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Origins
The Napier-Bentley is a special in the grand Edwardian tradition, assembled in 1972: a 1929 Bentley chassis carrying a 24-litre Napier Sea Lion — the marine descendant of the Lion aero engine — producing around 580 horsepower and visible flame, driven through a period gearbox with vintage brakes negotiating modern reality. Created by David Llewellyn and campaigned for decades most famously by Chris Williams, it became a beloved fixture of British hillclimbs and festivals, where its ground-shaking idle and sheet-flame upshifts draw crowds no modern hypercar commands. It represents Napier's afterlife perfectly: the company built its last car in the twenties, yet its engines kept British motoring's theatrical wing supplied for a century. The Napier-Bentley is heritage as performance art — loud, absurd, magnificent.
Napier Bentley burnout Mallory Park · Motorsport Central · CC BY-SA 2.0
