Bentley 4 litre chassis VF 4021 1931 VDP tourer garage find
whilst scanning the Bentley Drivers Club Advertiser I came across this amazing advert.
This car was purchased by the vendors grandfather in the 60’s and used regularly in their home town of Oakville Ontario.
at some stage she developed an overheating issue so was pulled into the garage and stripped for diagnosis, which turned out to be a cracked head.
I directly contacted the Vendor Ian with a view to purchase this amazing motorcar, Ian was very pleasant and had an interest in me and what would happen with the car moving forward.
we negotiated a deal and we’re both very pleased with the deal, also both very pleased that she was going to come back to the UK and not be turned into an 8 litre special.
VF4021 has become over time a very special car,
her engine is VF4024
she was built in November 1931
as a VDP tourer
her first owner was a mr Neil Aston
she was one of only 50 4 litre cars ever built and of those 50 only 11 were long wheel base chassis, VF4021 being one of those 11.
this makes this lady a very rare car indeed as many 4litre cars didn’t make it past the war, If they did eventually make it past the war they were then unviable to use as a car economically so were either parked up or cut up,
This 4 litre tourer was one of only two VDP tourers built and this is the only one in her original guise.
We are currently preparing her for the long journey home, bagging packaging her parts ready for the trip.
I have a friend in Toronto David Irvine who is dealing with the building up of the car for transport.
Update
In June of this year (2021) I searched for a shipper or at least someone who could at least get the car from Toronto to New Jersey for Westcoast shipping to deal with the rest of the journey to Southampton U.K.
I found a gentleman named Rob Kerby from Abrams towing and asked him for a quote.
In October mr Kerby got back to me with a quote of $3500 plus tax
for a 500 mile (1000) round trip, which I thought was a tad steep to say the least, the same journey in the Uk would cost £800 and the fuel is 3 times dearer here.
so back to the drawing board.
I decided to get back in touch with West coast shippers and spoke to Dan Burkandt, I told him what I was quoted he too agreed it was way to much so he said he would organise all the shipping from Toronto to New Jersey and then to Southampton for $2100 plus a handling charge from shipmycar.com of £650 to deal with unloading container and dealing with Nova / HMRC .
in essence Dan and west coast shipping did the whole thing for less than the first guy wanted to get the car from Toronto to New jersey.
on the 3rd November 2021 I was contacted by Nick Shibashin who informed me that he would be dealing with the collection of the Bentley and the truck was on its way to pick her up, I contacted the Vendor and informed him.
On the 5 th November I filled out the forms required.
on 8th November driver went to collect the Bentley.
on 17th November Nick emailed me to let me know she had arrived safely at their depo.
so now I just needed to wait for the paperwork to be confirmed and a container allocated, it was cheaper to have a shared container so I opted for that.
I was informed that she had been loaded and was on her way, expected arrival was 9th December but for what ever reason it changed to 12th December.
I then had to wait for Shipmycar.com to unload the ship, unload the container ( there was a shortage of having drivers which caused a backlog) I may have got her home a little quicker otherwise, a few stern telephone conversations and emails were passed back and fourth between myself and shipmycar.com whe eventually they said I could collect her.
on Wednesday 22nd December 2021 George and I set off for Southampton to collect her, on arrival we had about a 10 min wait and was called in to load her up, very helpful lads working there, we loaded up and we’re on our way home in no time.
