Somewhere in Motor Racing Heaven W.O. Bentley must be smiling, because, after more than half a century, the company 
that carries his name (and his brother’s) has been liberated from Rolls-Royce. Of course, neither popular British marque is independent. BMW owns Rolls-Royce, while Volkswagen is the caretaker of the Bentley brand, but there is no doubt that W.O. would have a preference that circumstance to the previous administration in which Bentleys were little more than Rolls-Royces without the famed radiator shell. Read more . . .
By an odd coincidence, both Henry Royce and Walter O. Bentley (see photo, middle) , two of Britain’s most vaunted automotive names, began 
their careers as railway apprentices. Many years later, in the 1920s, the two men competed for the title of best English car maker- Bentley with his hell-for-leather quasi-racing machines and Royce with his elegantly refined Rolls-Royce models. When the Depression strike and Bentley’s business collapsed, Royce was right there to pick up the pieces, acquiring the rights to the Bentley brand in a way that had to stick in W.O.’s craw, and the two names have been connected uncomfortably ever since. Read more . . .
If the marque were named Bamford Martin, would it have the same panache? 
How about if it were called plainly Ford Martin? Would the automotive cognoscenti find it similarly appealing? Truth be told, either name would be as apropos as the fabled Aston Martin moniker, just as the DB initials signify Aston Martin’s significant debt to David Brown, the man who gave a more distinctive stamp on the marque than even its founders. Read more . . .
They say BMW is “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” but before the now-legendary German brand took that given name for itself there was another, 
far more humble car, that called itself simply “The Machine.” It was built, not by Bavarian Motor Works but by American Motors, and despite its ordinary underpinnings, if The Machine had ever squared off against a contemporary BMW, it would have blown it back into the Black Forest. Which is not to say The Machine was the final “ultimate driving machine,” but in its own idiosyncratic way the American Motors Rebel Machine, a model you probably don’t recall, but a model whose single year was a great one, somehow, someway deserves to be considered among the Greatest Cars of All Time. Read more . . .
Nowadays, American Motors is but a vague memory, and not necessarily a pleasant one.
Those few American Motors-built vehicles that are still on the road today include shabby, old Jeeps and tatty Renault-based Alliances, rusting their way toward oblivion, certainly not the stuff of automotive fable. But there was a bright, shining half-decade or so when lowly American Motors gained a reputation for manufacturing attractive, sporty cars. And the version that was the centerpiece of American Motors’ version of Brigadoon was the American Motors Javelin. Read more . . .
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