1931 Bentley 8-Litre Mulliner Sedan - Jay Leno's Garage

this is what bentley was all about big powerful fast smooth cars welcome to the episode of jaylon's garage the car featuring today my 1931 bentley 8-liter mullen earth sedan this was called bentley's greatest achievement by a lot of people he wanted to build a hundred mile an hour car that could carry four people comfortably well even more than four people actually uh to sort of tour the continent and uh they built a hundred of these and they were all guaranteed to go over 100 miles an hour the ones with lighter coach work obviously went faster i think 125 was the highest the lighter coach worked cars went this this one i can testify has been over 100 miles an hour using my gps uh i mean it's an amazing automobile it's a six cylinder eight liter uh overhead cam four valves per cylinder w bentley was a fascinating guy you know there's certain engineers and then there are engineers engineers w.o bentley fred and augie dusenberg frederick lanchester mark burkett uh carl benz gottlieb you know all daimler all those just that whole group of guys pretty amazing characters bentley was born in 1888 and he died in 1971 so he lived a full life he lived long enough to see his cars window them all five times and then they kind of fell into bankruptcy and he had to work for other companies but then near the end of his life he got to see the club was formed the bentley drivers club and of course uh bentley's became revered marks and he was you know just welcomed anywhere he went to the concours or whatever so it was nice to see had no children married three times but he had no kids he is one of nine he was the youngest of nine kids born in 1888 to fairly wealthy parents he was always an engineer even a young man he he apprenticed with the great northern railroad in england let me show you what i'm talking about he was a locomotive engineer first and you can see the sort of locomotive like qualities in this engine here although this is an enormous engine it is only six cylinders there's no head gasket because there's no head it's all one solid piece this is how you get around blowing head gaskets these are carburetors or carburetors they call it this is an auto vac it's basically a fuel pump what it does is if you were not running this car for a long time you would open this up here you'd fill this with gasoline and as the car ran fresh gas would be pumped into this and it would drain i open this here and then it gravity feeds down into the motor interesting thing uh nice to keep it all original you have a battering coil and a magneto because you have spark plugs as i said before on each side this is your water pump right here notice the honeycomb type radiator this is the greaser i just tighten that to shoot a shot of grease into the water pump uh aluminum fan everything here as as as it was in 1931 it's hard to improve on perfection and you have your engine light here this lights up the engine compartment like i've often said with these kind of engines they're difficult to work on because you have to go through the bottom to get to anything to get to the valves you've got to go pull the engine go through the bottom as i've said before it's a bit like going to the proctologist for dental work you know it's a little tricky the actual engine ends here you can see uh bentley's locomotive background in the designer's engine because the overhead cam is not driven by a chain or even gears but by conrods by imagine the wheels of a locomotive you know how they they go like this well that's what you have here at the end of the crankshaft you have sort of quote for lack of a better word another crankshaft that turns the cam shaft and you adjust it by putting washers in between it and the squish of the oil kind of tells you how much you have how to adjust it and that's sort of how you adjust the valves on this thing it's it's a fascinating piece of engineering these were bulletproof engines at the time uh it's cast iron the crankcase is made of electron which is a kind of a magnesium aluminum alloy bentley pioneered aluminum pistons and aircraft in world war one he designed aircraft engines and he was sort of the father of the aluminum pistons for lightweight and uh better compression and all that type of thing and uh just a fascinating guy quiet guy kept himself couldn't be more british you know not a real show-off kind of guy he built his first car in 1919 in fact the man who bought his very first car i had his son on the tonight show uh his name was uh llewellyn i can't remember his first name he played q in the bond movies remember the james bond where he says to sean connery i never joke bond i'm always serious well when i found out he had bought the first bentley i invited him on the tonight show to talk about it it was fascinating so he bought the very first one the three leader he built a three liter four and a half liter the six liter speed six and of course his great achievement the eight liter you always hear about the blower bentleys the ones with the big blower on the front those are never built by bentley bentley did not like supercharging he did not like turbocharging he just thought going to a larger engine was the best and most reliable way to gain more power and at the time he was proven correct because he won them all six times a man named tim burkett he was a racer sort of a daring daring sort of character i used to race bentley's and with the help of i think his name was dorothy padgett a very wealthy woman he got the money to build um 50 or is it 55 uh the blower car so they could run it but again the engine was too high stress with the blower and none of them none of them won the race proving bentley was right he just went with a bigger motor to the six liter and this finally the eight liter you know you can see these cars were built when uh labor was cheap and technology was expensive because there must be 50 little nuts holding that water jacket on on each plate on each side and there are so many nuts and bolts on this car uh you know we had to replace the pulley and not replace it fix it the pulley at the end of the crankshaft had worked its way loose the nut that holds on it's worked way loose and what happened was the pulley would rock back and forward and there's a keyway that locks it in and it just chewed it up but in any normal car you would take the radiator off and they'll probably be on the other side the bentley the pulley is on the inside that's why you have here a fan belt that you have to link together you can't put a fan belt on this car unless you pull the engine out because the pulley is on this side of the crossmember and the cross member does not come out but once the work is done it's just a fascinating car to drive just a wonderful driving car and the sad thing is i rescued this one so many of these in the 60s 70s even into the 80s were uh they'd be found in a barn or wherever and then they'd be cut up and made into sort of quote hot rods or lemons tours you know they put an open body on it and they take this body and just throw it away and so consequently there aren't many of these left you see more bentley team cars than ever existed because people buy a bentley and they realize oh they want that sort of dashing look of the 30s with the green fabric body and you know that type of thing so a lot of these paid the price this car came out of chile i believe it was the ambassador's car it had been used as a chicken coop because it's big you get a lot of chickens in this thing you know and uh that's what it was so it was totally restored the wheelbase is 156 inches the biggest duesenberg was 153 and a half inches and the biggest car in the world the bugatti royale was 169.3 inches so that's the only one with the wheelbase bigger than this thing and at the time this car was built it was the biggest automotive engine ever produced in england and also one of the fastest cars i mean the idea behind this car was you would take this across the channel and drive across europe at 75 80 miles an hour and you can do it easy i mean i take this on the 405 freeway and it's a wonderful car more than keeps up in traffic 75 80 rock steady it's amazing it has mechanical brakes but it has a servo vacuum mechanical brake so you can't tell that they're not hydraulic brakes they work amazingly well this car is pretty much all original and i mean obviously been restored and repainted but the original radiator original matching engine transmission whatever a special four-speed transmission was developed especially for these cars you know it's funny the this and the duesenberg are two of my favorites because they were the most advanced cars of the period and the only ones you could really drive the way you drive a modern car today i mean it doesn't where you can go 75 you accelerate onto the freeway you're not holding people up the duesenberg had twin cams four valve per cylinder this is a single cam four valves another but this has a four-speed transmission the duesenberg had a three-speed transmission it just showed you different ways that people thought americans did not like to shift the less shifting you had to do the more prestigious or more powerful the car was you know this was noted because even in fourth gear you could slow down to 10 miles an hour press the accelerator and still pull away cleanly without you know bucking and that type of thing just because of the tremendous torque of this motor as i say the setup is completely stock we haven't modified it in any way what size of these wheels i'm not even sure i've got to check and see they're pretty big let's show you the let's start at the back of the car this is kind of the cool part here as you see it's very easy car to get into and oh my god it's so comfortable there's so much room in this thing let's see you've got a little table here and you've got storage compartments down there just to ride back here it's like driving your library somewhere you know it's just the beautiful wood i mean it's just classic english design all the elements are here you know the finest leathers most beautiful wood you've got lights everywhere i got these little ashtrays here because everybody smoked back in you know sometimes i just come here in the garage there's nobody around ah just taking a little nap just crash out here you know you've got down filled leather cushions here i mean it's amazing how comfortable this car is to ride in and to drive don't forget back in the 30s most british people if they did have a car and it was fairly rare with 750 cc's most people had motorcycles with side cars the working man type person and people would travel to 35 miles an hour that's about right maybe 40. to go 70 or 80 miles an hour was just unheard of uh the steering is well you'll see how it is on the road of course it's heavy it rests but once you're moving it's quite nice actually it's really terrific this car was built to compete with the rolls-royce phantom and that was an excellent car but it did not have the sporting potentials of this thing i mean this was fast it handled uh this is the car that scared rolls-royce to death that's why rolls-royce bought the company when it was in bankruptcy because they just thought this would steal all their thunder i think that's more than fair to say uh rolls-royces are very nice but they were not hundred mile an hour cars certainly not in 1930. see the thing that killed this car this chassis cost in 1930 cost the equivalent of 293 000. without the body on it so you had to be pretty wealthy and don't forget the depression had just started 1929 and of course it was just as bad in europe if not worse than it was here they barely got a hundred of these out the door before bentley went bankrupt this is the car that was supposed to save the company there just weren't enough rich people around that could afford it i mean the depression it hit you know showing this kind of wealth was seen as a kind of vulgar especially in england so consequently only a hundred cars were built bankrupt bentley went into bankruptcy they had like kind of a i don't know it was the secret sale but it turned out the high bid it was rolls royce and they essentially just crushed the company then crush it they took away anything that would compete with rolls-royce became a second-tier kind of deal as kind of we had cadillac and olds and bills like rolls-royce and then bentley you know um and yeah and that uh that was a devastating blow to wo uh w.o worked for rolls-royce i think a year and then he went to work for lagonda where he designed the v12 engine this first modern engine v12 overhead cam uh that's another car i got over there we'll talk about that one later but let's get back to this thing let's show you the front seat now now here you got you cause you've got your handbrake and your gear shift lever right there four speed transmissions i said whole complement of gauges and i'll show you how that works when we get inside and start it up the sunroof is really cool you're not really supposed to get in from this side let me go around and show you how they go this is how the chauffeur would get in the car it's just easier to get on this side and slide over rather than have the gear shift go up your trouser leg as they say see how it's cut away here for the for the transmission and got a flexible steering wheel have all your controls here this is your choke starting and running and this is uh advanced and and this is a hand throttle as well uh here's the sunroof this just slides open that way you can sort of pretend you're winston churchill and stand up and wait out the window if you like and it has this cute little that's your cigarette lighter see that there so put that in there kind of a cool thing that's your handbrake and you have a control here for shock absorbers uh you tighten this up or loosen it up and it it uh stiffens the shocks or loosens the shocks this little thing here is we put these wireless tail lights on this so you can see this thing from behind for some reason the english have these little tiny tail lights you know people didn't really drive at night when these cars were built the headlines were not so much to light up the road but to keep pedestrians from seeing you so you didn't run over them you know uh you couldn't really light up the road but you could see a car coming and get out of the road in time most people sort of put their cars away at 6 30 or 7 o'clock at night most gas stations were not open at night it wasn't much later in the big cities they did that i love the key just the artist sort of boy it wouldn't be hard to uh make one of those wouldn't come on i'll show you around the rest of the car i'm gonna get out on the other side my favorite is the trunk key let me show you that this looks like something you'd have in a child's music box or something and put that in there turn it and not a huge chunk of course but and just some of the various tools you need for you i guess i can take some of these out this this we made obviously to tighten the the nut on the hubcap there and then you've got various center hubcap and you always want to hit it with a lead hammer so you don't damage the chrome and just some various adjustment tools as well all right let's shut that again there you go nobody's going to break into this baby unless they have a coat hanger there we go all right uh this is that wireless tail light i'm talking about these are great if you have an antique car because you just stick them on any car and it gives you gives you instant taillights come around this side will show the other side of the engine obviously the exhaust side of the motor here's your oil filler cap right here you know if you can crank this engine you're a better man than i am it's not really for that so much i think is for timing carry spare plugs here people always say how does the engine fire with the plugs up there i go it doesn't they're spare plugs this is your one shot lubricator right here it's on this side you hit that pedal and it sends the chassis lube to all the points of the end all the points of the chassis have to keep it lubricated but as you see it's this is it's not perfect in here because this is a car that gets driven a lot i really enjoy driving this thing and to polish all this aluminum is is crazy it just takes forever this is your oil filler right here all i've done is just with a red magic marker just made it red just easier to spot so it's got exactly the right amount it's a it's a massive oil change and this thing i forget how many gallons it is uh it's it's a lot it's a lot yeah here it is right here right there let's shut this earlier mulliner was the most i think the most prolific uh bodybuilder for bentley i think they did the both number no two eight leaders are exactly alike these when you're spending that kind of money in 1930 the equivalent of well by the time i put the body on half a million dollars you got what you wanted so everybody wanted something just a little bit different uh again his skeleton key here locks the door just kind of old-fashioned kind of deal right there that's kind of cool you've got the windshield that opens this opens as well obviously there was no air conditioning in 1930 so as much air as you could get in you had the sunroof you had this you had the windows and your cars had the windshield that opened as well so air was pretty much flowing through this thing all the time just not massive hinges but pretty good size you see the doors open quite wide there's the mulliner script right there and jack barkley i think he was the dealer a very uh prestigious dealer of fine motor cars in the 30s used to run ads on all the magazines the fun part is when you get those magazines from the 50s see these cars 25 pounds 8 liter bentley you know just just virtually giving them away but let's take it next door put it up on the left and we'll show you what it's like on the underside okay we've got the bentley up on our sterile coney lifts i'm shooting this on an iphone because we can't have crew members in the shop because of the covert restrictions so let's get underneath here there's the massive brake drums mechanical brake drums as i said before with a vacuum booster these springs help take some of the vibrations squeaking out take the noise out actually it's funny how that works do the same thing in my bugattis massive 25 gallon tank rear end there's the original muffler i believe there's your battery box and we've got a modern optima battery in there now normally this would be a whole 12 volt you know big truck batteries but the optimas work great and they don't leak fluid and so they don't corrode anything no gaskets under their massive leak springs i love these gators here these are leather and what happens is you just kind of fill them with grease and they keep the grease in the springs as you can see there's a modern or newer drive shaft we had the drive shaft balanced i don't think that's cheating there's the transmission look at this look at that it looks like a bridge under here look at this frame unbelievable yes oh let's give osun shy driveline they did a nice job making that for us give them a plug all this bracing here uh november 2020 that's the last time we change that's the modern oil filtration system i talked about before uh it just makes sense to do that look at the size of the clutch and the flywheel look at this electron crank here look at look how big it is i forget how many quarts this uh this bentley is it's got to be 14 something like that massive breaks in the front as well there's the generator as i said before this car is just massively overbuilt you know and toro bugatti to insult bentley said he built the fastest trucks in europe and they're pretty massive and this frame is truck like but you know they're bulletproof it's one of the few cars you can drive as hard as you want and you won't break it bugatti's tend to be a little bit on the delicate side or as bentley's you can just pound them along the roads and they're fantastic and the bentley drivers club is great because any part you need is available you know they're not sticklers from number matching numbers and all that kind of stuff they just like to have cars that are fast and in the spirit of w.o bentley run the way they're supposed to okay that gives you an idea as i said single exhaust once again the gators let's uh let's take it for a ride come on this is what bentley was all about big powerful fast smooth cars you don't match that shift exactly there we go all right he's not single it takes a certain skill to master the bentley boxing when it's cold it's a little tricky i can't imagine what this must have been like to drive in 1930. you think of most cars with like model t's you know drafty and kind of bumpy this is just dead smooth this is my favorite winter car you know in the summertime these tend to run a little bit on the warm side so you don't get stuck in 100 degree traffic in one of these but a nice day like today this english kind of weather where it's about 60 degrees fahrenheit perfect i think i showed you the cigarette lighter there you go i just can't believe how good these brakes are for mechanical brakes well the packard's the same way mechanical with the vacuum which almost seemed like the way to go in 1930 before people trusted hydraulics you know you had the steel rods of the brake but the vacuum helps give you a little more pressure i mean she wants to run you can feel her pull it this and the duesenberg are the two most powerful cars of the late 20s and early 30s although technically is the 30s car but close enough you got this flexible steering wheel kind of fun like all the comprehensive gauges on the dashboard you know most older cars you go well they can't really go anywhere with it because you don't want to go much over 50 so it's going to take a long time to get there with this not a not a problem i mean it loves to run it's got all kinds of torque all through the river [Applause] it was an old saying back in the day but eventually you look at the car with the rolls-royce you look in the car because you want to say who bought that you know the bentley you want to look at the car it sounds funny to talk about this car as a sporting car with a sporting nature but it really is true you know the big rolls is a lot of the big package sedans with the beer they were just kind of like box cars on wheels even that gusenburg count car i and duesenberg is quite sporting actually that was a little bit different because it's such a big heavy box back there a lot of wood and you know you go around the corner it's like well hey hey hey you feel like you're going to come over where this thing just and a grown person when bentley was still alive but i never got a chance to meet him he died in 71 that's when i was 21 years old i would love to have met him but i think it's fascinating he was born in the 1800s in an agricultural society he worked on trains he worked on planes and ultimately with you know when bentley first started he didn't like automobiles he was a train guy and he actually said uh cars are awful all they do is splash blood on people when you go behind but uh he frankly got over that there's a number of biographies on wmently and they're all quite good and it really does make for an interesting read but all the gears everything in this car is massive massively overbuilt i've never had a tooth break in the transmission of a bentley box some of the other cars i have but not one of these and normally in la it's 100 degrees you got the windows down the windshield it's kind of cozy to be in this thing and get a little engine heat coming through with all the windows shut the sunroof bows and this kind of little luxurious cocoon as i said only 100 of these cars were built i believe 78 remain i've got uh i've got three of the eight leaders one open car and then a hot rod using a three liter vent with chassis three liter bentley chassis with eight bentley engine twin turbos on it this is the only one that's 100 stop and just fantastic as i said bentley did not really believe in supercharging or turbocharging he like naturally aspirated engines and didn't have enough power to make it bigger i mean it's hard to think of this engine as sort of the hemi of the 1930s but it was it was the biggest engine ever produced in england and the most powerful just the fact that this car is capable of going 100 miles an hour with i can't imagine what the coefficient of drag is in this thing but it's got to be horrible so just the power and talk to push it through the wind at 100 miles out with a totally flat windshield it shows it's got some some power anyway i hope you enjoyed this little history lesson on one of my favorites and one of my heroes w.o bentley just a great engineer and uh one of those intuitive guys you know guys just look at them and go no it's two millimeters off you know i can stand there for a half an hour and not see it but these guys are just great and they were their forefathers that made all the automobiles we have now possible especially exciting ones and i'm glad to see bentley is still going strong and building cars in the world tradition anyway i hope you liked this little uh ride we took and how often do we do a four-door sedan that's exciting so see you guys next week thanks [Music] ah

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 524,976

Rating: 4.9604149 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Bentley, W.O. Bentley, Mulliner, luxury, bespoke, car porn, English, UK, classic cars, gearhead, motonerd, rare cars, limited edition, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 1931 Bentley 8-Litre Mulliner Sedan, jay leno interview, car show, 1931 Bentley, 1931 bentley 8 litre engine, 1931 bentley 8-litre, bentley w.o edition, Mulliner Sedan, car reviews 2021

Id: 9baxW6o6ABM

Length: 31min 34sec (1894 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021