1926 Bentley 3/8 Litre

This is a photograph I took in the paddock at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992.

It's got a faded number 2 on the grille, but the race number on the scuttle is 68 and it's Stanley Mann's 1926 Bentley 3/8 Litre, and is chassis 1157.

1929 Bentley S/S Special 'Monty'

This car took part in an Eight Lap Scratch Race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's meeting at Donington Park in May 2001.

It was built by Stanley Mann's restoration company, mainly by Stewart Fernside, and has a single seat body and 8 litre engine, and is named 'Monty'. Apart from that I can't find much information about the car. It was listed in the programme of the event as a 1929 Bentley S/S Special and was driven in the race by Stanley Mann. It has a close resemblance to another of Stanley Mann's Bentleys, 'Old Mother Gun', and also to the Bentley Pacey Hassan, both of which took part in this meeting.

Bentley 4½ litre

This car competed in the two MicroProse Spirit of Speed Pre-War Sports Car Races that took place on Saturday 31 July and Sunday 1 August at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in 1999.

It's a Stanley Mann Racing 1931 supercharged Bentley 4½ litre and was driven in the races, the programme says, by Prof Dr Michael Rudnig and Stanley Mann. This car, chassis #MS3931 was originally built with a Weymann saloon body by Gurney Nutting, and the first owner was a James F Bryson. It was rebuilt in 1993/95 and fitted with the Le Mans replica body seen above.

Bentleys

Any meeting organised by the Vintage Sports Car Club is always going to attract a good number of Bentleys, and the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in June 2008 was no exception.

The car nearest the camera is the 1929 Bentley 4½ litre Le Mans driven in Sunday's hour-long Motor Racing Legends Pre-war Sports Cars race by Stanley Mann and Michael Rudnig. The red car next to that is possibly the 1927 supercharged Bentley 3 litre driven by Joe and Rachel Singer in the same race. The silver car looks like the 1927 Bentley 3/8 litre of Adam Singer that he shared with Stanley Mann in Saturday's 2 hour-long VSCC White House Memorial Pre-war Sports Car Team Relay Race. On 9 August 2017 I showed a photograph of this car at Donington Park in 2006. The next car appears to have three racing numbers and seems to be the 1928 Bentley 3/4½ litre Le Mans driven in the Relay Race by Joseph Singer as number 171 and Stuart Fearnside as number 172. It may also be the car shared by Adam Singer and Stuart Fearnside in Sunday's hour-long race - that was number 14, but is shown in the programme of the event as a 1927 car, not 1928. The racing number on the last car appears to be a 21, and if so it's the 1929 supercharged Bentley 4½ litre of Martin Overington that he drove in the Sunday hour-long race.

Veritas Meteor

This car was one of the entrants in the Pre 1952 Grand Prix Cars race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 2000.

It's Michael Rudnig's 1,988cc straight-6 1950 Veritas Meteor F2 car that was driven in the race by Stanley Mann (Michael Rudnig drove Stanley Mann's Bentley Jackson special 'Old Mother Gun' - the car behind the Veritas here - in that race). The Veritas Meteor wasn't very successful in the 1950s, the best performances being by Karl Kling in his own Veritas Meteor Streamliner.

On 3 November 2015 I showed a photograph of Michael Rudnig's car that I took at Silverstone in 1997.

Bentley 4½ litre

I took this photograph at the Silverstone Historic Tribute meeting in June 2004.

It's one of Stanley Mann's cars and is shown in the programme of the event as a 1929 Bentley 4½ litre Le Mans VDP. It apparently started off life as a 3 litre Vanden Plas 4 seater which was delivered to an Air Commodore Webb Bowen in December 1924. It was later rebuilt as a 4½ litre.

Bentley Jackson Special 'Old Mother Gun'

On 26th August 1996 the VSCC hosted a race meeting at Oulton Park which was, as the front page of the programme shows below, a 'Race Meeting dedicated to the Memory of Sir Henry Seagrave'.

One of the cars taking part in the ten lap scratch race in memory of Sir Henry Seagrave was the car below.

Shown in the programme simply as a 1930 Bentley Special with a 6648cc capacity engine it is, in fact, the Bentley Jackson Special more commonly known as 'Old Mother Gun' which has a very interesting history, as the extract below from www.ultimatecarpage.com tells us:

'Originally constructed in 1927, serial number ST-3001 was one of the Bentley works-prepared racers for the 1927 24 Hours of Le Mans. At the end of its illustrous career, over 2 decades later, it didn't look anything like it did in 1927. After being rebodied, technically modfied and nicknamed, ST-3001, Jackson Special or Mother Gun remains as one of the best known 'specials'.

Fitted with a four cylinder engine displacing almost 4.4 litre, it was forced to retire in the 1927 Le Mans race after a multiple car shunt. Bentley reconstructed it to campaign at Le Mans the next year. Carefully piloted by Woolf Bernato and Bernard Rubin, it took the overall victory, covering almost 2700 km. It was Woolf Bernato who gave ST-3001 a nickname that stuck, 'Mother Gun'. It was raced once more at Le Mans the next year and finished second behind the winning 6 cylinder engined Bentley. After being campaigned for two more years, it was sold by the works to Richard Marker in 1932.

Marker wasted no time and revised Mother Gun to race at the high-speed Brooklands track. Further modifications were carried through in 1934, as a remaining 6.5 litre 'Speed Six' engine was fitted. Multiple successes were scored by Marker and Margaret Allan at Brooklands and other tracks before 'Old Mother Gun' changed hands again in 1936.

Like the previous owner, Mother Gun's new owner, Robin Jackson, set out to revise ST-3001 to suit his needs. It took Jackson a year to completely revise the chassis, fit a single-seater body and fit new pistons and conrods. In its new guise, the 'Jackson Special' as it was now officially named, reminded of a lot of things but certainly not of the 1928 Le Mans winner. In this shape it still has today it recorded a best lap at Brooklands with an average of a little over 217 km/h. Mother Gun finally retired in 1948 after it was used in a number of speed trials in 1947 and 1948.

 Today it is campaigned by Bentley expert, Stanley Mann, in historic races across Europe. It was he who carried through a thorough restoration in 1989, to restore the Jackson Special to its 1939 form. Like it did in the late 1930s the Jackson Special was out breaking records again shortly after its restoration. In 1992 it covered 1000 miles with an average of just over 100 mph at 168 km/h.'

The race programme shows the owner of the car in 1996 to be Vaughan Davis and the car was driven by Stanley Mann, shown in this photograph at Druids Corner.