Automakers are rarely shy when it comes to celebrating past glories, but old cars and far-distant victories are normally nothing more than set dressing. Nostalgia should never be allowed to distract from the more important business of moving new metal. Few modern industry executives would publicly repeat Henry Ford’s assertion about the bunkness of history, but all would agree that the most important car is the one you can sell today.
Yet history has become an increasingly salable commodity with the rise of what have been dubbed continuation models. High-end replicas, as distinct from shoddy kit cars, have been around for decades, and the line that divides them from originals is often thin. But the growing market for officially sanctioned re-creations has created a fresh class of classic, proving that people are willing to pay serious money for an all-new piece of the past. For high-end carmakers with a past to plumb, continuation cars are a way to burnish their image and make a little money in the process. Jaguar has created, over the last decade, new versions of all its biggest midcentury hits. Aston Martin has been dabbling in the business since 1991.
Yet no previous continuation has been anything like this one. The Bentley Blower makes the Fifties and Sixties cars that have previously been, well, continued, look about as daring as a Greatest Hits compilation. The Blower comes from an earlier and more savage time, a car that you don’t drive so much as engage in hand-to-hand combat with.
This story originally appeared in Volume 5 of Road & Track.
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The sight of the Blower Continuation Series prototype—officially known as Car Zero—parked next to the car it copies, the original No. 2 team car, makes the ambition of this project clear. Nine decades separate these two cars, yet both are almost identical beyond the 2021 version’s obvious lack of wear. To build the prototype, and the sold-out run of 12 production Continuations that will follow it, Bentley’s dream-weaving Mulliner division spent hundreds of hours disassembling and scanning every part of the No. 2 car (which wears the number 9 on its grille) before putting it back together so that we could confirm the closeness of the relationship. Car Zero wears ugly supplemental LED headlights so it can be driven on test tracks at night, as well as turn signals and an electric engine fan. It is also fitted with a digital display screen and some modern data-logging equipment; my time in it on the Millbrook Proving Ground in the U.K. is part of 5000 miles of high-intensity durability testing. But in every other regard it is a facsimile.
Despite the No. 2 car’s roughly $34 million value, I’m sent out in it first. This is to give me a sense of the richness of its long and distinguished history; it wears a hood-mounted plaque listing its racing achievements, including the vital cameo it played at the 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours, and its dashboard features the mechanical scorekeeper stolen from a Parisian billiard hall to be repurposed as a lap counter for the race. But Bentley’s PR manager admits to another reason: The teeth of the original car’s non-syncho “crash” gearbox have been worn down by decades of graunchy changes and will therefore be more tolerant of my inexperience. Fair enough.
No part of the Blower experience is modern, but it is soon clear that some bits are less archaic than others. The shift for the four-speed gearbox is a conventional H-pattern, although it’s located to the right of the right-hand driving position. The clutch pedal is where my left foot expects to find it, but I’ve been warned that it also incorporates a brake to stop the gearbox’s input shaft so that first can be selected. Pressing too hard when the car is moving will effectively lock the transmission. I’m also ordered to double-clutch for both upshifts and downshifts. Oh, and the Blower predates standardized pedal positioning: Its accelerator is in the middle, its brake pedal on the right.
Getting rolling is surprisingly easy. The engine is already warm so starting is no harder than flicking the twin magnetos on—these are controlled by what were almost certainly 1920s domestic light switches—setting the spark advance to “retard” and then hitting the vast starter button. The huge four-cylinder engine churns a few times and then bursts into a loud, industrial idle. The gear selector is heavy and its throw long, but the clutch bites progressively and—with minimal throttle—the Blower moves off without drama.
Everything gets harder from that point. The driving experience could be politely described as challenging, indelicately as a total mindfuck. It’s a reaction and coordination test that gets exponentially harder as speed increases. The reversed pedal positions cause less confusion than I had expected, especially as it becomes clear the cable-and-rodding brakes can only slow the car at a gradual rate and stopping needs to be planned well in advance. The steering is hugely heavy and, unlike most unassisted racks, doesn’t get any lighter once the car is moving; the hugeness of the wheel is necessary to fight the car into tighter turns. But these are of small concern compared to the need to battle the recalcitrant gearbox.
The clutch-neutral-clutch-gear change comes with a little practice, but the need to match the speeds of the engine and road sides of the transmission requires much more dexterity, with the need to deal with both the stubborn gearchange and deliver a rev-matching throttle blip with an accelerator pedal in the wrong place. After half an hour I’m hitting one downshift in three sweetly. By the end of a day I’m little better than 50/50.
Jaguar E-Type Lightweight
Year produced: 2014
Number produced: 6
Price: approx. $1.4 million
Jaguar has produced more continuation models than any carmaker in the last decade, including the D-Type, XKSS, and the recently announced C-Type. But it all began with six E-Type Lightweights built in 2014 to complement the 12 original aluminum-bodied cars from 1963.
Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato
Year produced: 2019
Number produced: 19
Price: $7.9 million
This production run of DB4s (now with bodywork by Zagato) marks the fifth time the company has produced this model. That includes the original 1958–63 cars. If the price sounds nuts, that’s because it is. At least it included a matching DBS GT Zagato to go with your new-old DB4.
Lister Knobby
Year produced: Ongoing
Number produced: unlimited
Price: approx. $400,000
The British racer with the silly name and the Jaguar D-Type straight-six engine, this Lister model was once raced by the likes of Stirling Moss. The continuation cars are built to 1958 spec from Brian Lister’s original drawings and manufacturing jigs in the Lister factory in Cambridge.
Porsche 911 Turbo S Project Gold
Year produced: 2018
Number produced: 1
Price: approx. $3.3 million
Porsche built its last 993-generation 911 Turbo 20 years after production ended. Using a leftover 993 body and spare parts, the result was a fresh 911 Turbo S with mild upgrades. The money raised at its auction went to the nonprofit Ferry Porsche Foundation.
Yet crunchy changes aside, performance is never lacking. On Millbrook’s high-speed bowl, a two-mile banked circle, the No. 2 car accelerates at a rate that would be impressive if it were 40 years younger, pulling strongly as the needle on the boost gauge records increasing positive pressure. There is no noticeable supercharger whine, and revs turn the engine louder without making it in any way melodic. The redline is marked at 4500 rpm, but a single exploratory run proves there is no point venturing so far, as acceleration feels just as strong at 3000. At an indicated 80 mph—the fastest I’m permitted to go—the Blower feels absolutely in its element, steering true and with its aeroscreen and low seating position doing a good job of minimizing wind buffeting. The sight of rushing road through the many gaps in the floorboards adds to the sense of velocity. When the Blower racing cars were advertised for sale in 1931 each was guaranteed to be able to achieve 125 mph.
Returning to Millbrook’s staging area to swap to the Continuation Blower gives a chance for a closer examination of both the massive engine and the complicated plumbing that connects it to the huge, front-mounted supercharger. This incorporates twin SU carburetors that supply the motor through several feet of inlet piping. It is a spectacular piece of engineering art, but also proof of the ideological split that divided Bentley’s racing efforts at the time.
Company founder W. O. Bentley didn’t hold with forced induction and, even as supercharged rivals like the Bugatti Type 35C and Mercedes SSK started to win more races, he preferred to add urge through the proven expedients of more cylinders and increased capacity. But one of the aristocratic “Bentley Boys” who regularly raced for the company, Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin, was convinced that a blown version of the company’s smaller 4.5-liter four-cylinder engine would make more power. Having used most of his personal fortune to try to make one, Birkin then employed his considerable charm to persuade a wealthy heiress and famous racehorse owner, Dorothy Paget, to further fund his project.
The finished Blower was impressively potent, its 240-hp output being more than the six-cylinder works cars made from their 6.6-liter engines. But it was also prone to understeer and thirsty even by the standards of its era, managing around 2 mpg at racing speeds. Birkin entered a privateer team of three Blowers at Le Mans in 1930, nominally competing against Bentley’s factory cars. He led the charge himself in this No. 2 car, passing Rudolf Caraccioli’s supercharged Mercedes SSK twice in the early stages of the race. Birkin’s searing pace was part of a patriotic pact with the works team, forcing the Mercedes to chase him in the expectation it would break. It did, but none of the Blowers lasted until the end of the race, either. The factory team scored a one-two finish.
In short, the No. 2 Blower possesses an almost intimidating amount of history, while the continuation car does not. Something that feels surprisingly liberating after swapping between them. Mess this up and I’ll be forever known as the guy who crashed an old Bentley, rather than the guy who crashed the old Bentley.
Car Zero’s lack of roof denies any sense of new-car smell, but the combination of leather and Rexine bodywork—a cloth and cellulose covering more often used for books—would certainly be pungent in a confined space. The dashboard’s Edwardian mantelpiece impression of wall-to-wall dials and chaotically strewn controls seems more incongruous in something that has been newly created, but its duty is obviously to reflect the original.
Although Car Zero is restricted to 3200 rpm during testing, I drive the rest of it harder than I do in its more famous predecessor, and on a more demanding bit of track. Millbrook’s Hill Route was apparently modeled on an Alpine pass—a narrow, tight one—and its condensed combination of corners and crests gives the chance to both push the car and feel it push back.
The gearbox is no friendlier than in the original, but the engine’s flexibility means it can be left in second gear for most of a lap. The brakes are truly dreadful—even panic pedal pressures bring minimal retardation—it later transpires the prototype had just been given new pads that hadn’t been properly bedded in. Fortunately the sizable hand brake on the outside of the cockpit applies a separate and obviously toothier set of pads inside the rear drums, pretty much doubling the stopping power when used with the pedal.
The Blower’s handling balance is also impressively benign. The semielliptical leaf springs and lever arm dampers maintain surprisingly impressive order over bumps, at the expense of a teeth-rattling ride. The narrow, positively cambered tires can be powered into understeer in tighter turns. But the limiting factor on cornering is the strength required to turn the vast wheel, especially as accelerating with the chassis loaded up causes the steering to try and straighten itself. This is a car that lives for the straights, and I emerge from a half-hour stint behind the wheel feeling as if I’ve wrestled an octopus. Also understanding Ettore Bugatti’s famous dig about Bentley making the world’s fastest trucks.
Yet the Continuation Blower is not supposed to be easy or civilized or in any way tamed. It’s supposed to be an accurate copy, and in that the engineering team has absolutely delivered with a driving experience direct from the Thirties. It is a glorious, deliberate anachronism, one that makes other continuation cars seem as safe and unimaginative as vanilla ice cream. Each of the dozen buyers worldwide is spending at least $2 million. Given the scale of the project—and the cost of an original—that makes each one a bargain.
The Re-creation
The expansion of the continuation market has created conflict between the makers of sanctioned and unsanctioned replicas. Conflict, as always, meaning lawyers. Lots of lawyers.
The legal war began in Sweden. Karl Magnusson, a professional car designer and longtime Jaguar enthusiast, wanted to build a replica of the early-Fifties C-Type. He started to collect drawings and pictures and to use his CAD skills to create a digital design. He told Jaguar of his plan and, he says, was invited to the U.K. in 2016 to make a presentation about the car to JLR’s Classic division. Two years later he was sued in Sweden for copyright infringement, subsequently losing the case. The court ordered Magnusson to pay JLR’s costs and also to destroy his car. “My idea was to make them interested in my digital database of the whole car. It was a professional presentation,” he told R&T. “When I got the warning letter my wife and I didn’t believe it was from Jaguar. It was so completely different to the experience I had with them.”
JLR’s line is that Magnusson’s venture was a commercial endeavor since he said he was planning to produce a series of cars. Magnusson admits he wanted to build two cars in addition to his own, but that he agreed not to when the lawyers first made contact. “We got very close to a settlement, and I agreed to pay the money they were asking,” Magnusson said, “but they were still demanding destruction of my car. I couldn’t accept that.”
Magnusson appealed the verdict and still has the car—although the rest of his collection was sold to pay costs. But JLR has already cited the case in legal correspondence with at least one other company building a C-Type replica in the U.K. Two weeks after sending this cease-and-desist notice in January, Jaguar Classic announced its plans to build eight officially sanctioned C-Type Continuations.
JLR Classic activities fall under the company’s Special Vehicle Operations division, and although SVO boss Michael van der Sande refused to comment directly on either case, he made it clear to R&T that the larger company is planning to try to shut down the creation of unofficial replicas.“Clearly it’s a sensitive subject, but it’s not just to protect our Classic business, which is a minor component, but also the integrity of our brand,” he said. “We don’t want to kick the person in the teeth who might have bought a replica 10 years ago or who might want to build something in their garage tomorrow. . . . However, when businesses want to use our copyrights and trademarks to make money and sometimes compete against us, that’s where we will step in.”
How then, you might be asking, does GTO Engineering get around this sticky legal problem with its replica 250 SWB (page 125)? Well, the company buys a less valuable Ferrari of the same era, takes it down to pieces, and builds it back up as the vaunted SWB. So, it’s a Ferrari, but not the Ferrari that Ferrari made. George Orwell wasn’t thinking of intellectual property pursuits when he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it’s hard to look at the growth of both the continuation market and rights-based litigation around it without thinking of one of the dystopian masterpiece’s most famous lines: “Who controls the past controls the future.”
The Curio
Neither a car nor a stage prop, Aston Martin’s DB5 Goldfinger Continuation is a full-size Corgi toy.
The Aston Martin DB5 Goldfinger Continuation is preposterous. It’s a trinket fitted with stage-prop weaponry. It’s a car that can’t be registered for road use in many parts of the world. Yet spending time with it triggers a visceral desire to play. It isn’t a reborn DB5 so much as a 1:1-scale version of the Corgi toy that used to eject its plastic passenger under the couch. It is also a very different car from Aston’s previous factory-sanctioned Continuations. The DB4 GT and its Zagato sister were aimed primarily at historic racing. As a pixel-perfect re-creation of what is the most famous movie car of all time, the DB5 Goldfinger is more frivolous. Its $3.5-million price tag is certainly not lacking in seriousness. It is also a car with a split personality—half heirloom, half gewgaw. The continuation car has tighter tolerances and a crisper paint finish than the 1964 DB5 did, but the basic mechanical package is the same. The new version is, after all, built using the same materials and techniques as its predecessor. This means heavy, unassisted steering and a straight-six engine that breathes through period- correct SU carburetors. The Q-department weapons are, necessarily, play-acting. They are, of course, nonlethal. They include twin machine guns that emerge from behind the front turn signals, onboard radar, a motorized bulletproof rear screen, smokescreen, oil-slick dispenser, three-way rotating license plates, and front and rear bumper rams. The film car’s guns used blank ammunition; the Continuation’s barrels simulate fire with ultra-bright LEDs and a motorized recoil action, playing a loudspeaker soundtrack deliberately more subdued than real gunfire. The Continuation’s oil slick fires water, and the Mustang-chewing tire-slashers come in a display case and can’t be fitted to the car. Most disappointing is the lack of a passenger ejector seat. The asymmetric moonroof aperture and hidden red button in the gear lever are both present, but there is no ability to fire somebody out of the car.
Although Aston provides a remote control box to allow operation outside the car, the novelty of the gadgets fades quickly. Like most noisy toys, you don’t want to play with them for too long at a time, even if you’ll enjoy the chance to show them off to the next unsuspecting victims.
Which is where the appeal of a factory-fresh DB5 takes over. Aston helpfully demonstrated the legal wiggle-room around the Goldfinger’s lack of street legality by road-registering its demonstrator under the U.K.’s permissive individual vehicle approval rules. (You’ll want to consult your state’s DMV to see how you might slither around the rules in the U.S.) Driving it through Middle England feels every bit as special as you’d expect, although the gadgets were temporarily inhibited.
Performance is brisk rather than 21st-century fast. The Goldfinger has been upgraded to a larger capacity 4.0-liter engine than a period DB5, this making a claimed 290 hp. But loose-feeling steering gives no encouragement to try to confirm the claimed 140-mph top speed. The Avon Turbospeed tires run short of grip early and noisily in tighter turns. The suspension manages the neat trick of feeling too hard and too soft at the same time, crashing over smaller imperfections and heaving over larger ones. Small wonder Connery had so much trouble outrunning Goldfinger’s goons in their 63-hp Mercedes 180 sedans. None of this matters, of course. You’re driving James Bond’s car.
