Features
10 Bentleys
It's not every day you see a convoy of Bentleys drive through London, which is why Bill Thomas had to do it
In the troubled economic times we're currently facing, it's generally not a good idea to buy 11 Bentleys. Please forgive me for safely assuming that that theory applies to most of us. I can assure you that it applies to me.
The repayments on 11 brand new Bentleys, at an average price of say £130,000, would be £4,939 per calendar month over a 24 month period, after paying a deposit of around £275,000.
Which is savagely more than I can afford. It's disastrously, heinously and excessively expensive. Eleven brand new Bentleys - what a great number, 11; why have one when you can have 11? - really doesn't add up for the likes of me.
But of course what makes no economic sense to we mere mortals doesn't matter a jot to Richard Dixon, a bloke who did recently buy 11 brand new Bentleys, for cash. That's just under a million and a half quid.
Dixon is the boss of a high-end hire company called Just Prestige Cars and he put out a press release saying, 'we bought 11 brand new Bentleys, check these out,' with some pics attached.
It was one press release among the hundreds we get every week at TopGear.com, but it busted through the clutter because it was 11 Bentleys in a great big row.
"OK," we said, "that's pretty impressive," we said, "but will you let us drive them?" we asked - expecting the answer 'no'.
'How many amber lights would the tail end of this many Bentleys have to run to keep up?'
"Yes," said Dixon. "Sure you can."
Excellent. We collected them - 10, as one was being used elsewhere, but we didn't much miss that nine-point-oh-nine-percent Bentley loss - from the Just Prestige Cars showroom in London, near Hanger Lane on the A40.
For no reason, I picked the Wimbledon Dog Track as our destination. Well, there was a bit of a reason - I like the Dogs and arriving at the Wimbledon Dog Track in a stupendous fleet of Bentleys appealed. But we'd have to get across town in convoy first, in mid-afternoon traffic, and we'd have to stick together in line astern. How would 10 brand new Bentleys all together look and feel?
Magnificent, of course. Bentley itself could never arrange this sort of a shindig at such short notice, but Dixon did. He asked for copies of our driving licences so he could insure it all, and away we went.
I drove up front, in a black Conti GTC with the roof down, muttering 'rubber duck' and 'got ourselves a convoy,' and stuff like that. And in the mirrors were nine other Conti's, a mixture of GTs, GTCs and GT Speeds, all with about a hundred miles on the clock, led by Paul Regan, TopGear.com editor, in a pearlescent white GTC. Then other Top Gear staff behind, and Peter Grunert, former Top Gear Deputy Editor, as tail-end Charlie.
Grunert had joined us at the very last second because, due to idiocy, I'd only organised nine drivers. So one minute he was in the office formulating magazine launch strategy tactical demonstration projection presentations and the next he was at the back of a fleet of 10 Bentleys in heavy traffic wondering how many amber lights he'd have to run to keep up.
Quite a few, as it turned out.
Bookmark with:
What are these?