Bentley does not build many cars like the Bentley 4½ Litre: a as arranged with coachbuilder by customer with 4.4 L SOHC straight-4, built from 1927 to 2020 the vintage years, when coachbuilders still shaped most of what was sold. Its designer of record is Walter Owen Bentley.
The background
The Bentley 4½ Litre is a British car based on a rolling chassis built by Bentley Motors. Walter Owen Bentley replaced the Bentley 3 Litre with a more powerful car by increasing its engine displacement to 4.4 litres (270 cubic inches). A racing variant was known as the Blower Bentley. Bentley buyers used their cars for personal transport and arranged for their new chassis to be fitted with various body styles, mostly saloons or tourers. However, the publicity brought by their competition programme was invaluable for marketing Bentley's cars.
At the time, noted car manufacturers such as Bugatti and Lorraine-Dietrich focused on designing cars to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a popular automotive endurance course established only a few years earlier. A victory in this competition quickly elevated any car maker's reputation. A total of 720 4½ Litre cars were produced between 1927 and 1931, including 55 cars with a supercharged engine popularly known as the Blower Bentley. A 4½ Litre Bentley won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1928. Though the supercharged 4½ Litre Bentley's competitive performance was not outstanding, it set several speed records, most famously the Bentley Blower No.1 Monoposto in 1932 at Brooklands with a recorded speed of 222.03 km/h (137.96 mph).
The engineering
Under the skin sits 4.4 L SOHC straight-4; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. Kerb weight is 4½ Litre: 1625 kg. The gearbox is a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Where it sits in Bentley's history is not in doubt: the Bentley 3 Litre came before it; the Bentley 6.5 Litre followed it; it was built at Cricklewood, United Kingdom. On a showroom list of its day it stood against the British Motor Corporation Austin 16, the Triumph Super 7, the Maserati Tipo 26B. Its Bentley stablemates include the Armoured Arnage and the Bentley 3 Litre.
The money
There is no federal ownership record for the Bentley 4½ Litre — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.