No one came. No one, that is, except for curious tourists by the dozen. It went to prove what any vintage car owner will tell you: the general public is interested in and entirely unthreatened by old cars and has an instinctive liking for their antiquity. While they swirled, we took a minute to savour the elegance of the surroundings before heading back into the traffic, peering through the slit screen, over the louvred bonnet, past the dinner-plate headlights and on to the road.
Driving a car like this in London is something you’d never manage if you hadn’t established familiarity with it in easier-going traffic. First, there’s the ultra-heavy, unassisted steering and 45ft (my estimate) turning circle to contend with. If you only ever drive moderns, you forget what a huge part of driving time is taken up with clutch and transmission management. Sure, the engine is huge and flexible, but any gearchange, up or down, requires a time-consuming double shuffle (one-pause-clutch-clunk-two) that simply can’t be banged through, no matter how many white vans are snapping at your rear. Same for the brakes. They’re powerful, but the car’s a three-tonner. Start slowing before you have to, that’s the rule.
Yet it’s comfortable. Not exactly spacious, but it has those enveloping bucket seats of the early days of motoring and room enough to stick your legs more or less straight out in front. Despite the lack of independent suspension at either end, the Bentley’s weight simply mashes most bumps into submission, and with such a vast wheelbase, fully a metre longer than some family cars, the big beast simply never pitches.
We hunted for a while before finding our next landmark, the old Gurney Nutting coachbuilding shop in Elystan Street, behind the King’s Road, where the Blue Train coupé’s special body was reputedly built.
At first we saw only blocks of f lats, but suddenly there it was, small, perfectly placed and venerable enough to be a coachbuilder’s shop. Our hearts leapt. Then it was back through Berkeley Square again – past the Morton’s Club greatly favoured by Barnato and his chums – and into St James’s Street, where we parked outside the old Conservative Club. Again, the confidence of the old-car owner came to the fore; we must have stood there for 15 minutes, funnelling taxis and tourist buses from two lanes into one while various snappers (moving and still) did their stuff. We were never hassled.