Children's car

Sir,

I was sorry to read in your “Rumblings” column that you did not like my little child’s Bentley, exhibited at the National Motor Museum, but I know you like to be factual and I thought I would therefore mention that your reference to a cut-down Mark VI radiator shell is incorrect.

The car was designed by my late uncle, Donald Wilcock, a Droitwich dentist, and given to me on my 10th birthday in 1937 to use on private roads at our home in Angmering, Sussex. My uncle built the chassis and the coachwork was supplied by Mulliner’s, a special radiator shell bearing a Bentley badge was fitted, as the car shared the garage with my father’s 3-1/2 and 8-litre Bentleys. The basis of the radiator was material provided from a 1936 3-1/2-litre (Derby) Bentley.

“Oddity” if you wish, but I can assure you that it gave the 10-year-old Wilcock a very great deal of pleasure and invaluable training but, in fairness to both Mulliner and my uncle, it was never intended to be a scale replica of an existing Rolls-Bentley. As a matter of interest, its pedal-driven predecessor was a Roesch Talbot, complete with proper dashboard instruments, my father being auditor of Clement-Talbot Limited, but it regrettably no longer exists today.

F.M. Wilcock – St. Helier, Jersey.