Auto Restoration 101

This is a really nice car that was just finished up this past summer for one of my customers. I had always wondered why Mike called the car “Miss Marple”. I recently asked him to write up some history on the car and he sent me this great story.

Sometime in the fall of 1971, close friends saw an ad in “Antiques” magazine for a 1951 Bentley Mark VI for sale in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. The owner was an antique dealer, but the ad was fetching and immediately caught the eye of the lady of the house. This couple was a pair of characters of the first class! They were known as Grandma And Grandpa to everyone, related or not, because most of their friends, like me, were much younger than they were. I would have been 26 at the time and they both 63.

Grandpa said “ok” to Grandma wanting the car, so plans were put in motion. Grandma, her daughter and a female friend decided to go get the car and drive it home to Wichita. Yes, 3 women!

The afternoon of their arrival was chilly and the weather was deteriorating, but they got a cab to the dealer’s location to get the car. They were given instruction on operating the car, right drive, stick shift, Trafficators, and other points of difference with “normal” cars. The poor dealer nearly had apoplexy upon learning that 3 women were going to drive to Kansas in the car. He took the check and ran back into the shop!

On the drive to the night’s lodging, it began to rain, and the windows began to fog over. Grandma gave the order to turn on the wipers and defroster. Well, it is not quite as simple as that, and no one knew how! The wipers must be “raised” by knobs on the dash, the motor turned on, and the wipers engaged onto the moving cord. The demisters must have the vents opened on the dash, and the motor turned on for the demister fan. In the dark, and not knowing where the controls were, or even that some existed, both operations proved futile. Grandma simply opened the window and drove with her head outside!

The drive to the lodgings finally succeeded and everyone had a night’s rest.

There were other adventures, certainly, like emptying a barber shop next to the café where they stopped for lunch in, I believe, Illinois. Everyone was naturally curious about the car, and 3 women driving it.

For the next 15 years or so the car participated in many social events and several “shunpikes”, road trips with no specific destination in mind, just driving on the secondary roads and byways. To keep the car exercised, I was allowed to take the car out on many occasions, just for fun.

It was under Grandma’s ownership that the car was early-on christened “Miss Marple”, after the Agatha Christy detective. Indeed, Grandma was a sort of “Miss Marple” herself, keeping a police scanner at home to listen to the police calls. Anything juicy would get her in the car to go “see what was going on”.

With advancing years and failing healthy, “Miss Marple” was ultimately sold. While I wished I could have bought the car, I was in no position financially to buy it, knowing that quite a bit of work needed to be done, particularly on the interior.

After some years, she ended up in the hands of a well-known collector in Wichita, who had a new interior put in, and refinished the woodwork. Ultimately he had to overhaul the engine after breaking a piston. He used the car on various tours with Rolls Royce Owner’s Club and others.

I saw her again after maybe 25 years at this collection when I made acquaintance with the owner after buying a 1934 Bentley. I knew it had to be “Miss Marple”, made my inquires and it certainly turned out to be that car. I immediately let it be known that if he ever wanted to sell the car, I’d buy it. Several months later he called me, we made a deal and I bought “Miss Marple”.

I drove her for a number of years, on several tours, and many thousands of miles, finally deciding it was time to repaint the car. I had seen a Derby Bentley in Chicago at the RROC meet in the color scheme that we ultimately used on Miss M. Steve Nicholson and Classic Body Works undertook the restoration of the body and paint.

Since that work, I have driven the car to the RROC meet in Williamsburg, Va this past summer, at which meet she took 2nd in Touring class. We probably got 2nd instead of 1st because of certain modernizations made for greater comfort and reliability in touring. We installed an alternator, air conditioning, breakerless points, and various other items not strictly original, but in our view more reliable in today’s world.

For more information on Bentley Mark VI’s visit RRAB
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