The R-Type Continental Fastback in its time was the finest and most expensive touring car in the world, the ultimate in transcontinental land travel for the super-rich owner-driver.
Owned for the past 50 years by the charismatic Pink Floyd manager and gentleman racer Steve O’Rourke and his family with a recorded mileage of only 32,000 which is believed to be correct.
When the prototype R-Type Continental Fastback was shown at the Paris Salon and the London Motor Show in the autumn of 1951 Bentley found over 200 buyers for a car in spite of the colossal price tag – £7,608 3s 6d.
In 1952 that would buy two new Ferrari 225s, two new Morris Minors for the staff and have enough left over to drive the Continental down to the Riviera for a couple of weeks holiday.
In 1949, H.J. Mulliner had produced three ‘Mulliner Lightweights’, streamlined coupés based on Mk VI running gear. In parallel, Franco-Britannic Automobiles of Paris commissioned Pinin Farina to design a sporting Bentley Mk VI coupé the ‘Cresta’ which was another aerodynamic design – but heavy.
Ivan Evernden, Bentley’s head of chassis design, combined the principle of the aluminium bodywork/frame of Mulliner’s Lightweights with many of the chassis developments of the Cresta. A tuned version of the new R-type’s 4566cc engine, coupled to a close-ratio gearbox and final drive ratio of 3.077:1 gave 28mph per 1000rpm in the overdriven fourth gear and a 120mph maximum.
The new Bentley was introduced to the public as the ‘Continental Sports Saloon’, a title that encapsulated its role as a long-distance express. A total of 207 (plus the prototype) were built in five series: ‘A’ to ‘E’, from May 1952 to April 1955, and no two were the same.
First owners of the new Continental included the fabled American sportsman Briggs Cunningham, the Shah of Iran, Greek tycoon André Embiricos, shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli.
KKR1
VIN: BC 2 A
Eng: BCA2
First registered 1952
First registered in Paris it was repatriated twenty years later by Victor Barclay, scion of Jack Barclay Bentley in Mayfair.
In 1973 he sold it to Pink Floyd manager Steve O’Rourke, it’s said that he bought the car on a whim whilst passing Jack Barclay’s showroom in Berkeley Square after a particularly successful business lunch nearby involving a considerable amount of wine. He and his family have kept it since, always looked after by the best Bentley specialists with no expense spared. The car has been used sparingly to say the least but always conveyed the O’Rourke family and guests to the Duke of Richmond’s Goodwood occasions.
