Face off: how the historic ‘Blue Train’ Bentley inspired the Bentley EXP 15 concept

The ‘Blue Train’ Bentley is not blue. It is also not a train. It’s a car named after a race that it did not compete in. An illegal street race no less. And yet it is – with the possible exception of one of the Le Mans winning ‘Blowers’ – the single most valuable Bentley in existence. Call it 20 million quid between friends.

Allow me to regale you with its story. It’s the summer of 1930 and Bentley’s playboy boss Woolf Barnato is unimpressed about Rover bragging that its latest model is faster from Cannes to Calais than Le Train Bleu, the most luxurious long distance train of the time.

He wagers £100 (over £5,600 today) that he can drive from Cannes all the way up to Calais, board a ferry, sail to the south coast of England and make his way to the Conservative Club in London before the train puffs into Calais. And then he went and did it. The Bentley beat the train by four minutes.

Photography: John Wycherley

Naturally the French were furious, banned Bentley from the 1930 Paris Salon and fined him more than his winnings, but Barnato had proved once again – on top of his hat trick of Le Mans wins – that Bentley made the fastest, most reliable long distance grand tourers.

The car he drove for the 830-mile dash was his trusty Speed Six saloon. To celebrate, he named the Gurney Nutting coachbuilt coupe he’d ordered after the feat. It was delivered a month after the race and became known as the Blue Train Bentley. Over the years the tale got twisted and people understandably started to believe the Blue Train was the car that raced. It even fooled transport artist Terence Cuneo who immortalised the wrong car in his painting of the event. Thankfully the facts have now been straightened out, both Bentleys associated with the race still exist, and both are owned by the same American collector.

What the ‘Blue Train’ Bentley Speed Six Gurney Nutting Sportsman Coupe, to give it its full title, really represents is the British racing green embodiment – the true essence – of Bentley. Powerful, luxurious and unspeakably caddish. The sort of car that would offer to chivalrously carry a blushing bride to the church, only to elope to the HÔtel de Paris, pick up a French maid in the sideways back seat, trash the honeymoon suite and write the manager a lavish cheque for being any bother.

Because Bentley is a member of the exclusive club of carmakers that have been around for over a century and can trace their lineage back to the days when motoring was a genuinely dangerous adventure, it can leverage that heritage in a way that more recent upstarts would long to. So the infamous Blue Train is supposedly the inspiration for something called the EXP 15, a concept car which doesn’t preview any particular upcoming Bentley you’ll ever be able to buy, but instead acts as a six-metre long mood board for where the Flying B’s design goes from here.

Flipping heck. It’s not a subtle evolution, is it? For a century, you could rely on Bentleys to have big, doleful round eyes, a sharply slatted mesh grille, and about as much interest in aerodynamics as ol’ Woolf did in French speed limits. This is... well, it’s... is it even a Bentley at all?

First, let’s address the shape. The ride height is much loftier than a regular saloon but the cabin is swept back like an Audi A7’s. Are we to understand that the next Flying Spur will become some sort of coupefied crossover? Bentley design director Robin Page explains the logic behind the unorthodox silhouette thusly.

“The beauty of a concept car is not just to position our new design language, but to test where the market’s going. It’s clear that SUVs are a growing segment and we understand the GT market but the trickiest segment is the sedan because it’s changing. Some customers want a classic ‘three box’ sedan shape, others a ‘one box’ design, and others again something more elevated. So this was a chance for us to talk to people and get a feeling.”

TG’s feeling is that with Audi knocking several ‘Sportback’ models on the head and Mercedes euthanising the once outlandish CLS (and wishing it’d given the EQS and EQE a stately posture), it’s an odd call to sketch up a new Bentley saloon into a teardrop. The rest of the market seems to have got over that little niche busting dalliance.

Obviously aero has a lot to do with this. Bentley’s designers have gilded the car with twin active roof spoilers and a diffuser no less. The wheels are shrouded in flush covers. You need a slippery shape when batteries are the new W12s. The EXP 15 is imagined as an AWD electric automobile, though no estimated battery size, range or performance is quoted.

But you can bet Bentley boffins are sweating exactly that right now, ahead of the company’s commitment to launch its first EV at the close of next year (a ‘luxury urban SUV’ is promised – oh goodie) and be an entirely engine-free marque by 2035. Though don’t hold your breath. Bentley is one of many manufacturers that originally committed to going electric by 2030 then demurred when the UK government messed around with the deadlines.

Bentley, like Rolls-Royce, Audi and Mercedes, is in the awkward position of having built up decades of design DNA that doesn’t translate especially well into EVs. Sit up and beg visages wreck the drag coefficient. Why carry around a massive grille when there’s no engine to cool, at the end of a massive bonnet which houses fresh air?

So it’s had a go at rebranding the family silver: the grille becomes an illuminated art installation in the only slightly tapered nose and the vast bonnet is intended to house piano cover hinged compartments for stowing one’s fitted luggage. A smart idea, but most front motored EVs barely offer a froot that could carry a bunch of grapes. Will Bentley be able to innovate around that?

Front and centre, the winged B logo has had its feathers sharpened up – it’s only the fourth time in Bentley’s 106 years it has dared to dabble with the badge. It’s decisions like the LED strip lighting front and rear that jar. Is that truly distinctive enough? Or perhaps a case of “we don’t need to make our car recognisable at night because the badges all light up and spell it out for us”. It’s a more menacing look than the almost surprised looking expressions of the Mulsanne and Flying Spur, but for us the Bentleyness has been sacrificed along the way, in favour of a lighting signature that any of the Chinese upstarts could’ve scrawled.

So where are the nods to the Blue Train? Apparently they come in the form of the “endless” bonnet line that runs from the tip of the nose and along the car’s shoulder, the upright grille, the rearward cabin, the pumped rear haunches – and the three seat interior.

This idea is built on sound logic – Bentleys are bought by people who like to drive and occasionally be driven. The least important seat in the car is the front passenger’s, so it’s been dispensed with in favour of a pampered pet bed. The passenger side rear seat then has room to recline, and indeed swivel for easier egress when the rear passenger coach door is opened. Don’t go looking for the same trick on the driver’s side – the EXP 15 is asymmetric. One door coupe to the right, two door saloon to the left. Who knew the Hyundai Veloster was actually onto something?

The EXP 15 is already doing its job. Love it? Disgusted? Either way, it’s made you think about the future of Bentley

Up front the Bentley wings are echoed in the dash shape and Bentley shreds the concept car rulebook by fitting physical switchgear, conscious its customers (like the rest of us) actually enjoy twiddling a knurled metal switch from time to time. Even the charging indicator is a mechanical artefact, encased in glass.

Bentley is the undisputed interior design master – everything from the material quality to the balance of touchscreen media with tactile controls is unmatched. And let’s not overlook that Bentley gets its big, controversial calls right. Sharing a platform with a VW saloon did the original Continental GT no harm at all back in 2003. It became the bestselling Bentley ever.

Today’s arch money printer is the Bentayga, which was itself previewed by a much maligned EXPerimetal car, the EXP 9F. To modern eyes accustomed to all these ultra 4x4s it’s nothing offensive, but at the time Bentley insiders admitted they’d gone a tad overboard with their Strange Rover. Feedback was vitriolic, the production car was redrawn, and it sold bucketloads.

Meanwhile the EXP 15 is already doing its job. Love it? Disgusted? Either way, it’s made you think about the future of Bentley, and brought a few more folks up to speed on one of its most dastardly, devil may care exploits. And in another 100 years, if someone decides Bentley needs a design overhaul, the Blue Train will be just as beautiful and just as cool. And still an absolute bounder.