Since I started documenting interesting machinery in car graveyards, I’d run across a mere two Rolls-Royces and not a single Bentley… until a few weeks ago, when I crossed the ocean to visit the breaker’s yards of Northern England. Today, we’ll be admiring an example of the final generation of the glorious Bentley S-Series, found near Leeds.
This is Westminster Auto Spares, located in Sherburn-in-Elmet (birthplace of the legendary Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber of World War II). This business specializes in Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, with some Jaguars and high-end Mercedes-Benzes in the mix, and there are about 120 Bentleys and Rollses in stock. I’ll do an in-depth article on this establishment in the near future, which will include photos taken with a 100-year-old English film camera (as one does).
The Bentley S3 was the last of three generations of the Bentley S-Series, which began production in 1955. About 1,600 S3s were built between 1962 and 1965. List price on the U.S.-market version for 1962 was $16,355, or about $165,027 in 2024 dollars. Cadillac’s most expensive sedan of 1962, the Fleetwood Seventy-Five, had an MSRP of $9,722 ($95,098 in today’s money). Meanwhile, the S3’s Rolls-Royce cousin, the Silver Cloud III, cost $16,655 ($168,054) on our side of the Atlantic.
Under the bonnet, a 6.2-liter Bentley pushrod V8 with Lucas generator and voltage regulator. It’s hard to get exact power ratings for this engine, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of 200 horsepower and 350 pound-feet. Descendants of this smooth-running engine were used all the way through 2020, in the Mulsanne.
Westminster Auto Spares generally parts out the vehicles in its inventory for customers all over the world, but the owner hasn’t yet had the heart to start unbolting components from this very restorable classic Bentley. He told me he’d take £8,000 (about $10,090) for it right now, so here’s your chance to give this extremely rare car a forever home!
There’s some body rust and a bit of deterioration of the wood and leather of its sumptuous interior, but overall it’s a solid and complete restoration candidate for its age (though certainly not one for the faint of heart or thin of wallet).
In the world of cars, indisputably Number One.