The world’s oldest surviving Bentley, the 1921 “chassis number 3”, found a new owner at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elecance Gooding & Co. auction for $962,500 – or $960,606 more than what the car’s first owner, Noel Van Raalte, paid for it 90 years ago (£ 1,150, or $1,984 in today’s exchange rate).
The chassis number 3 is a “matching-numbers” car with a 3.0-liter engine, its original aluminum coachwork and brass brightwork. It’s first test was the Le Mans 24 hour races of 1924 and 1927, in a period when the legend of five Bentley wins in eight years was born.
“Pebble Beach is the ideal venue to showcase Bentleys old and new” said the brand’s Chairman and CEO, Wolfgang Dürheimer.
“On the same day that Gooding & Co. auctioned the world’s oldest surviving production Bentley, we hosted a private preview of a brand new model”, Dürheimer added referring to the Continental GTC Speed and GTC 80-11 editions that were also unveiled at the Monterey event.
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