Blue Train Races - Bentley Speed Six

Bentley Speed Six

Woolf "Babe" Barnato was a businessman of substance (a diamond mining heir in South Africa and Bentley chairman), a celebrated racing driver (a "Bentley Boy" with multiple Le Mans wins), and a noted bon vivant. One evening in March 1930, at a diner at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, talk around the table had swung round to the topic of motor cars; in particular to the advertisement by Rover claiming that its Light Six had gone faster than the famous "Le train bleu" express. Barnato contended that just to go faster than the Blue Train was of no special merit. He raised the stakes by arguing that at the wheel of his own Bentley Speed Six, he could be at his club in London before the train reached Calais and bet GBP100 on that challenge! The next day, 13 March 1930, as the Blue Train steamed out of Cannes station at 17:45h, Barnato, with one of his friends who had gallantly offered to act as a relief driver, took to the mighty Bentley and set off at the double. From Lyons onwards they had to battle against heavy rain. At 4:20h, in Auxerre, they lost time searching for a refueling rendezvous. Through central France they hit fog, then shortly after Paris they had a burst tyre, requiring the use of their one and only spare. And yet, racing non-stop through the night along the bumpy, 1930's Routes Nationales, they reached the coast at 10:30h, sailed over to England on the cross-Channel packet, and were neatly parked outside The Conservative Club in St. James's Street, London, by 15:20h - four minutes before the Blue Train reached Calais. He won the bet, whereupon the French authorities promptly fined him a sum far greater than his winnings - for racing on public roads.

The H. J. Mulliner-bodied formal saloon he drove during the race as well as a streamlined fastback "Sportsman Coupe" by Gurney Nutting he took delivery of on 21 May 1930 became known as the Blue Train Bentleys; the latter is regularly mistaken for or errouneously referred to as being the car that raced the Blue Train, while in fact Barnato named it in memory of his race. A further cause of confusion is the well-known painting of the race by Terence Cuneo which features the Gurney Nutting bodied car.