Monday, December 14, 2020

CELEBRATIONS OF HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENTS by John Crawford

Recent news items celebrated two of Britain's most famous automotive icons - the Bentley Blower and the Jaguar E-type.

Bentley Mulliner finally completed the first ‘new’ Bentley Blower in 90 years after 40,000 hours of meticulous work. Car Zero is the prototype for the Blower Continuation Series.

 

This truly exclusive run of only 12 customer cars (all of which have been pre-sold) will be created from the design drawings and tooling jigs that were employed for the original four Blowers that Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin built and raced in the late 1920s.


Bentley's own 'original' Blower (chassis HB 3403-rear) was used to fabricate every single component for the 'new' car, including a laser scan of the entire car and all its parts.



The Jaguar E-type sports car is celebrating its diamond anniversary in 2021, and to mark the momentous occasion an F-TYPE Heritage 60 Edition will be released in limited numbers.

Based on the supercharged, 575-hp F-TYPE R, these all-wheel-drive sports cars are limited to a production run of only 60 units. It will be available for sale worldwide with each unit being hand-finished by the artisinal specialists at SV Bespoke.



Jaguar has also produced 'Continuation' models based on unused chassis numbers of lightweight E-types and XK-SS sports cars.

Whilst the creation of Bentley Blower Car Zero is an admirable and monumental feat of intricate, sophisticated and meticulous execution, I'm not sure these cars will ever represent the value of the humungous price these 12 buyers paid, to secure a 'copy'. In fact, when you look at the large number of genuine vintage Bentleys still being driven, you could suggest these 12 cars are worth nothing!


Whilst 'continuation' projects have been successful in boosting the brands' images, and securing exceptional revenue for Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar and others, in the end the cars are 'fakes'.


I would much prefer to spend my millions (if I had that sort of money) paying Touring Superleggera of Milan to build me one of the re-imagined replicas it has so cleverly executed on a variety of modern chassis. To me those cars ARE TRULY UNIQUE, and worth every cent their proud new owners paid for them.



John Crawford


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