Life imitating art, art imitating life

When I joined the board of Bentley Motors in 2003, it felt like a sensible moment to indulge a long-standing weakness. A boyhood one, in fact. If you’re going to justify buying a historic Bentley to yourself, being on the board seems as good a rationale as any.

The object of my desire was the Bentley S-Type. And not by accident. It represented, to my mind, the absolute zenith of body-on-frame engineering – just before the entire concept was swept aside by the inexorable advance of the unitary body. True, by the time the S arrived, monocoques had already taken over almost everywhere else, but body-on-frame lived on in American saloons, SUVs and pickups for decades afterwards. The S was also the first Bentley to house the now-legendary Crewe V8 in its natural habitat. Finally – and this is not trivial – I simply loved the way it looked.

But that rather jumps ahead.