#silver wraith

Bentley Mark VI Majestic Major Hemi V8 Special (one-off). 

When you first see a Bentley Mark VI in all of its stately proportions, high-performance isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. The Mark VI is now often used as a wedding car along with its Rolls-Royce stablemate the Silver Wraith, and what they lack in outright speed they make up for with elegance, dignity, and opulence.

For the uninitiated, a Bentley Special is a car that started life as a Bentley, often a Mark VI, that then has its chassis shortened and lowered. A new more sporting body is usually fitted on top, possibly influenced by the Bentley Le Mans racers of the 1920s and 1930s, and new engines and transmissions are frequently fitted for a more sporting driving experience.

In essence, Bentley Specials are hot rods for the kind of people who fare on a first name basis with all the Ritz-Carlton concierges from London to Los Angeles.

When delivered to customers most of the Bentley Mark VIs that were made were fitted with steel coachwork with four doors, and they were powered by either the 4.3 or 4.6 liter straight-six sending power to the rear wheels via a 4-speed manual gearbox.

The Daimler Majestic Major 4.5 V8 engine is perhaps not as well known as it should be. It was designed by legendary British engineer Edward Turner in two forms that look remarkably similar from the outside – the 2.5 V8 and the 4.5 V8.

The 2.5 V8 was produced in far higher numbers as it was fitted to both the Daimler SP250 sports car and the Daimler V8 250 four-door sedan. Surprisingly given the difference in displacement the external dimensions of the two engines are fairly close, the 4.5 is slightly wider, longer, and deeper.

Turner had made a name for himself designing motorcycle engines for Ariel and then Triumph earlier in his career, including the famous Ariel Square Four, the Triumph Speed Twin, the Triumph Thunderbird, and the Triumph T120 Bonneville.

In 1959 he designed the two automotive V8 engines for Daimler, using a very similar design for both engines, which included hemispherical combustion chambers and an overhead valve cylinder head design influenced by his earlier work on high-performance Triumph motorcycle engines.

The V8 has a 90º vee angle, an iron block with sandcast aluminum-alloy heads which contain two valves per cylinder actuated with pushrods from the camshaft which is located high in the block. The design of the engine has been praised by many over the years, including Jay Leno, however the fact that it was most famously fitted to the Daimler SP250 sports car – a vehicle that was not at all well-received – did dampen its reception somewhat. The 4.5 liter version of the V8 was fitted to the Daimler Majestic Major, a large and luxurious four-door sedan with a curb weight north of 4,000 lbs. The engine was said to produce 220 bhp and 283 lb ft of torque however this has been challenged in intervening years as the Daimler dynamometer was somewhat antiquated and was unable to produce readings above 220 bhp.

1946 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith

Starring: ‘55 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith Saloon