I love this thing cuz I can drive it like a modern car I can go hundreds and hundreds of miles without any fear of it's going to over heat or breakdown or whatever it just keeps running it's nicely geared so at 70 you turn in what maybe 3500 RPM something like that red line is about 5500 if this had the name Ferrari a Porsche written on it it would be worth 10 times as much

Californ it's a perfect place for a car like this boy it's about 50 something degrees today a little on the cool side but you get just enough engine heat to keep you warm. Bentle Really built cars to be durable at last you know I love my Bugattis but the B spindly you know then they always made proper automobiles you could take a beat on a day like today you can drive right up to the snow line here in California like 35 40 minutes in my garage the road's close cuz there's snow and it's 70° down here it's so relaxing just to drive that it's deceptively quick you know I'll be going along going oh jeez I'm doing 90 the short wind screen is quite effective you don't get anything in your eyes all the wind kind of blows over the top you know La has a worst traffic in the world till you get 5 miles out of LA and then you have this not another car on the road

When it comes to Ferraris for v12s they're all like 1.5 2 L this is 4 1/2 L big motor big Power big torque just fantastic I love a big steering wheel I to believe the worst traffic in the world is 6 miles that way that's what I love about California the only reason to use these roads is for driving fun you know if you need to get somewhere the highway will take you around the mountains but there's hundreds of miles of Roads through these mountains it's just terrific in a lot of ways

Vintage motoring is more fun than supercars because you're more involved with it you know you feel exactly how much pressure is going into the brakes there's no power assist of any kind no power booster on the brakes no power assist and power steering you know exactly what the car is doing at all times I love this era of Motoring when every car had the engineers fingerprints on it you know dusenberg build a particular kind of car Bentley buil a particular kind of car Frederick Lanchester build a particular kind of car you know

And I also love that era when each car cars had the traits of their Nation you know German cars very meticulous and precision Italian cars are kind of wild and kind of full-blooded looking you know English cars were somewhat restrained had a lot of quiet power I love it when the car represents the characteristics of the nation that they're from those car is pro

If you take care of your automobile you can drive the thing for 30 years one thing about all these old cars he slowed down by using the transmission more than the brakes cuz brakes didn't last too long I've still got the original pads on this thing when I got it CU I use the transmission a lot to slow down I'm not I'm not jumping on the brakes hard that being said it can do the job of called upon

It's a perfect day in California enough heat coming off the engine to keep your toes warm and your face is in a cool breeze think how advanced this car was back and you know even Cadillac had gone back to the Flathead for their v12s and b16s linol was a flathead not a lot of twin cam not a lot of you know overhead cam B12 VES around amazing thing is it didn't have to be this good but that's just the way Bentley built them you know

A lot of you might have seen this car racing in the 80s and early 90s up in Monteray lagona sea it was on the track there quite a bit Joe did a terrific job as you probably know laganda is still around to this day was acquired by Martin and they've done a pretty good stewardship with it it's a great name and they get some wonderful cars in the first part of the last century and this is probably I think the best they ever did

Well I went in gu too much about how much I love this car but it it you know it really is amazing it's reliable dependable it handles it's fast it's fun to drive it's good looking it's really almost a perfect vintage car

Thanks once again for checking out the website I hope you enjoy this little bit of English History and uh we'll see you guys next week thanks a lot

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena lot of ways vintage motoring is more fun than supercars because you're more involved with it you know you feel exactly how much pressure is going to the brakes there's no power assist of any kind no power booster on the brakes no power assistant power steering you know exactly what the car is doing at all times welcome episode of Jay Len's garage the car we're featuring today 1940 laganda Lal race car laganda is one of those great marks it's an English company a lot of people might be surprised to know the man who started the company was American he was a man named Wilbur gun a little bit of engineering background also an opera singer all kinds of things I don't know how famous he was an opera singer but he's good enough to be called a semi-professional anyway I believe he got a divorce and he went to England and he was interested in automobiles in the early 1900s started laganda Motor Company they were the first to have an integral bodied car by that like a monoco type deal a lot of people think lanso was the first he was actually the first but I think lcia gets most of the credit for it but that being said this car is famous because the engine was designed by wo Bentley W Bentley of course ran Bentley Motors from 1919 to 1931 won Lon a whole bunch of time times built just fabulous cars the 8 L Bentley's the 3 l Bentley the blower Bentley although blower Bentley were not built by wo Bentley he hated supercharging and turbocharging he his solution to make cars durable just make the engines bigger and make them a little bit stronger and that qu worked quite well for him because a blower Bentley really never won anything but it was uh sort of a fearsome automobile it was loud and Fast and racing Legend Tim Burkin drove one and uh you know but that that but that's another whole story anyway when Bentley went under Bentley was looking for work he was a fabulous genius engineer not a great businessman went to work for Rolls-Royce for a while and then wound up uh working for laganda and he developed his uh V12 engine this is his I think first modern engine WL Bentley was a locomotive engineer so when you see a lot of his stuff you see even the way the the overhead cam driven by by Conrads kind of like you know when you see on a train that yeah kind of deal like this well yeah but well that's that's how he ran the overhead valves this had twin overhead cams V12 I'll show you this engine a little bit and he was hired by laganda to build a couple of Lamont's cars and he had five months to do it and he thought well that was impossible but he did quite well the cars placed third and fourth their first time out remember he took essentially a aod chassis lightened it up I believe Frank fely was the designer designed this fabulous looking body went to Lamar he instructed his guys not to run any faster than one mile an hour faster than last year's winning time which is some 82 M hour the cars did quite well third and fourth at lamal first time out is pretty impressive they only ran the one year 1939 1940 the war intervened Hitler was there and that put an end to all of that two lamal race cars were built I believe both were destroyed during the war during the bombing of Britain there was direct hit on the factory that one blew up and I think the other one is gone too this is what you call a lon's replica but an exact replica you know a lot of times replicas have Volkswagen engines or something uh this is exactly as it was built by the factory this is built by my good friend laganda Joe Joe Harding I met Joe when he was a young man man he was just a real engineer type loved to race loved londas I got this God almost 30 years ago and it's just been a wonderful wonderful car it's fast it feels postwar it's hard to believe this is a a pre-war engine because it it it's quite modern and it's power delivery it's 220 horsepower which is very impressive for the day top speed well over 100 mph four-speed gearbox we'll go through it in a minute here but you can see these flowing lines and the chassis is drilled for lightness and interesting here on these drum brakes it's got hydraulic brakes you see those aluminum discs in there I thought it would run cooler with the aluminum discs out it actually runs cooler with the aluminate discs in I don't quite know why but they race that way so that's a way we keep it and I must admit I had never had any trouble with the brakes overheating it's a really comfortable car to drive it's quite a long wheelbase so you can stretch out in this thing but uh it's really long-legged it's you know in fourth gear at 100 mph you well I can't remember where the revs are but pretty low it's just a relaxed fun car to drive you got two filler caps here which was sort of standard back in the day for pit stops you'd have those big cans and they put two of them up here and fill the tank obviously twice as fast knockoff Wheels this is what aerodynamics look like in 1939 I don't know what the coefficient of drag would be on it but I imagine it was certainly better than the the standard car body that it came with okay let's take a look under the hood here okay there we go let's put this over here as you can see four carburetors caretas as they say Eng just a modern engine okay you got two rows of cylinders it's an angle of 60° the born stroke is virtually square at 70 5x 84.5 mm this gives you 4480 CC capacity it's a 4.5 L engine the cylinder blocks the upper half of the crank case are cast some nickel alloid iron the lower half is kind of a complex aluminum casting with removable rib bottom section there now notice each cylinder has an overhead cam shaft driven by chains and four helical too gears the c cam shaft has seven bearings each and they rotate in aluminum housing so it's a pretty sophisticated piece of work here it really looks like something Ferrari would have produced after the war you know the twin Distributors the four carburetors it's really just a fabulous car it doesn't overheat in both racing applications and it was put in there big sedans and limousines I mean it was smooth it was powerful it really is post-war engine done pre-war really I think it's pretty Advanced this was I think this was Bentley's first modern engine truly modern engine he built sort of things the oldfashioned way see he was worked on the I think it was a Great Northern Railroad he was an engineer for them and I think he died in 1971 W Bentley did so he although his car company was not a financial success I think he died knowing it was a huge Enthusiast automobile there was the Bentley Club was had been going few years by then then and he was featured the speaker and so I think uh he didn't become a rich man but I think he certainly was rich in and friends and respect and all those kind of things that really count so uh but I think this was his ideal motor he designed all kinds of Motors but this I think was his cud de and it was reliable the fact that it the whole car was built in 5 months and came in third and fourth is pretty pretty amazing I think uh notice this beautiful fan here we go the Cann filters okay those aren't original apparently the air was much cleaner back in 1939 CU they ran without air cleaners but I like to keep them on here but you know I've driven this car for 30 years Joe did such a beautiful job on it nicely balanced just a wonderful wonderful driving car I've got another one in the back that I bought I bought it up at Monteray back uh in the 80s it kind of been slapped together it still had the V12 engine but it wasn't built as nice as this one somebody had put the wheels on the wrong side which meant every time you hit the brakes you were loosening the wheels because you're doing this you understand they were threaded opposite so I'm on the 4 fire freway and I hit the brakes and boom that wheel falls off what boom that wheel falls off I had to chase him down like walk half a mile to get my wheel luckily as you can see the brake drums are so huge when the car went down with the wheel off I it it didn't really fall fall more than maybe four or five Ines so it wasn't like I wasn't because just because the drums are so huge I I kind of rolled on those for a little while uh anyway that one's parked in the back and I'm going to get to that one someday but this one has just been a joy uh Joe did a wonderful wonderful job uh let's see what else do we have here okay let's go over the uh the gauges all you got your spedometer here on the far side a fan uh electric pumps you know a lot of times with old cars you put modern electric fuel pumps in them because they're just more reliable than the mechanical pumps but this came with electric pumps so so they're still on there you can run them individually turn them on and off the starter switches right here electric fan you've got uh oil temperature oil pressure uh water temperature uh ammeter and of course your tachometer right here at Lal you were required to carry a spare tire and if you got a flat the driver had to change it himself you couldn't get help from the pits we'll show you that in a minute we'll take a look now here's a spare tire how it's right under there I'm going to start this thing up for you first we turn the key make sure she's neutral I did this once not I hit the button hey it dragged me across the shop before I could uh could turn it off so here we go HS a starter docel as can be just a wonderful motor it's very cold now so is fantastic fantastic no smoke Run's great let's put the hood back on it and uh we'll take it for a spin and show you what it can do all right let's pull out of here well I can see racing this car for 24 hours it's comfortable you got plenty of room let's get some heat in first there are all kinds of great uh engines in the late 30s you had Victoria Yano with the uh 2.9 Alpha with the two superchargers that's a great one uh of course Maserati everybody else I just feel this is an overlooked car this engine has been pretty bulletproof I've been driving it for 30 years all I do is change the oil it's fast it handles has a glorious sound just wonderful car to drive I love this era of racing car when you could drive a car to the race enter the race win the race and then drive it home I think the last car to do that was probably the F1 McLaren cuz that was a road car converted into a race car they actually detuned it at the time but the idea here was you took a standard car and you modified it and uh you won the race I love this thing cuz I can drive it like a modern car I can go hundreds and hundreds of miles without any fear of it's going to over heat or breakdown or whatever it just keeps running it's nicely geared so at 70 you turn in what maybe 3500 RPM something like that red line is about 5500 if this had the name Ferrari a Porsche written on it it would be worth 10 times as much californ it's a perfect place for a car like this boy it's about 50 something degrees today a little on the cool side but you get just enough engine heat to keep you warm w bentle Really built cars to be durable at last you know I love my Bugattis but the B spindly you know then they always made proper automobiles you could take a beat on a day like today you can drive right up to the snow line here in Califoria like 35 40 minutes in my garage the road's close cuz there's snow and it's 70° down here it's so relaxing just to drive that it's deceptively quick you know I'll be going along going oh jeez I'm doing 90 the short wind screen is quite effective you don't get anything in your eyes all the wind kind of blows over the top you know La has a worst traffic in the world till you get 5 miles out of LA and then you have this not another car on the road when you think about Ferraris for v12s they're all like 1.5 2 L this is 4 1/2 L big motor big Power big torque just fantastic I love a big steering wheel I to believe the worst traffic in the world is 6 miles that way that's what I love about California the only reason to use these roads is for driving fun you know if you need to get somewhere the highway will take you around the mountains but there's hundreds of miles of Roads through these mountains it's just terrific in a lot of ways vintage motoring is more fun than supercars because you're more involved with it you know you feel exactly how much pressure is going into the brakes there's no power assist of any kind no power booster on the brakes no power assist and power steering you know exactly what the car is doing at all times I love this era of Motoring when every car had the engineers fingerprints on it you know dusenberg build a particular kind of car Bentley buil a particular kind of car Frederick Lanchester build a particular kind of car you know and I I also love that era when each car cars had the traits of their Nation you know German cars very meticulous and precision Italian cars are kind of wild and kind of full-blooded looking you know English cars were somewhat restrained had a lot of quiet power I love it when the car represents the characteristics of the nation that they're from those car is pro if you take care of your automobile you can drive the thing for 30 years one thing about all these old cars he slowed down by using the transmission more than the brakes cuz brakes didn't last too long I've still got the original pads on this thing when I got it CU I use the transmission a lot to slow down I'm not I'm not jumping on the brakes hard that being said it can do the job of called upon it's a perfect day in California enough heat coming off the engine to keep your toes warm and your face is in a cool breeze think how advanced this car was back and you know even Cadillac had gone back to the Flathead for their v12s and b16s linol was a flathead not a lot of twin cam not a lot of you know overhead cam B12 VES around amazing thing is it didn't have to be this good but that's just the way Bentley built them you know a lot of you might have seen this car racing in the 80s and early 90s up in Monteray lagona sea it was on the track there quite a bit Joe did a terrific job as you probably know laganda is still around to this day was acquired by Martin and they've done a pretty good stewardship with it it's a great name and they get some wonderful cars in the first part of the last century and this is probably I think the best they ever did well I went in gu too much about how much I love this car but it it you know it really is amazing it's reliable dependable it handles it's fast it's fun to drive it's good looking it's really almost a perfect vintage car well thanks once again for checking out the website I hope you enjoy this little bit of English History and uh we'll see you guys next week thanks a lot\n"