THE world's most valuable racing car was to have changed hands recently in a record £10 million sterling deal. Then the Japanese buyer planned to sell it on at a £2 million sterling profit. But today - Thursday, July 5 - the seller and buyer are in Court. Their feud is over the authenticity of "Old Number One", double Le Mans winner and, in its various forms, most successful of the celebrated racing Bentleys of the 1920s and 1930s. (The case - Hubbard v Middlebridge Scimitar Ltd - is being heard by Mr Justice Otton in Court number 17 of the Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London WC2.) First "Speed Six" ever to be raced, the car at the centre the present controversy was winner of the final two - 1929 and 1930 - of the Bentley company's five Le Mans 24-hour victories. It also won long-distance classics on the daunting banked track at Brooklands in Surrey. Most notable of these - the 1931 Brooklands 500 Miles - was the world's fastest motor race of its time. The 2½ -ton "Old Number One" was first past the flag at an average of 118.39 mph. A year later, tragedy in the 1932 Brooklands 500 Miles brought the car's illustrious racing career to a close. Clive Dunfee had taken over the eight-litre monster from his brother Jack and was in fourth place, lapping at 126 mph. Apparently intending to overtake another car on the outside, he swung high up the Members' Banking, then put a wheel over the edge. For a moment it seemed he had regained control but the Bentley struck a tree that flipped it into a double-roll in mid-air. The car plunged into woodland behind the banking and Clive Dunfee was flung onto the concrete track. Owner of the Bentley was Captain Woolf Barnato, heir to a diamond fortune, and chairman of Bentley Motors until the company was taken over by Rolls-Royce. After the fatal crash, he had the car re-bodied as a coupé for his personal use on the road. It subsequently passed through a number of hands and remained unused in the USA for 15 years before returning to Britain in 1988. |
