1952 Bentley Mark VI

Launched in 1946, the Bentley Mark VI standard steel sports saloon represented a number of firsts for the company, as their first postwar luxury car, their first car with all-steel coachwork, and the first Bentley assembled entirely, from the bottom of the tires to the top of the roof, at the Rolls-Royce plant in Crewe.

 

Riding on a 120" wheelbase and weighing a bit over two tons, the Mark VI was initially powered by a 4.3L "F-head" engine, in which the intake valve was in the cylinder head, but the exhaust exited a sidevalve in the block.

In 1951 this motor was bored out to give a displacement of 4.5L. With a 6.4:1 compression ratio, a brace of SU carburetors, and dual exhausts, it put out... well, the manufacturer famously never reported horsepower as anything but "adequate".

A contemporary road test in The Autocar of a 4.5L car comparable to the 1952 model seen in the photos returned a zero-to-sixty acceleration of 15.2 seconds and a top speed of 100 miles per hour.

   

This one was photographed with a Panasonic GM1 and an M. Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens in July of 2019.