Today's car of the day is Yow Modellini's 1929 Bentley 6 1/2 Litre Tourer.
The regular Bentley 6 1/2 Litre and the high-performance Bentley Speed Six were sports and luxury cars based on the Bentley rolling chassis in production from 1926 to 1930. The 6 1/2 Litre was inspired by the Rolls-Royce Phantom I as a closed-body car.
For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: Bentley Speed Six
Even with the recent crop of small-scale Continental GTs, Bentley models still remain few and far between in small scale. Yow Modellini is not a common sight in small scale, either. Dave Weber included some additional information on the firm in the A to Z Small Scale Toy Cars section here on the Garage. Yow Modellini specializes in 1/43 scale models, but released a limited production set of 5 small-scale models back in 2009, including this Bentley. The small-scale Yow Modellini cars are similar in feel and build quality, to Kyosho.
Like the four cylinder engine, Bentley's straight-6 included overhead camshaft, 4 valves per cylinder and two sparking plugs per cylinder, all uncommon technologies at the time, as well as a single-piece engine block and head cast in iron, and therefore no head gasket to blow. 180-200 hp was produced, and the car was faster and more reliable than the supercharged 4 1/2 Litre produced a year or two later, which used four cylinders of the same dimensions.
Although based on the Bentley 3 Litre, it incorporated many improvements. The cone-type clutch was replaced by a dry-plate design, incorporating a clutch brake for fast gear changes, and four wheel finned-drum brakes were used. The front brake drums had 4 leading shoes in each drum and the brakes were also power assisted. Operation of a patented compensating device by the driver could adjust all four brakes to correct for wear while the car was moving. This was particularly advantageous during racing.
