Bentley gathers four Blowers in Crewe as first 25 electric Blower Jnrs near delivery
Four versions of Bentley's iconic 1929 Blower — the original, a road-legal electric 85 per cent scale car and two hand-built models — have come together at the company's Crewe home.
- 349 cars
- 25
- 75 miles (120 km)
- 30 examples
What Happened
Four expressions of Bentley's iconic Blower have come together at the company's home in Crewe, each built at a different scale. They are the original 1929 4½ Litre Supercharged Team Car No. 2, the crown jewel of the Bentley Heritage Collection, and three smaller versions inspired by it: Hedley Studios' fully electric Blower Jnr and Amalgam Collection's 1:8 and newly unveiled 1:18 scale models. Bentley says the quartet brings together engineering, hand craftsmanship and innovation spanning close to a century. Separated by almost a century and dramatically different in scale, construction and purpose, all four share the same unmistakable DNA, the company says.
- Bentley's original 1929 4½ Litre Supercharged Team Car No. 2, the crown jewel of the Bentley Heritage Collection
- Hedley Studios' Blower Jnr, an 85 per cent scale, fully electric car that can be driven on public roads
- Amalgam Collection's newly released 1:18 scale Blower, which Amalgam calls the most technically accomplished 1:18 model it has ever produced
- Amalgam Collection's 1:8 scale Blower, first revealed in February 2020
The Blower Jnr was first revealed in 2023 as a collaboration between Bentley Motors and The Little Car Company, now Hedley Studios. It is an 85 per cent scale, fully electric car that can be driven on public roads: a 31 bhp (23 kW) powertrain delivers a top speed of more than 50 mph (80 km/h) and a certified range of up to 75 miles (120 km). The first 25 cars have now been completed at Hedley Studios' Bicester atelier and are preparing for delivery to customers, with the first of them — Bentley's own car — delivered to the company's campus in Crewe. Extensive engineering, testing and homologation were undertaken so the car meets the requirements of a modern road-going vehicle while keeping the character and analogue feel of the 1929 original, as part of a run of just 349 cars.
“The hardest part of recreating a 1929 Bentley is everything you can't see. We wanted Blower Jnr to preserve the character and analogue experience of the original, while also being a genuinely usable modern road vehicle. That meant engineering everything from headlights, indicators and braking systems to the electrical architecture and even a reversing camera, so that the modern technology effectively disappears into the car. Doing that as a fully homologated production vehicle for a run of just 349 cars has been an enormous undertaking. We believe Blower Jnr may be the first recreation of a pre-war car design to be homologated as a newly manufactured production road vehicle, which gives some sense of just how unusual the programme has been.”
Amalgam Collection's newly released 1:18 Bentley Blower was created in collaboration with Bentley and joins the company's 1:8 scale Blower, first revealed in February 2020. Amalgam has also created a race-weathered version of its 1:8 scale model, limited to just 30 examples, each meticulously hand-painted and detailed by its master model makers to recreate the dirt, patina and battle scars accumulated in competition — specifically how Team Car No. 2 looked after the 1930 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, complete with bent rear fenders caused by tyre failures. Owners of the Blower Continuation Series can go a step further by commissioning a 1:8 or 1:18 scale model crafted to mirror the individual specification of their own car.
“Having already developed the Bentley Blower in 1:8 scale, we knew just how complex this car is. The challenge was taking all that exposed mechanical detail and engineering and recreating it faithfully at one-eighteenth of the real size. Achieving that level of complexity in 1:18 scale demanded extraordinary precision from our team, and the result is what we believe to be the finest, most complex and technically accomplished 1:18 scale model we have ever produced.”
At the heart of the story remains Team Car No. 2, the original 1929 Bentley 4½ Litre Supercharged Blower, registered UU 5872. It was one of four Team Blowers created for competition and raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1930, cementing its place in Bentley's motorsport history. Far from living a quiet retirement, it remains an active member of the Bentley Heritage Collection, appearing at events and historic driving experiences around the world. Its distinctive proportions, exposed mechanical components and uncompromising character have made it one of the most instantly recognisable cars from Bentley's early racing era — and nearly a century later those same qualities inspired both the Blower Jnr and Amalgam Collection's scale recreations.
Why this matters
The gathering shows how a nearly century-old racing car still drives modern activity, from a road-legal electric miniature to hand-built scale models. It matters to collectors and enthusiasts: the Blower Jnr is being built in a run of just 349 cars, the first 25 are now ready for delivery, and Amalgam's race-weathered 1:8 model is limited to 30 examples.
Terms in This Story
- Blower
- The nickname for Bentley's supercharged 4½ Litre racing cars of the late 1920s.
- Homologation
- The process of certifying a vehicle as meeting the legal and safety requirements needed to be sold and driven on public roads.
- Scale model
- A replica built to a fixed proportion of the original object's size, such as 1:8 or 1:18.
- Continuation Series
- A limited run of newly built cars made to an original historic design.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.