This photograph, taken at Oulton Park Richard Seaman Trophies meeting in 1971, is clearly of a Bentley – and, from the stylish mid-1930s coachwork, the car should logically be a Derby-built car. But it is not; it was built in Cricklewood. Chassis number XT3630 started life in 1931 as one of the last 4½-litre Bentleys. It was sold as a chassis only on 11th August 1931, and first bodied as a Gurney Nutting saloon, and then as a tourer by an unknown coachbuilder.
But in 1936 it was again re-bodied, this time with a body taken from a Triumph, the style being known as “Flow-Free”, and fitted by Coopers of Putney. As is the case with so many Bentleys, it was re-bodied again as a VdP 4-seater tourer in 1930, but the Coopers body survived, and has a fascinating history.
This body style was fitted to the Triumph Gloria and was designed by Triumph’s in-house stylist, Walter Belgrove around 1934-35, in a ‘streamline’ year in which many manufacturers exhibited this ‘wind-cheating’ coachwork at the Olympia Motor Show. 50 of these streamlined Triumphs were sanctioned for production, but fewer than half that number were thought to have been produced – because at £425 they failed to sell well, despite their rakish looks.
No Flow-Free Triumph Gloria models still exist, but in the 1930s a number of small companies – one of them Cooper Motor Bodies of Putney – bought end-of-the-run bodies from major manufacturers, and this one was fitted to Bentley XT3630. The body had to be adapted to the Bentley: the rear and the body below the doors were extended downwards, and the rear wings were enlarged to cope with the bigger wheels and tyres. A new bonnet and front wings were made.
In 1994, pre-war Triumph expert and restorer Rob Green purchased the body when the Bentley was converted to a VdP replica and, by reversing the previous alterations, fitted the body to a Triumph Vitesse that was otherwise beyond repair.
Although no Vitesse models originally carried this type of body, the resultant car is a unique example of a Triumph with Flow-Free coachwork, and a fitting tribute to the streamline era.
I took the car to Oulton Park but I recall it being 72 or even 73. I did not own the car at that time it was owned by R S Smith of Cheltenham