| When you hear someone has bought a vintage Bentley, most people would have the vision of the new owner behind the wheel of their shiny British racing green behemoth, its thunderous exhaust note bellowing out as they press on down the road to the pub to show it off to their mates. But not if you’re Tim Smith… Tim wanted what is known in the industry as a ‘project’ and boy did he get one of those…. We’ll let him explain in his own words…
‘I’ve been on a couple of brilliant tours with Classic GT, firstly the Jaguar E type run to Geneva and then the first South African adventure. I’m booked to go to Namibia in November 2025.
I guess we are all products of our upbringing and my father was a BMC man with the odd Ford and Vauxhall thrown in. This has rubbed off on me and having only sold one car in my life I’ve built up a bit of a collection of British cars, with one outlier, a 1943 Willys Jeep. But I always knew there was one car missing and now I’ve found it. Bought recently at auction, I’ve got a 1926 Bentley 3 litre Red Label with original engine, gearbox, axles and Van den Plas body. It’s probably a 5 year project. The engine and gearbox both need work and the body has suffered as the car was last used around 1960. So far the car has had a good clean, a mummified cat removed from the rear footwell and the archaeology of a full restoration started.
The car was owned in the late 1920s by Beris Harcourt Wood, a Bentley boy who raced with Tim Birkin and competed at Brooklands and the TT held at Ards, near Belfast. He was entered for Le Mans but DNS with engine problems from poor fuel in France. Of the three Bentleys entered the factory only had time to fix two, hence the non-starting Harcourt Woods.
I look forward to entering a Classic GT Bentley tour with the car in a few years’ time.’ |
