Bentleys Galore: Bentley Drivers Club 60th Anniversary Meeting

It's hard to argue against Bentley. From the marque's start as high speed play things for Europe's Jazz Age, monied neerdowell/rapscallion set to an impressive string of Le Mans victories at the hands of ubermenschen like Woolf "Babe" Barnato to all the Bond Villianesque Coupes of the 1950s to the torque-master turbo yachts of the 1980s and 90s all the way up to today's steriodal VW-platformed Continentals, the brand's got that little sumpin' sumpin'.

August 8 and 9 marked the 60th anniversary meeting of the Bentley's Drivers Club at England's famed Silverstone track and what better way to celebrate than with lots of racing? Says the club's Competitions Captain Sebastian Welch, "Our aim was to celebrate 60 years of BDC racing at Silverstone with two days of 'proper' club racing, from highly competitive dicing on track to a non-stop slideshow of archive pictures in the pit garage and family picnics on the grass at Copse." We so wish we were rich.

Perhaps equal to our raging jealousy is our fascination at the lineup of cars on hand for the 60th meet up. A few favorites: 1928 Speed Six, 1933 Napier-Railton (with a 24-liter, 550 hp W12 -- no front-wheel brakes, either), 1949 MkVI Special, 1990 Turbo R and the Le Mans winning, 600 hp, 217 mph 2003 Speed 8. If none of those float your boat, check your pulse concentrate on the fact that one of the scratch races saw 25 Bentleys of all vintages going wheel to wheel with Michael Higginbotham's MkVI Special coming out on top. Be sure to peruse the gallery as these are some mightily beautiful pictures.

[Image Source: Peter de Rousset-Hall]