This Working Bentley Blower ‘Toy’ Is As Big As A City Car

There’s a good reason we’ve used inverted commas in the title. We’ve covered plenty of tiny, working reproductions of iconic cars before - there’s a healthy market from them, so lots about - but this one ain’t so small.

Yes, this Bentley 4 ½ Litre Supercharged ‘Blower’ is made in collaboration with ‘The Little Car Company’, but it’s 85 per cent scale, so ‘little’ it is not. In fact, at 3.7 metres in length, the road-legal creation is longer than some full-size city cars. "The result is a vehicle that will have even experts looking twice,” Bentley says.

It doesn’t, sadly, have an 85 per cent reproduction of the original car’s four-cylinder supercharged engine, but its 20bhp, single-motor, 48-volt powertrain will still get the car up to 45mph (but only 25mph in the USA due to legislation - boo) and can cover up to 65 miles on a charge. Tandem seating ensures you can bring a mate along for the ride.

The attention to detail is extraordinary. Underneath there are leaf springs with "scaled-down, period-correct friction dampers," while the brakes, supplied by Brembo, no less, feature discs at the front and drums at the rear. The bodywork is made up of two main parts, with impregnated fabric over a carbon fibre structure at the rear, and a hand-crafted aluminium bonnet secured by leather straps at the front. 

The original details are all present and correct-ish - many are repurposed. The ‘fuel tank’, for instance, is now a storage compartment, while a replica supercharger contains the charging ports.

What looks like the original fuel pressure pump selects one of three power modes (Comfort, Bentley or Sport), the battery charge is shown in a replica of the ammeter, and a reproduction of the ‘'ignition advance control'’ is used to select drive, neutral or reverse. Mixing with this are some more modern touches, including a digital dashboard with sat-nav, a reversing camera and a USB charging port.

We weren't ever expecting this to be cheap. The Little Car Company’s also not-so-little Tamiya Wild One recreation is £35,000, and as the Bentley goes far beyond that in terms of expensive touches, it's £90,000 for each of the 99 First Edition versions, plus tax. Production begins during the second quarter of 2024.