From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Customer's feedback letter on a 4¼-litre Bentley, with suggestions for improving suspension and braking systems.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 89\4\ scan0091 | |
| Date | 9th June 1937 | |
| COPY 20, Fenchurch Street, E.C.3. 9th June 1937. Bentley Motors (1931) Ltd., 16, Conduit Street, W.1. Dear Sirs, 4¼-litre Bentley. Now that I have been running my car for a year and can claim to know it really thoroughly, I think you may be interested to hear my views upon it, particularly coming from one whose main hobby for many years past has been the study of motor cars from the owner's point of view. The good points of the car are naturally known to you so I shall not waste any time upon them, and will confine myself to mentioning those points where I consider modification to be desirable. Suspension. I hardly think it necessary to urge the extreme desirability of fitting independent front wheel suspension forthwith, the advantage of which on all types of cars is so apparent that the majority of my friends, including myself, who once become acquainted with them have all resolved never again to be without them. I will only add that my brother, who is a possible prospective customer of yours, has a little Fraser-Nash B.M.W., which despite its diminutive weight rides over potholes infinitely better than does my Bentley wherever I set the ride-control, and its road-holding and cornering are equally good. Braking. It is more than ten years since I first attempted to persuade Major Cox of Messrs. Rolls-Royce (who always listened patiently to my suggestions!) that the braking of the future would be on all four wheels, evenly distributed throughout - and in later years I frequently complained of the lack of power and proneness to skidding resulting from the various other distribution-ratios employed on subsequent Rolls-Royce models, and later on the 3½ and 4¼ Bentleys - (all of which gave a preponderance to the rear wheels.) The objections of your technical staff were based on doubts as to the behaviour of such a braking system in the hands of inexperienced drivers, but I imagine that now that practically every car sold to the public is so equipped, these doubts must long since have vanished. Further I confess I can see no advantage in a servo mechanism for a car of this weight, and would far rather have a straight-forward hydraulically operated system with self-energising brake shoes. (In this connection I refer to our recent correspondence | ||