Bentley Speed Six review

A brand new car from 1929. Bentley really ought to work on its timing, huh? The original Speed Six arrived just in time for the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that followed. The new Speed Six Continuation was announced in a world of skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty. But that didn’t stop the extremely limited production run of 12 selling out.

So it’s a recreation of a classic?

Bentley considers it a resumption of production, continuing a lineage from almost 100 years ago. In order to create the new Speed Six, an original multi-million pound example was painstakingly inspected, dismantled and scanned. That was so accurate drawings could be made to recreate its components, using techniques largely lost to history. And because it’s being done by Bentley itself, this isn’t a replica or a restomod. It’s a proper, pucka Bentley.

Each car takes eight months to complete, with Bentley’s bespoke Mulliner division entrusting various elements to ‘specialist suppliers’ then completing final assembly in Crewe.

For the new 6.5-litre engine alone, more than 600 brand new parts had to be fabricated. Each dial inside is faithful to the Speed Six which won the 1930 24 Hours of Le Mans. Because there’s a thriving classic racing scene tyres could be found relatively easily, but don’t underestimate just how labour-intensive this car was to produce. Especially given it’s not a museum artifact – it’s a racecar.

What sort of performance are we talking?

The originally aircraft-derived straight six (that’s right, each piston displaces more than a litre) generates a dyno-verified 205bhp. Now, Hyundai i20N power might seem a bit on the stingy side given we’re talking about a car that costs £1.5 million. Plus tax.

And despite the mountain bike tyres and lack of luxury features like ‘a roof’ and ‘a passenger door’ it’s not exactly lightweight either. The Speed Six weigh somewhere in the region of 1.5 tonnes, so it has the same power to weight ratio of a mid-spec BMW 3 Series. But trust us: 205bhp with these brakes, this handling, and this much sensory overload is plenty.

There’s quite simply nothing like the Speed Six – and if in the car industry you offer a totally unique experience, you deserve to charge whatever you like for it. Bentley’s 12 Speed Six owners don’t seem to have minded.

They know they’ve not so much bought a car as a company heirloom, a classic they can race guilt-free without worrying about compromising mileage, condition or originality. Can you put a price on that?

One wonders, now Bentley has built the Blower and Speed Six continuation series, what legends it’ll choose to reanimate next.