1930 Bentley 6½-Liter Speed Six

Although the 6½-liter had been conceived as a touring car to compete with Rolls-Royce's new Phantom, in Speed Six form it proved admirably suited to competition: in 1929 Barnato/Birkin's Speed Six won the Le Mans 24 Hour race ahead of a trio of 4½-liter Bentleys and Barnato/Kidston repeated the feat in the following year's Grand Prix d'Endurance at the Sarthe circuit ahead of similarly mounted Clement/Watney. Small wonder, then, that the fast yet refined Speed Six was W. O. Bentley's favorite car.

The 6½-liter was produced for four years, during which time 544 chassis were completed, 182 of these to Speed Six specification. LR2776 was one of a small number of Speed Six chassis bodied for Bentley Motors by H J Mulliner, arriving at the latter's Chiswick works early in 1930 and listed in the Service Record as "our own body order." Described as "folding head sportsman's coupe," the coachwork is of the drophead coupe type. Each of the others was different:...