The long-stroke, four-cylinder engine ticks over like a burbling kettle, with just a thin blue haze from the fishtail exhaust

An irony of Bentley’s Le Mans legend is that so many people picture the supercharged 41/2-litre as the archetypal winner. The ‘Blower’ Bentley never was, nor was it even a works car. WO famously hated it, describing the Paget-Birkin partnership that created them as ‘the organisation that gave us all a good deal of additional anxiety during our already anxious last months’. He rode with Birkin in one in 1929, but wrote ‘to supercharge a Bentley engine was to pervert its design and corrupt its performance’. He was even more miffed that nearbankrupt Bentley had to build 50 supercharged road cars to homologate the Birkin-Paget team cars – of which there would be just four.

Built in Welwyn, they combined Birkin’s passion for supercharging, the Hon Dorothy Paget’s money, Bentley saviour Barnato’s indulgence in building the road cars, and Amherst Villiers’ designs. Their three-year career’s only significant successes were second for Birkin in the 1930 French GP at Pau (in the stripped number four car), third and fourth in the 1929 and 1930 Irish GPs, and second in the 1930 Brooklands 500 Miles. 1930 was their only Le Mans outing, when Birkin hounded Caracciola’s blown 7-litre Mercedes and softened it up before Barnato’s Speed Six went in for the kill. Birkin famously overtook the German car with two wheels on the Mulsanne grass at around 125mph, threw a tyre tread at Mulsanne corner, completed the lap in record time, then had the tyre disintegrate in the Esses. He continued after replacing it, outlasted the Mercedes by 55 laps, but went out near the end with a burned valve – leaving victory to WO’s beloved unblown 61/2-litre.

The car shown here is that same short-chassis 1930 Birkin Le Mans car – number two of the four Birkin-Paget Blowers, fourth placed car from the 1930 Irish GP, and 1930 Brooklands second place car.

It is maintained rather than restored, and handsomely aged. The architecture is perpendicular, the scale heroic. The scatter of instruments across the grubby alloy dash includes an eightday Jaeger chronometer, a 140mph speedometer far from the driver’s gaze, an oil pressure gauge the size of a dinner plate, a boost gauge reading to 25psi, and many others of no fixed size or design. The gated gearshift is almost under the driver’s right knee, the handbrake outdoors and the thin-rimmed wheel as big as needs to be to cajole two tons of car to change direction.

The long-stroke, single-overhead-cam, four-cylinder engine starts cleanly and ticks over like a burbling kettle, with just a thin blue haze from the huge fishtail exhaust. Throttle response reflects a huge flywheel and long plumbing between supercharger and inlet manifold, and at speed the Bentley sounds like distant artillery. The single-plate clutch isn’t too heavy, but the four-speed gear shift is agricultural. The secret (so long as you aren’t Birkin) is not to rush, but to be very deliberate. Especially with the brakes, which require a big push and plenty of road. With such momentum you don’t hurry the turn-in, or abuse the grip. In its pomp it produced 256bhp at 3750rpm, and enough torque to tow a battleship. In May 1959, driven by former owner Stanley Sears on a closed road near Antwerp, it covered a flying mile at a two-way average of 125.7mph. WO may not have liked it, but it’s obvious why the outside world loved it.

In 1935 (as WO Bentley was about to join the company), a Lagonda M45 Rapide driven by John Hindmarsh with bespectacled amateur Luis Fontes put a British marque atop the podium for the first time since the Bentley glory days, ending Alfa Romeo’s intervening run of four back-to-back wins. Its 4.5-litre Meadows straight-six was tuned to give around 150bhp and it won in spite of failing oil pressure, aided by a lap-scoring error by the Alfa crew.

Former Bentley Boy Benjafield shared another with Ronald Gunter and finished 13th, in spite of being stuck in top gear for many hours. Minister of Transport Hoare-Belisha sent the winners a telegram: ‘This is really splendid. My congratulations to all concerned.’ A very British greeting in a very British year, with the UK supplying 22 of the 28 finishers, including the class-winning 1.5 Aston of Martin and Brackenbury in third overall, and the Singer of Barnes and Langley winning the one-litre class.