You won’t find a La Sarthe in any Bentley dealer’s stocklist, much less in the history of the company. However, my hunch is that, one day, examples of this stunning vision of what a Bentley Le Mans racer of the early 1950s might have looked like will find their way into the world’s exclusive showrooms and concours events and their story into the history books.
The fact is, although it’s not made by Bentley, the La Sarthe actually is a Bentley and is recognised as such by the car maker. This is because each one is built around the original chassis, engine, gearbox and mechanicals of a Bentley R-Type saloon, the large-booted model that Crewe produced between 1952 and 1955, supplying it to the public with a standard steel body or to coachbuilders without.
Many factory-bodied R-Types have survived but, out of respect for the model, only those whose bodies are the most corroded and beyond saving are considered for transformation into a La Sarthe. Given that each La Sarthe costs from £500,000, you can assume that only a few factory-bodied R-Types will ever make the cut anyway. The company responsible for the La Sarthe is Bensport, which takes its name from Rolls-Royce’s internal development title for the first new Bentley car under its stewardship. It’s based in workshops in the Somerset village of Ilton, near Ilminster.
I’ve come to meet its founder, Bob Perry, an energetic 71-year-old who has spent his life working on Rolls-Royces and Bentleys – and around nine years ago had a ‘what if’ moment. “I wondered what, if the company had built one, a Bentley Le Mans race car of the early 1950s would have looked like,” he explains to me.
His question was triggered by the Embiricos, a famous coachbuilt Bentley named after André Embiricos, the wealthy Greek businessman and racing driver who commissioned it in 1938. Based on the Bentley 4¼-litre chassis, it was fitted with a streamlined aluminium coupé body designed by Pourtout of Paris. It looked sensational and from 1949 to 1951 raced at Le Mans with some success.
Inspired by it, Bentley created in 1952 the equally beautiful and streamlined R-Type Continental, a car capable of cruising comfortably at 100mph. The obvious next step might have been for the car maker to spin a streamlined racer off its then new R-Type chassis and contest Le Mans, as it had done so successfully in the 1920s. However, Rolls-Royce, Bentley’s owner, had no interest in racing, so an R-Type never saw a race track.
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It's easy to see where Bob Perry gets his inspiration from, and even easier to see where his love of these older cars comes from. Time to go and buy a lottery ticket, I think...........
@martin_66, thank you. See below, I found Delahaye 135MS Pourtout
After some thought I looked under Pourtout and found Delahaye 135MS Pourtout with a very similar grille. A common prractice, even Pininfarina copied himself.