Treasure found in an underground parking garage - A Bentley in the rough.
When Doug Saunders discovered his 1949 Bentley Mark VI, it was entombed in an underground-parking sarcophagus at a friend's condo and covered in an archeological dig's depth of accumulated dirt that masked its form so well he didn't immediately match it to the poster he'd been eyeing wistfully for three decades.
"I'd always loved them and I'd had a poster of a guy sitting on the front fender of a Mark VI since the late 1970s. But it always seemed so remote and so impossible that I'd ever have one. It was a dream,” Saunders says.
One of his automotive dreams had already come true, when he acquired his 1968 Jaguar E-Type, a car he first saw as a 14-year-old in Britain the year it was launched in 1961. And the second was about to.
“When I drove in, I didn't recognize what it was, but said to myself I must have a look at that on the way out,” says Saunders. Closer inspection soon identified it as a 1949 Bentley Mark VI that had been sitting neglected for three years.
Saunders, who lives in Oakville, Ont., tracked down the owner and began a series of coffee-shop negotiating sessions that ended with the pair sitting in the leather- and wood-trimmed back seat of the car in 2008, a deal finally struck.
“We pulled the picnic trays down from the backs of the front seats and I wrote a cheque on one of them and he wrote out the bill of sale on the other,” Saunders says.
What Saunders had purchased was an example of Bentley's first new postwar model, which had been launched in 1946, just a year before he was born.
The Bentley marque had been created by founder and aero-engine designer W.O. Bentley in 1919. Over the next decade, he created a series of sensational road-going and racing cars, including those that won the Le Mans 24-hour race four times from 1927-30.
But Bentley's operation tripped over the unravelled shoestring it had always operated on and was purchased by Rolls-Royce in 1931. The Bentley models that followed were basically somewhat sportier rebadged Rolls-Royces.
The Mark VI's mechanical specification was basically updated prewar engineering, but it featured the first factory-built steel body used by Rolls-Royce. Before this, Rolls-Royce had supplied its chassis to individual coach builders who had created bodies for them. It was shared, suitably modified, by the 1946 Silver Wraith and in 1949 by the Silver Dawn.
The Mark VI bodies were built by Pressed Steel of Coventry and mated to the chassis, trimmed and painted at Rolls-Royce's factory in the town of Crewe in Cheshire, England.
The Bentley Mark VI chassis was fitted with an independent coil-sprung front suspension, a leaf-sprung live axle rear end (rear damping could be adjusted for firmness via a steering wheel centre control) and drum brakes with R-R's unique mechanical servo assist. It also had a central lubrication system.
Power was supplied by a 4.3-litre, F-head (overhead intake, side exhaust), inline-six driving the rear wheels through a four-speed manual gearbox.
Output was, in Rolls-Royce parlance, “sufficient” to accelerate the 1,067-kilogram sedan (a current R-R Phantom weighs 2,670 kg) to 100 kilometres an hour in just over 15 seconds and to a top speed of about 160 km/h. It burned “petrol” at the rate of 16.5 miles per imperial gallon.
The Mark VI was built until 1952 and 5,202 were produced (about one fifth of them with coach-built bodies, which were still insisted on by certain wealthy and conservative customers).
Like his Bentley, Saunders also has a Rolls-Royce connection. Born in Ireland to British parents, he completed a mechanical engineering degree at Trinity College in Dublin and went to work for Rolls-Royce's aero engine operation.
During his time there, he indulged his love for old British cars, not with Rolls-Royces – “I never even visited Crewe” – but with a Daimler Conquest, an old Hillman Minx and a series of Morris Minors. “It was always older British cars that interested me,” he says.
And that interest followed him to Canada where he acquired an MBA from the University of Ottawa, then moved to the Toronto area and settled down to career and family life. It wasn't until 1981 that he indulged his old-car interest again with the purchase of the '68 E-Type Jag, found derelict at a small local garage.
“When I was 14, I'd said, ‘That's the car I want,' and 20 years later I finally got my E-type,” he says. The car was rebuilt to a road-worthy state with help from the garage owner, driven for a while and then stored, until 10 years ago when it underwent a full ground-up restoration.
The all-but-abandoned Bentley's condition initially had a big question mark hanging over it, until Saunders discovered that a local restoration shop that had done work on his E-Type knew the car.
“I said, ‘I'll get it towed out for you to have a look at.' They said, ‘No, just go to Canadian Tire, get a battery and start it up,'” Saunders says. And with help from his son, he did just that, and after performing some other checks, pressed the starter button and it was soon running.
“We drove it around the parking lot and my wife says when I got home, I had a grin from one ear to the other,” he says.
Driving it is “interesting,” says Saunders, as it's right-drive and the shift lever for the four-speed box is located to the right between seat and door.
Once the layers of underground parking grime had been removed from its blue and grey paint, the Bentley proved to be in very sound shape. The previous owner had it for some 30 years, during which it had received a full mechanical, body and interior restoration. New tires and a horn repair were all it needed to be made fully roadworthy.
“It's not a 100-point car,” says Saunders of the now 60-year-old and well-travelled Bentley – which was originally purchased by a British colonel, passed on to an owner in Cornwall, made its way to Quebec, then Niagara-on-the-Lake, where its previous owner bought it and took it to New Zealand before returning to Oakville – “but it shows well. You could probably spend $100,000 on it and it would only look 20-per-cent better.”
Source: Treasure found in an underground parking garage - A Bentley in the rough.
"I'd always loved them and I'd had a poster of a guy sitting on the front fender of a Mark VI since the late 1970s. But it always seemed so remote and so impossible that I'd ever have one. It was a dream,” Saunders says.
One of his automotive dreams had already come true, when he acquired his 1968 Jaguar E-Type, a car he first saw as a 14-year-old in Britain the year it was launched in 1961. And the second was about to.
“When I drove in, I didn't recognize what it was, but said to myself I must have a look at that on the way out,” says Saunders. Closer inspection soon identified it as a 1949 Bentley Mark VI that had been sitting neglected for three years.
Saunders, who lives in Oakville, Ont., tracked down the owner and began a series of coffee-shop negotiating sessions that ended with the pair sitting in the leather- and wood-trimmed back seat of the car in 2008, a deal finally struck.
“We pulled the picnic trays down from the backs of the front seats and I wrote a cheque on one of them and he wrote out the bill of sale on the other,” Saunders says.
What Saunders had purchased was an example of Bentley's first new postwar model, which had been launched in 1946, just a year before he was born.
The Bentley marque had been created by founder and aero-engine designer W.O. Bentley in 1919. Over the next decade, he created a series of sensational road-going and racing cars, including those that won the Le Mans 24-hour race four times from 1927-30.
But Bentley's operation tripped over the unravelled shoestring it had always operated on and was purchased by Rolls-Royce in 1931. The Bentley models that followed were basically somewhat sportier rebadged Rolls-Royces.
The Mark VI's mechanical specification was basically updated prewar engineering, but it featured the first factory-built steel body used by Rolls-Royce. Before this, Rolls-Royce had supplied its chassis to individual coach builders who had created bodies for them. It was shared, suitably modified, by the 1946 Silver Wraith and in 1949 by the Silver Dawn.
The Mark VI bodies were built by Pressed Steel of Coventry and mated to the chassis, trimmed and painted at Rolls-Royce's factory in the town of Crewe in Cheshire, England.
The Bentley Mark VI chassis was fitted with an independent coil-sprung front suspension, a leaf-sprung live axle rear end (rear damping could be adjusted for firmness via a steering wheel centre control) and drum brakes with R-R's unique mechanical servo assist. It also had a central lubrication system.
Power was supplied by a 4.3-litre, F-head (overhead intake, side exhaust), inline-six driving the rear wheels through a four-speed manual gearbox.
Output was, in Rolls-Royce parlance, “sufficient” to accelerate the 1,067-kilogram sedan (a current R-R Phantom weighs 2,670 kg) to 100 kilometres an hour in just over 15 seconds and to a top speed of about 160 km/h. It burned “petrol” at the rate of 16.5 miles per imperial gallon.
The Mark VI was built until 1952 and 5,202 were produced (about one fifth of them with coach-built bodies, which were still insisted on by certain wealthy and conservative customers).
Like his Bentley, Saunders also has a Rolls-Royce connection. Born in Ireland to British parents, he completed a mechanical engineering degree at Trinity College in Dublin and went to work for Rolls-Royce's aero engine operation.
During his time there, he indulged his love for old British cars, not with Rolls-Royces – “I never even visited Crewe” – but with a Daimler Conquest, an old Hillman Minx and a series of Morris Minors. “It was always older British cars that interested me,” he says.
And that interest followed him to Canada where he acquired an MBA from the University of Ottawa, then moved to the Toronto area and settled down to career and family life. It wasn't until 1981 that he indulged his old-car interest again with the purchase of the '68 E-Type Jag, found derelict at a small local garage.
“When I was 14, I'd said, ‘That's the car I want,' and 20 years later I finally got my E-type,” he says. The car was rebuilt to a road-worthy state with help from the garage owner, driven for a while and then stored, until 10 years ago when it underwent a full ground-up restoration.
The all-but-abandoned Bentley's condition initially had a big question mark hanging over it, until Saunders discovered that a local restoration shop that had done work on his E-Type knew the car.
“I said, ‘I'll get it towed out for you to have a look at.' They said, ‘No, just go to Canadian Tire, get a battery and start it up,'” Saunders says. And with help from his son, he did just that, and after performing some other checks, pressed the starter button and it was soon running.
“We drove it around the parking lot and my wife says when I got home, I had a grin from one ear to the other,” he says.
Driving it is “interesting,” says Saunders, as it's right-drive and the shift lever for the four-speed box is located to the right between seat and door.
Once the layers of underground parking grime had been removed from its blue and grey paint, the Bentley proved to be in very sound shape. The previous owner had it for some 30 years, during which it had received a full mechanical, body and interior restoration. New tires and a horn repair were all it needed to be made fully roadworthy.
“It's not a 100-point car,” says Saunders of the now 60-year-old and well-travelled Bentley – which was originally purchased by a British colonel, passed on to an owner in Cornwall, made its way to Quebec, then Niagara-on-the-Lake, where its previous owner bought it and took it to New Zealand before returning to Oakville – “but it shows well. You could probably spend $100,000 on it and it would only look 20-per-cent better.”
Source: Treasure found in an underground parking garage - A Bentley in the rough.
