Bentley Speed Six Blue Train Garage Diorama, Green, weathered

On 13 March 1930 Woolf Barnato bet £100 that he could leave Cannes as Le Train Bleu pulled out and reach his London club before the train reached Calais. With Dale Bourn sharing the driving, he lost time to rain, fog and a burst tyre and still parked in St James's Street at 15:20, four minutes before the train reached Calais. He drove a Speed Six saloon bodied by H. J. Mulliner. The car modelled here is the one that took the name: the Gurney Nutting Sportsman Coupé he collected on 21 May 1930, two months after the race, and called the Blue Train Special. A fastback with no boot and a spare wheel on each side of the bonnet, it is often taken for the race car, Terence Cuneo's painting included.

Here the coupé stands in a two-walled brick lock-up with a plank floor. One side of the bonnet is raised to show the engine, and the plates read GJ 3811. The green paint and black roof are weathered, chipped along the wings and worn on the edges. Bentley signs and a Bentley Motors advertisement hang on the walls, above a Castrol cabinet, a green oil drum with a pump and a workbench carrying a blue vice, Castrol cans, tools and a tray of parts. Spare tyres wait on a pallet, and the room sits on a stepped wooden base.