IN 1931, DESPERATELY IN NEED OF A powertrain that cost less to build and run in the wake of a rapidly changing world that had turned against gasguzzling motors, Bentley installed a 4-litre engine designed by someone else into its full-sized 8-litre chassis. It wasn’t even designed by Bentley and was quite unlike any other engine it had used to date. And it didn’t work: just 50 of these Bentley 4-litres with their Ricardo-engineered straight sixes were built before the receivers shut down the original Bentley Motors for good.
Spool forward just over 90 years and Bentley is reacting in the same
