Saturday 20th August 2005

Bentley Motors celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the famous Blue Train race with the launch of the Arnage Blue Train saloon at ‘The Quail – A Motorsports Gathering’ in California’s Carmel Valley. In March 1930, British Le Mans winner and then chairman of Bentley Motors, Woolf Barnato, wagered £200 that his Bentley Speed Six could beat Europe’s fastest train, Le Train Bleu, from Cannes to London. Travelling with his golfing partner Dale Bourn, the records show that Barnato pulled up outside his London club 4 minutes before the Blue Train had even reached the French port of Calais.