They did not make old bones well in Africa as displayed in their value ~ zero. However they were pretty vehicles, idiosyncratic with stunning NVH levels. Mercedes Benz was a far better car by then post war. Pre war it was always a better car than any Jaguar.

 

For NVH and the ride handling combination, the series XJ were unmatched in their time and better than most since. Certainly, Mercedes were far better built than the series XJ in those days, especially the series 2 that suffered terribly from all the evils of BL.

 

This is a properly built car. Not a Standard or whatever in pretty clothes.

 

It is a lovely thing, but one wonders what percentage of the population could afford it. Perhaps .0001% ?
No wonder VW became so popular post WW2. Cheap, simple and reasonably reliable beetle.
Standard, Austin, Morris etc. did attempt to make cars that the masses could afford.

 

I think it would have had black wall tires on though _ may be I'm wrong.

I would take this over the Mercedes, but unfortunately the Bentley's antiquated F head engine with its complex crank damper and weird braking system, I'm sure it falls short in the engineering department when compared to the Mercedes.
The Bentley didn't breath very well either.




Or This

 

Indeed but there was nothing wrong with the very well built & reliable Ponton. The Beetle & Kombie served their purpose well. Just look at how many they sold. Lee Iacocca of Ford & Chrysler fame used to have a Beetle torn down every few years & marvel at the workmanship at such a low price.

Don't worry Bill. I come from a family that believed that to buy British was to buy better when every indication was to the contrary. My Mum & I broke that mould. Me with a long string of Alfa's (7) and my Mum with Chrysler Valiants & finally an Alfa before she stopped driving at her choice. She came home one day and declared herself no longer competent to drive & informed my father that he would have to drive her in future. The Chrysler Valiant was the best selling car in South Africa at that time.

My Dad stuck to his Austin Cambridge's, S Types etc. at the time. His last British car was a Rover P5 Coupe but he too moved to Valiants.

I wanted to restore an Aston DB6 Mk2 but could not find one (loved the Kamm tail) so I did the S type as we had owned one and I liked it.

 

One of the reason VWs were so cheap after the war was because the UK and possibly the US invested a shed full of money into them to reboot the German economy. If the same amount of money had been invested into UK car manufacturers we might still have a Motor industry instead of assembling cars for other countries.

I have a friend who has a 1956 Bentley S1 which I have the pleasure of driving on a regular basis at wedding. Beautiful car but as Jeff said so complex. The brakes for instance only work on the rear brakes up to 20mph before a load of extra levers, wires and a clutch to transfer some braking to the front wheels. The reason for this is so when you come to a halt at low speeds the front of the car does not dip disturbing the passengers who instead get a level ride.

 

One of the reason VWs were so cheap after the war was because the UK and possibly the US invested a shed full of money into them to reboot the German economy. If the same amount of money had been invested into UK car manufacturers we might still have a Motor industry instead of assembling cars for other countries.

I have a friend who has a 1956 Bentley S1 which I have the pleasure of driving on a regular basis at wedding. Beautiful car but as Jeff said so complex. The brakes for instance only work on the rear brakes up to 20mph before a load of extra levers, wires and a clutch to transfer some braking to the front wheels. The reason for this is so when you come to a halt at low speeds the front of the car does not dip disturbing the passengers who instead get a level ride.

 

Duplicate? Britain at the time was rationing steel to encourage export to pay off war debt. Why Lyons had to build his first LHD's. The US being his largest customer. The US put piles of money into the German economy. The UK had little to do with the German economy. They had bigger debt problems of their own.

 

Refresh page for edits.

 

I've often quoted A.M. Wellington (The Art of Railway Location, John Wiley, 1887):
"... engineering .. is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion."

The Merc up the page and to less extreme level the R-R based Bentleys don't do well on that test.

So we don't judge the Merc as a car, more as technical and styling tour de force. Brian Sewell wrote to the effect that it makes the statement look at me and up yours. (Actually his words were stronger than 'up yours'). But, isn't that the nice thing about a Jaguar: it manages to say look at me I'm wonderful without the up yours?

 

The UK contribution to VW was from the British Army in terms of reconstruction of the factory, development of product quality and production methods, and a spare parts system. The Royal Engineers were way ahead of UK car car manufacturers in these areas. The British military also provided the first major orders for Beetles and they were used by the administration. There's a film by VW describing it all.

 

Yes ~ I've seen the film Peter. I'm talking car manufacturers. In reality the UK put very little into Germany after the war. They could not afford to. They had bigger problems of their own.

 

In the words of my late father-in-law Harry Judd who was a bomber pilot in the RAF and had 3 Masters Degrees from London University, Marine, Mechanical & Aeronautical. ~ "The Germans were damn fine engineers". The US would not have put a man on the moon without Wernher von Braun and the Space Shuttle would never have flown without the Austrians. They held patents on and supplied various materials that made it possible.

The Judd Estate was used as officers quarters during the war.

 

... not to forget that several of the German and Austrian engineers were actually from the Austrian imperial possessions; that is Czech, Hungarian...

 

Agreed! That takes nothing away from the likes of Ferdinand Porsche, Willie Messerschmitt, The Daimler Benz history etc.etc. ad infinitum.

 

Refresh for edits.

 

Glyn
Those Chrysler Valiants were as tough as guts. They stood up well on the Australian outback roads.
The only fault was that Chrysler Australia did not have the dealer/spares coverage that Ford and GM Holden had in place.
I drove a slant six model for a couple of years and the only fault was a propensity to cause spark plug failure at 5000 to 8000 mile intervals.
I never did sort out why but at 50 cents each a new set of plugs was not going to break the bank.

 

Cass
A friend of mine has a 1956 Rolls Royce which looks identical to the Bentley. I understand it was the last model to have a separate chassis
i have helped him out on some of the electrical and instrumentation areas and carbie issues.
As you stated it has a weird and wonderfully complex braking system which really contrasts to the relatively simple vacuum brake booster system used in MK7, 8, 9 Jaguars of a similar vintage.

 

Though I've known people who owned and liked them, I've always thought Beetles were awful cars. But my opinion is probably irrelevant. I thought the Datsun/Nissan Cherry was a horrible thing, yet it was the first car to obtain greater 'owner loyalty' than the Beetle. Amongst popular British cars, I found the Morris Minor pretty bad with a noisy gearbox and not much of an engine. The Wolseley 1500 and Riley 1.5 were enormous improvements yet BMC sold close to zero. As for the Ford Cortina, most often an enormous bonnet with a lot of empty space under it.

Someone I knew years ago, he'd restored a Mk VI Bentley, said the RR-Bentley cars solution to many design problems was to make the item from expensive materials, put in extra seals, so it would last forever, then add a load of extra complication so it wouldn't. All engineers have their characters which makes their products interesting though not always good. However, as I've written many times, what makes a company a success depends little on the the engineers, it much more having someone inside the business who acts as the customer to the engineers and access of the business to sympathetic finance