The terrifying car that Bentley's boss wants to risk his life for

Crewe, England

IN a sense, Bentley's latest car has been 90 years in the making. On Wednesday the luxury brand unveiled a recreation of its 1929 4.5-litre "Blower", one of the most famous cars in its racing history.

The gloss black car with Oxblood red leather seats is a development mule that Bentley's Mulliner division will use to see how its reverse-engineered classics hold up to being driven hard. As "Car Zero" in the Blower Continuation Series, which involves recreating 12 of the famous cars, the prototype will cover 8,000 km on the track, which simulates 35,000 km on the road. The company plans to send a brave engineer on a top-speed run in the Blower, which has around 240 horsepower, but the brand's chairman and chief executive Adrian Hallmark has reportedly volunteered to have a go at it first.

Car Zero came together after 40,000 hours of work by Bentley's Mulliner Classic division, which restores or recreates cars from the brand's history. The team makes it a point to be as faithful to the originals as possible. Like the 1929 cars, for example, the prototype has seats stuffed with 10kg of horsehair.

The new Blower prototype was recreated from the design drawings and tooling jigs used for the four Blowers that Sir Henry "Tim" Birkin built and raced in the late 1920s. Bentley completely took apart Team Car #2 from its own collection so every one of its parts could be scanned and remanufactured for the recreated Blowers. It says the disassembled car could be the most valuable Bentley in existence.

Presumably, Bentley will have judged the exercise worthwhile. The 12 recreated cars (one for every race the original Blowers entered) cost £1.5 million apiece (S$2.67 million), but every one was snapped up as soon as the company announced the reproduction series. For some car companies, old is gold.