracy, they all worked together as a dedicated and tightly coordinated group on the track. The proof is in their race results and speed records, including the glory years of 1927-1930, when the team famously scored  four consecutive victories at the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans races.

2016 | Owls Head Transportation Museum
http://www.owlshead.org
Facebook: OwlsHeadTransportationMuseum

Special Thanks to the Lang Education Center &
The Richard C. Paine Jr. Automobile Collection Charitable Trust

Select photographs from the book “Bentley Experimental No. 5” by Clare Hay
Special Thanks to the W.O. Bentley Memorial Foundation  |  http://www.wobmf.co.uk
Images represented in this video are for educational purposes

Music used under Creative Commons Licenses
“Brooks” by Kai Engel  | http://www.kai-engel.com
“Hot Lips” performed by Bill Brown and His Brownies  |  composed by Henry Busse 1922

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