[ Bentley Continental GT3-R ]
It was an infamous wager made in 1930: drive from Cannes to London quicker than the Blue Train could make it from Cannes to Calais. The feat cemented the legend of the Bentley Boys. We try to top it in a Bentley Continental GT3-R
Words STEVE MOODY Photography RICHARD PARDON
The noise builds with an incredible shriek of the high-boost turbos spinning up followed by a thunderous bellow as all of the eight cylinders go potty, with a hard crackle marching through the lightweight Akrapovic titanium exhausts.
Imagine all your favourite noisy car noises, served in one gluttonous banquet, and you have an inkling. But while wondering how the devil it sounds both heart-flutteringly heavenly and bowel-grippingly satanic at the same time, you’ll already be past the ton and heading for real trouble. The 572bhp Bentley Continental GT3-R is mesmerisingly, brutally quick, but the delivery of extreme speed is a true and unalloyed joy, devoid of the nagging doubt that it’s milliseconds from ruination.
Woolf hound: Barnato was determined to beat the Blue Train
The fabled challenge that has inspired our cross-country journey ahead came about over dinner at the Carlton Hotel, perched on the French Riveria, in Cannes in 1930, where then Bentley chairman, racer – jubilantly triumphant with three consecutive wins out of the same number of entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans no less – and diamond-mine heir Woolf Barnato poured scorn on Rover’s and Alvis’s much-heralded beating of the Blue Train from Cannes to Calais.
A trifle, he thought. Anyone could do that. In the same time, 21-and-a-half hours, he reckoned that he could steer his Bentley from the Carlton to his dinner companion (and soon to be co-driver) Dale Bourn’s club, the Conservative, just off London’s Pall Mall, and pocket a £100 wager in the process.
A cruiser or brusier? This Bentley is both
‘France starts to look a pifflingly small place with this much pace available’
That’s definitely a contest worthy of a Bentley Boy. It must have seemed a sticky trial 95 years ago, even for somebody as esteemed and successful as Barnato who had never lost at Le Mans, because it still feels pretty testing today, sitting in the golden glow of a winter morning, downing as much coffee as the Carlton can brew, eyeing the muscular 2015 Continental GT3-Rsitting malevolently on the start line.
‘It can’t be done,’ some naysayers comment. ‘Certainly not in less than a day with any half-usable pictures taken too.’ Photographer Rich and I, pepped on the tales of Bentley Boys Birkin, Duff and Benjafield, and wide-eyed races against impossible odds, think otherwise. I hope we are not about to make complete Charlies of ourselves.
Cannes we do it? ‘Race’ starts at Carlton Hotel
An evocative steam train, its first-class-only sleeper cabins loaded with the great and the glamorous from Churchill to Chaplin, the Blue Train – Le Train Bleu – can’t be physically raced anymore because it doesn’t exist. The luxury version reached its final terminus in 1962. So, we have just the Breitling clock on our dash as a rival. Still, we’ve got a fast car to race the ghost train in – the motorsport-inspired GT3-R has a top speed of 170mph (surprisingly low because of its eight shortened gear ratios) from its twin-turbocharged engine. In 2015, the 4.0-litre V8-powered super coupé had a list price of £237,500, with only 300 handbuilt examples produced. Only 35 of those offically came to the UK. It should suffice then.
Barnato downed his drink in the Carlton bar and coolly swept off down the road in his 6.5-litre Speed Six Mulliner saloon – not the Gurney Nutting fastback-styled machine now called the Blue Train car – but our start is an ignominious one, getting lost in the one-way warren of Cannes. Once out and heading for the hills, I discover a good thing: bloody hell, the powerful super-Bentley accelerates viciously hard.
GT3-R turns heads as well as it dispatches bends
Its weight and four-wheel drive bring the surefootedness of a veteran steeplechaser and through the rocks of the Col de Vence and Gréolières, the drive becomes a thing of quite majestic proportions. In the icily sharp air, the blastwave the GT3-R produces must be spilling over the edges and down into the valley, rumbling the breakfast crockery. What a splendid way to wake the locals up. France starts looking a piffingly small place with this much pace available.
Company founder WO Bentley’s attitude was that racing sold cars, so he would have liked the homologation special GT3-R. Its white paint – the default and only colour choice – wide carbon wing, green body streaks and Union Flags look very like the Blancpain endurance racer that inspired it.
Driving in France rarely take its toll if you use the péages
But it is not the most chic Bentley, more Max Power for millionaires. Ideal for the moneyed types of the Cote D’Azur it seems. We’d arrived the night before, and as our Bentley parked on the Carlton’s mosaic-clad porch, expensively dressed women tottered into the bar cooing appreciatively.
You might think real Bentley Boys would follow, order magnums of Pol Roger and spend the evening wooing with talk of derring-do and heroic victories. But the Bentley Boys were not quite the party animals many assume, when there was work to be done. The drivers did not drink in the run-up to races, WO banned girlfriends from the pits, while everything was planned and practiced with meticulous precision. As for racing, the idea was to go only just fast enough to win.
No mistaking the motorsport references here
Finally, we crest the formations and follow wider tree-lined hairpins as they sashay their way down the last whimpers of the Alpes Maritime, where the remarkable braking of the Bentley is shown to its best effect. Downhill with more than two tonnes of momentum, even though the GT3-R is 100kg lighter than the V8S on which it is based – I brake late, and each time find I have to release pressure on the pedal, or the vast and unfading carbon silicon carbide brakes will anchor us ferociously short of the turn. In 2015, the 420mm front vented and drilled discs were the largest fitted to a production car.
The GT3-R isn’t a full-on sports machine though, even though it was billed at the time as the most driver-focused Bentley ever made. The torque vectoring system subtly acts on the rear wheels, pulling us remarkably tight through a corner as though the car is being trussed in a corset. The steering ratio is still GT-weighted and on some bends you can’t just plait your arms through 180° and spear off after the apex.
That makes the steering wheel-mounted paddleshift of the eight-speed automatic gearbox harder to use, because the levers stay where they are while your hands are doing the Charleston. Usually, these shifters are an affectation, but the GT3-R feels more like a sequential system than an electronic parlour game.
Blue Train luxury but with a more sporting feel
Hit the limiter before pulling for the next one and the car will buck angrily, while shifting down meekly without enough engine speed results in the quite odd sensation of speeding up as the engine revs to match the chosen ratio. Basically, it’s all-out or nothing, with no horses to be spared as each gear bangs positively into place. Tremendous fun.
Then it’s onto the flat wide plains beyond. Our plan is to follow the approach Nelson took, and ‘go straight at ’em’, so that means pointing north-west to Calais on Route Nationales, just as Barnato did. But in his day, there were barely any cars and while the roads were rough, at least they were empty and he could happily and easily keep up his 75mph lope.
In my imagination, we would roll down tree-lined avenues, punctuated by stops at shuttered cafes for revitalising espressos. But the routes nationales are clogged with lorries, caravans and toll dodgers in battered Citroëns, lined not with plane trees but Super U supermarkets, tyre fitters, pizza outlets and out-of-order toilets – what is it with French plumbing? It’s slow-going, and even with the ballistic acceleration of the Bentley, picking off this endless train of snails is hard work, averaging barely 40mph. That means France could take 19 hours, discounting fuelling, food and finding working urinals.
GT3-R based on the V8S variant of the second-gen Continental GT
‘The powerful Bentley accelerates viciously hard’
After hours of irritations though, the roads start to clear as everyone finally heads home, and we snake through the Rhône valley, with the sun dipping behind steep-sided hills, the wintering vines throwing shapes of tortured spidery claws. The GT3-R is magnificent at this sort of pacy gallop, with a smooth consistency, plush damping, and the deep, intoxicating bark of the exhausts thumping out a steady rhythm.
By the time we reach Burgundy it’s pitch black, but along the flat road of the Routes des Grand Crus skirting the Beaune ridge, we’re making great progress as we flash past vineyards and through tree-lined tunnels floodlit by the brilliant white glare of the Bentley’s LED headlights. I could drive all night. But we are still hundreds of miles from home, and with the stopping for photography added in, hours behind schedule. Just as well the cabin is set up for a long run, with deep, firm Alcantara sports seats trimmed in a jarring green leather, beautifully finished carbonfibre panels steepling from the floor, and a weight-saving banquette in the back where seats would usually be a useful bench for cameras and rubbish.
Heading into Champagne, we switch to the autoroute to stand any chance of seeing the coast by dawn, but I qualify that strategic change by the fact WO would have done the same – it was all about the winning, not the taking part. He once said, ‘We were not in it for glory and heroics, we were in it for business.’
On top of the world, just like Barnato must have felt
Because of that, WO rated Barnato as his best driver; on board he was the antithesis of the playboy persona that sold so many cars. Unlike the more erratic Tim Birkin, Barnato was mechanically sympathetic, drove strictly to team orders, and most importantly, never made mistakes.
On the near-empty motorways I am careful that our behaviour should remain gentlemanly and the toll-station-getways aren’t all pomp and circumstance, trailing a 24-gun salute in our wake, no matter what the temptation. Post-Charlie Hebdo France is in a rather delicate, jumpy state, and antagonising already edgy gendarmes with needless buffoonery just doesn’t seem the done thing. Lucky that, I think, as we crawl up to a gate at Reims to be confronted with what seemed like half the Foreign Legion and a platoon of customs officials. A gruff chap in an important-looking jacket aims a flashlight at us while men with automatic weapons circle. He quizzes us and concludes that we aren’t the renegades they might be looking for.
Official economy high of 31mpg, but probably not on this trip
‘Now you go,’ he says. ‘But you go very fast, and very loud from here, yes?’ Well, when an official backed up by an arsenal that would have made Wellington think twice about sounding the bugle tells me to give it the full beans, who am I to argue?
Gales and heavy rain sweep across wide, flat expanses of northern France, bringing inevitable fog banks, often suddenly enveloping us as we drop into shallow valleys, and even the steadfast Bentley needs a careful hand. These are the conditions Barnato encountered, although no major surprise seeing as this is the default climate setting of the miserable Somme region.
‘Come on, open up, I quite need the toilet…’
But 16 hours in, and starting to feel a bit bleary-eyed, I find that corrective inputs at the wheel aren’t quite as accurate as intended. Coming over melancholic about the challenge ahead, I manage to snap out of it with some mental self-flagellation. Imagine rattling along on barely paved roads, engine roaring away, skinny crossply tyres skipping across standing water, draughts swirling, screens fogging, and suspension crashing with 150 miles to do before croissants and coffee. Barnato wouldn’t have allowed the upper lip to vacillate. He’d have hunkered down behind the wheel and dug in for a long innings. Pull yourself together, you cosseted, 21st century blitherer.
One of the many advantages we have is that we can use the splendiferous Channel Tunnel to claw back on our ghostly competitors. Barnato reached Boulogne in time for a hearty breakfast and had to wait a couple of hours while the Speed Six was winched aboard the cross-channel steamer bound for Folkestone. On board the next train at 4.15am, we effectively reach Blighty’s ragged road network before we left France.
Are they the ghostly tail lamps of a 1930s Bentley?
At this point you could rest on your laurels and start dreaming of Champagne corks arcing into the air and pretty girls kissing soot-stained cheeks on Pall Mall, but Monday morning rush-hour into London is not a beast that tames easily and many a grand excursion has nearly gone belly-up in the capital with the finish line at its mercy, as Phileas Fogg would testify.
Even at half five in the morning, with an hour left on our deadline, the traffic is crawling up the A2, and as we enter central London the clutter and dirt after the glories of France is a shock to a frazzled system. As we get closer, we’re in danger of being late, as each mile becomes gloopier with traffic. Nine hundred miles, only to have the last four wreck it.
Not on top of the sea like Barnato, but beneath it
Then, as we enter the posh bit of London after Westminster Bridge, the roads clear. We’ve time for a victory roll around Piccadilly and down St James to our spiritual destination at the Conservative Club, where old Tories harried their last few port-soaked umphs but is now, rather aptly, a bank, and then round the corner to the RAC Club with barely 10 minutes to spare. Barnato dashed through the very same doors to sign in officially, four minutes before the Blue Train pulled into Calais. Having managed it in the same time he did, but with none of the deprivations, I have huge respect for his feat.
Ten years ago, a quarter of a million pounds may have seemed a lot of cash for what appeared to be a breathed-on Continental GT V8S, but this is a unique car. A McLaren or Ferrari at that price was a different animal – there’s nothing else like this marvellous blunderbuss, a modern evocation of the blisteringly fast ‘lorries’ WO built that Ettore Bugatti was both so disparaging of and beaten by.
At last, the bright lights of London. Hooray!
In the darkness of a wet London morning, the GT3-R sits like the gleaming contemporary classic it is among grimy delivery lorries disgorging their day’s goods. I want to tell everyone about the magnitude of what we’ve just done, but nobody seems bothered. I wanted to scream and shout, to strike up the brass band and wear a sash: look at what we’ve seen and where we’ve come from, hear how we’ve raced legends and beaten ghosts.
I desperately hobble into the RAC Club and find a working urinal, below a picture of WO Bentley. I like to think the old boy would have approved of our dash – we are Bentley Boys after all.
2015 Bentley Continental GT3-R
Engine 3993cc V8, dohc, Bosch direct fuel injection, IHI twin turbochargers
Power and torque 572bhp @ 6000rpm; 518lb ft 360lb ft @ 1700rpm
Transmission ZF 8HP90 eight-speed automatic with paddleshift, four-wheel drive
Steering Rack and pinion, speed sensitive and electronically power-assisted
Suspension Front: four-link double wishbones, computer-controlled self-levelling air suspension, anti-roll bar. Rear: trapezoidal multi-link, computer-controlled self-levelling air suspension, anti roll-bar
Brakes Front and rear: vented and drilled carbon silicon carbide discs, servo-assisted
Performance Top speed: 170mph; 0-60mph: 3.8sec
Weight 2120kg (4673lb)
Fuel consumption 15-31mpg
Cost new £237,500
Price now £90,000-£160,000
HOW TO BE A BENTLEY BOY
1. BUY A RACING CAR
More than £10m bags you ‘Old Number One’, the Bentley Speed Six which won Le Mans in 1929 and 1930, if it were up for sale. £365k buys a used 500bhp Continental GT3 racer. Upwards of £40 enters you in the Living Room 24hrs in a Scalextric Bentley Continental GT3 (1:32 scale Krug bottles not included).
2. PLAY HARD
WO said of his charges, ‘The public liked to imagine them living with several mistresses and very fast Bentleys, drinking champagne in night clubs, playing the horses, and beating furiously around racing tracks at the weekend. When they were not yachting in the Med, skiing in Switzerland, or playing in Cannes, the parties were often held in Grosvenor Square, the south-east side of which known as Bentley Corner.’
3. DRINK!
Barnato was said to be able to drink two bottles of Champagne ‘to no visible effect’. One of the drinks of choice was the vicious Bentley cocktail – one part Dubonnet, one part Calvados – which was dreamt up at a party in Grosvenor Square when the other available drinks ran out.
4. WIN AT ALL COST
Despite the playboy antics, a cold, hard winning mentality is at the core of the Bentley Boy ethos. That means destroying rivals, as Barnato did in 1930 at Le Mans, harrying the faster Mercedes early in the race and forcing the driving great Rudolf Caracciola to use the car’s supercharger to the full, right until it blew a gasket.
WO wasn’t interested in the glory, just the PR that came from winning. He said, ‘I would have been perfectly content to see our cars circulating round Le Mans in inglorious solitude so long as the Daily Mail gave us their front page on Monday morning!’
5. HAVE MASSIVE AND LAVISH PARTIES
After the 1929 Le Mans win, Woolf Barnato held a huge party at his Arderun mansion in Surrey, in which the drive was turned into a racetrack, and bars were even built as pitstops!
BLUE TRAIN RACE: 1930 VS 2025
1930
Route Cannes, Aix-en-Provence, Lyon, Auxerre, Paris, Calais
Car Bentley Mulliner Speed Six Saloon (probably)
Engine Six-cylinders inline
Power 180bhp @ 3500rpm
Price new c£1800
Miles Unknown
Time 21hrs 36 minutes
Average speed 43mph
Money won £100
Fines £200 by Automotive Club de France for racing on roads
2025
Route Cannes, Valences, Lyons, Reims, Calais
Car 2015 Bentley Continental GT3-R
Engine V8, twin-turbochargers
Power 580bhp @ 6000rpm
Price new £237,500
Miles 838
Time 21hrs, 28 minutes
Average speed 39mph (with photography!)
Money won £0
Fines None
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