09 March 2023
Did you know the Bentley Boys nickname was originally tagged to the Bentley racing team mechanics?
The name was soon attached to the team drivers. Their wild parties and off-track antics meant they were constant tabloid fodder.
Always ready for a race, a challenge or a glass of champagne, the Bentley Boys were a group of playboys, adventurers, bon vivants and highly competitive racing car drivers.
They gleaned an international reputation during the 1920s and 30s for their outrageous antics and driving talent.
They competed in the most gruelling races, the Brooklands Six Hour and Double Twelve and of course, the most famous of them all, Le Mans, with five wins in just eight years between 1922 and 1931.
One of the ‘Boys’, Woolf Barnato, who took control of Bentley in 1924, had three consecutive wins at Le Mans; in 1928, 1929 and 1930.
Four of the ‘Bentley Boys’ had adjacent flats in London’s fashionable Grosvenor Square where their renown parties could go on for days interspersed with ‘races’ around the Square and became known as Bentley Corner.
They were a bunch of privileged gents who drove hard and partied harder.
