Bentley might have extended the production suspension till 11 May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that isn’t gonna stop the progress of the Blower Continuation Series project. A team working from home has completed the CAD (Computer Aided Design) model that’ll serve as a master design and engineering reference for the new cars.
Announced last year, the Blower Continuation Series is a run of 12 new Blower Bentleys, each of which will be an exact mechanical copy of the 1929 Team Blower built and raced by Sir Tim Birkin. The Continuation cars are being produced by a dedicated team in Mulliner’s Classic division, who are working with a team of vintage specialists to re-engineer and build the suite of parts needed to bring the new series of cars to life.
The 12 cars have already been sold to keen collectors around the world, and the first stages of the build for Bentley’s own engineering prototype – Car Zero – is expected to begin soon.
Birkin’s Team Car No. 2
Bentley’s Team Blower has been carefully dismantled and then re-created in the digital world through a combination of precision laser-scanning and intricate hand measurement. The finished CAD model is comprised of 630 components across 70 assemblies, and is more than 2 GB in size. From start to finish it’s taken 1200 man-hours for two dedicated CAD engineers to complete the model from the scan data and measurements, and the result is an accurate and complete digital model for a 1920s Bentley, the company said.
Besides assisting the development of parts design and development, the CAD model has also been able to assist with the specification of individual customers’ cars, with Bentley’s Design team able to create accurate full-colour renders from the data.
While the Continuation Series cars will be mechanically identical to the Team Blower, customers are now in the process of choosing their own exterior and interior colour palettes and materials so that the cars are visually distinctive from their predecessor, Bentley said.
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