PAST IMPERFECT:He started off on the railways, but pioneer engineer WO Bentley soon found his calling, writes Bob Montgomery.
FROM HIS earliest childhood, Walter Owen Bentley felt he had a "calling" to be an engineer. But for young Walter, born in 1888, the locomotive rather than the car caught his interest.
One of six brothers, he attended Clifton College in Bristol, leaving at 16 to become an apprentice in the Great Northern Railway works at Doncaster. There, other forms of wheeled transport influenced him and he became a keen motorcyclist. In the five years that followed, his passion for the internal combustion engine grew and he decided to devote his life to car engines.
In 1912, with his brother Henry, he took over an agency for three makes of French car, working from an old coach-house just off Baker Street in London. When war broke out in 1914, he enlisted in the newly formed Royal Naval Air Service, in its aero-engine development branch. WO, as he was known,helped take the engine out of a Mercedes which had triumphed in the 1914 French Grand Prix and persuade Rolls-Royce to copy it for use in naval aircraft. This became the renowned Rolls-Royce Eagle engine.
Bentley also designed a rotary engine, the BR1, which was fitted to the famous Sopwith Camel fighter plane.
After the war, WO returned to Baker Street, where he built the first engine and chassis for the 3-litre Bentley car. It was an instant success. In 1926 it was joined by a 6-cylinder car, and, the next year, a 4.5-litre 4-cylinder version. In 1931 a luxurious 8-litre car was launched, but it is for the five wins, between 1924 and 1930, in the 24 Hour Race at Le Mans that the marque became forever famous.
In the late 1920s WO was joined at Bentley Motors by Harry Westlake, who made considerable improvements to the engines' efficiency. In 1926 racing driver Woolf Barnato, one of the famous "Bentley Boys", became Bentley chairman. With his friend Cecil Rhodes, Barnato had made his fortune in diamond fields in South Africa. When the world slump of 1931 hit, Barnato withdrew his investment from Bentley Motors, causing the company to fail.
WO wanted old-established firm Napier to gain control, but was shocked when Rolls-Royce took over. In later years WO recalled his first meeting with Henry Royce, who observed that Bentley was not a trained engineer. WO retorted that, like Royce, he had been trained as an engineer in a railway works. However Bentley felt that he was just "part of the office furniture" at Rolls-Royce, and moved to Lagonda. It was there, in 1935, that he conceived the V12 Lagonda as a challenger to the Rolls-Royce Phantom 3.
The appointment of WO as Lagonda's chief designer saved the company. WO stayed with Lagonda through the second World War and designed the 2.5-litre Lagonda with all-independent suspension - the engine used by Aston Martin after they bought Lagonda.
By 1947, Bentley had left Lagonda; his final design, a 3-litre engine for Armstrong Siddeley, was not put into production.
WO Bentley, one of the greatest of all engine designers, died in 1971.