Sir Henry Birkin's Blower Bentley: A Brooklands Legend

The Blower-4½ single-seater Bentley with which the late Sir Henry Birkin twice broke the Brooklands outer-circuit lap record was very much in evidence when I was a regular visitor to the Track. Its appearance raised anticipation to high levels, because it was one of the fastest cars racing, effectively taking the place of the legendary aero-engined monsters of an earlier decade. To see the slight figure of the Baronet taking this long, slim, blue (later red) Bentley round the bankings was indeed exciting, his polka-dot scarf streaming out behind his helmet and the big car snaking viciously over the bumps. From which it can be seen that I was an avid admirer of this combination of man and machine and used to watch it in most of its races.

The last appearance of this very fast and successful Brooklands car was when Birkin beat John Cobb by 0.8sec in a match race in 1932, won at 124.33mph. By then Birkin was estimated to have done more than 50 laps of Brooklands in it at 135mph or more and had twice broken the lap-record with it. Sir Henry died in 1933 and surprisingly the Bentley was never raced again before the war, and Birkin’s patron Dorothy Paget did not sell it. Sir Henry had said it was an extremely difficult car to drive fast so perhaps there were no takers.

Twin blow-off valves crown the inlet manifold, above.