Past Imperfect: a tale of the second World WarThere is an enduring legend about a particular Bentley, the 'Bullion' Bentley, the car that supposedly saved France's platinum reserves from the invading Germans in 1940. The Bentley in question was a 3.5-litre Derby Bentley with the chassis number B38EF and was the personal car of a director of the Banque de France.
When the Germans invaded the Low Countries and France in June 1940, it soon became apparent that they would encircle Paris. The bank directors sought a way to save their assets - especially the refined ingots of platinum - from the invading army. Legend says they decided to strap the ingots inside the chassis rails of the Bentley, feeling that a lone car might escape attention and could possibly slip through the enemy lines into neutral Spain and on to Portugal.
The roads were clogged with refugees as the Bentley headed for Spain, despite being attacked by Stuka dive-bombers. Somehow, the Bentley always escaped damage in these air-raids. It was claimed that a French sympathiser had alerted the Germans, and that orders were issued that the Bentley was to be stopped but not damaged. The Bentley reached the Spanish border at Hendaye but there was a queue of vehicles several miles long waiting to cross over. The Bentley took to the narrow mountain roads and drove high into the Pyrenees until it could go no further. Finally, its driver stopped at a tiny mountain inn.
The innkeeper supplemented his income by smuggling, and sensing that the driver of the Bentley had something to hide, offered to take him across the mountains into Spain in return for a large reward.
The crossing was made at night without headlights which could have given them away. At one stage, a wooden bridge collapsed under the weight of the car just as it passed over; at other times, the narrow track threatened to collapse, but the Bentley made it into Spain, and drove on to Portugal, where the driver made his way to the British embassy. At first, embassy staff found the driver's story hard to believe, until they saw the ingots strapped to the Bentley's chassis. It was arranged for the driver and the bullion to be flown to Britain in an RAF flying boat. They made their escape just in time, for the story is that German agents found the car and dismantled it in a search for the platinum.
There the story ends. The bullion was sold to America and the money used to finance Charles de Gaulle's Free French army. The Bentley was taken over by a British agent in Portugal, who kept it for 11 years before selling it to a one-legged Portuguese . . .
True or false? At this remove, we'll probably never know. What is certain is that B38EF exists, having being brought to England in 1974 before being sold to American Ralph Lauren, and finally returning to the care of a collector in southern England.