[wasif]

Hi John.

Great pictures, please share some of he engine and the interior if possible

[DKG]

What a treat John. Thanks for sharing the amazing pictures and the history associated with this magnificent car

[ARTYBRIT]

Here are some other photos of the Jaipur Bentley taken when it was owned by Ian Findlater, and including one shot of the left side of the engine compartment. The man in the driver's seat is my brother Simon Becker.

FYI

T. John F. Becker

[travancore]

Originally Posted by ARTYBRIT

I am going to try uploading three pictures to this thread. The first is a side view of the Jaipur Bentley Speed Six LR2778 DUU 618.

The second is a forty year old color photo of the same Bentley showing the original color when it came to the Becker family in 1937. The color quality has deteriorated, sad to say, but it clearly shows that Black and Green were the basic colors.


John Becker

Thanks John for confirming / sharing the original colours. After all, colour is so much a part of the "character" of any car. Now maybe the new owner will restore her to her original glory (hint!). Cheers

[ARTYBRIT]

An interesting coincidence. In 1952 I was part of a large international group called Moral Re-Armament that came to India. We were presenting stage plays all over the Indian subcontinent. Actually for several months we lived on a train. But while we were in New Delhi we were given the use of Jaipur House, the former residence of the Maharajah of Jaipur which is now one of India's primary art museums, right next to the Red Fort. At that time, because of our family's ownership of the Maharajah's Bentley LR2778 I was keenly interested in seeing the amazing group of garages clustered in a Mews behind the House, knowing that they must at some point have housed the Bentley. There must have been about twenty of them if my memory isn't playing tricks. At that time they were all vacant, but it was a very impressive group of garages. We spent nine months in India and we all fell hopelessly in love with it.

Our trip was documented in 2010 in a remarkable book titled "Ice in every carriage" by Michael Henderson, with more than a hundred photographs. The title referred to the fact that the only way we could stay cool on our train in the formidable summer heat was to have gigantic blocks of ice placed in the middle of each compartment once a day, and to turn the wall fans onto the blocks of ice.

T. John F. Becker

[wasif]

Amazing stuff.....please do share more of your recollections. Also what other interesting cars passed thru your family

[Clare]

John,

Sorry I haven't been back to post, great to see your photos of the Jaipur Speed Six. I'll email you on the address above. Meanwhile the car is in lots of bits and we're having trouble working out the roof line and the sunroof.

Clare

[DKG]

Originally Posted by Clare

Meanwhile the car is in lots of bits and we're having trouble working out the roof line and the sunroof.

what exactly does that mean? under restoration or an accident?

[Clare]

Originally Posted by DKG

what exactly does that mean? under restoration or an accident?

Not quite sure, to be honest, although I have heard the car was rolled. Stripping off the roof covering revealed a lot of old repair work and the roof profile differs quite a lot from its appearance in early photos. The sunroof also seems far too crude to me to be as fitted by H J Mulliner in 1930, they were very high-class coachbuilders and the workmanship in their bodies is terrific. Aesthetics for coachbuilt bodies are difficult, as the people who built them back in the 1920s and 1930s knew exactly what they were doing, whereas nowadays I've found quite often that while the workmanship of some rebuilds is impeccable the aesthetics are all wrong. You would be surprised how often people rehang wings on vintage cars without realising that the curved portion has to be concentric with the wheel centre.

[Clare]

Work in progress - aiming for Pebble Beach next year.

[travancore]

Originally Posted by Clare

Work in progress - aiming for Pebble Beach next year.

Thanks Clare. Nice to see the car regaining its old glory. Assume it is going back to its original livery. Cheers

[DKG]

Originally Posted by Clare

Work in progress - aiming for Pebble Beach next year.

Fascinating !! and wish you the very best. Thanks for sharing the pictures of the car under restoration

[kasli]

Originally Posted by Clare

Work in progress - aiming for Pebble Beach next year.

Where is the car being restored ? Some details please

[karlosdeville]

To bump up a thread - Its Rally of Rajasthan time!

Schedule for Vintage Bentley events all over the world

Any T-BHP participants?

[wumpletoad]

Originally Posted by Clare

Work in progress - aiming for Pebble Beach next year.

Oh dear!

I have in the past conveyed my disappointment that "restorations" of worthwhile vehicles so often are motivated by the "Pebble Beach syndrome".

Pebble Beach is an over-hyped convention of the super-rich often possessing little real understanding of the cars they contract to others for "bulling" way beyond the vehicles' manufactured conditions and characters. In stead of being used in any sense that approaches their original purpose, these luckless artefacts are condemned to the sterility of being hauled out of a museum or similarly stultified repose, trailer-ed to a golf course, paraded like a Parisian model's poodle and then shut away again.

What a dreadful potential waste. Surely one of WO's finest deserves better than that.

Wumpletoad