CALIFORNIA'S MONTEREY PENINSULA HAS A PENCHANT FOR THE THEATRICAL.
Each morning cloaking itself in a thick shawl of sea mist that rolls in off the Pacific, then whipping it off around 9 am to reveal a Hollywood set on 17-Mile Drive - immaculate fairways on the Spanish Bay links tumbling down to a rocky coastline teeming with pelicans, seals, and pockets of blonde sand. Occupying the higher ground, enormous showboat mansions battle it out for the best view. "Those are all £25m houses up there," Mike Sayer, head of Bentley's heritage collection and the world's most patient driving instructor, points out. That's a lot of dinero.
Precisely the same amount as the jewel in Bentley's collection, the Number Two "Team' car, just one of four supercharged 4½-litre Blower racers ever built and a favorite of the most famous Bentley Boy, Sir Henry Birkin. This is not that car, this is Car Zero, the development prototype for a run of 12 continuation cars announced back in 2019, costing £1.5m each. So the fiscal risk is lower, but the machine is true in every possible way to the original. Handcrafted, for 40,000 hours, using original tools and 3D scans of Number Two, it is every inch as beautiful... and every bit as truculent to drive.
Which is why I'm up with the pelicans, for a crash course in how to pilot a 100-year-old motor car. If Mike deems my efforts to be less shocking than I suspect they will be, I shall progress to my full driving test at about lunchtime, ferrying my examiner (Adrian Hallmark, CEO of Bentley) around Laguna Seca. If Mr. Hallmark surmises that I didn't make a complete pig's ear of it, then I shall celebrate in traditional American fashion, by taking the Blower to a drive-through for a delicious meaty snack. I know how to live.
This story is from the October 2022 edition of Top Gear.
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This story is from the October 2022 edition of Top Gear.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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