Unless you went to watch the various Bentley models racing at the weekends, visited one of the brand’s few dealers, or attended the London Olympia Motor Show once a year, there was really only one way to find out a bit more about the brand’s different models: reading the magazine ‘(The) Motor’ or its rival ‘Autocar’.
“The Motor” (which later became simply “Motor”) was a British weekly motoring magazine founded on 28 January 1903, more informative and less conservative than its rival “Autocar”, which had been launched on 2 December 1895 “in the interests of mechanically propelled road carriage”.
Each sought to capture the reader’s full attention with ever more exclusive information. Nothing has changed since then!
Autocar also claims to have invented the road test in 1928, the year it reviewed the Austin 7 (which I was lucky enough to own ‘some time’ ago!) during the Gordon England Sunshine Motor Show. Autocar remains the world’s oldest motoring magazine and has been published weekly since its inception (with the exception of the major British strikes of 1970). In 1988, it absorbed its rival The Motor, creating a single entity.
Below you will find the first two road tests of the Bentley 4½ Litre.
The first road test dates from May 1928 and was carried out by The Motor magazine, whilst the second test, featured by Autocar, dates from February 1929
