Green-blooded men

WHAT IS IT ABOUT Bentleys that gets into the blood? I’m talking of proper Bentleys, of course – those built under the auspices of Walter Owen himself up to 1930. A 1930s Derby car is a superb machine, and who wouldn’t like to waft around in a Continental GT, but there’s something in the throb and heft of those early Cricklewood cars that infuses through the driver’s seat. And once there it gets passed on to the next generation.

Take the Morleys. Maybe you remember the thunderous Napier-Bentley that lit up VSCC races in the 1980s and ’90s, its 12 exhaust stubs firing like mortars in three different directions from the W-layout cylinders. That was Peter Morley’s doing, just one aspect of his Bentley-focused passions, which he passed on to his son Clive and Clive passed on to his sons James and Stuart… And at times they’ve had all three generations on the grid at once.

I went to the Morley farm in Essex to meet this family