Battery Baby Bentley Blower

“Noooooo!” We can hear you scream. “They have surely not converted a Bentley Blower to electricity!?” We can’t just hear you screaming, we can hear thousands of keyboards damn near burst into flames as they are jabbed at, angrily. Pulses raised, emotions high, a crushing need to write angry prose about how building a Bentley Blower with electricity as a means of propulsion is nothing short of a criminal offence. It can’t be, can it? Well, here’s the late Michael Winner…

Of course this isn’t a real Bentley Blower that’s had its oily, snarling heart ripped from it. It’s something else, something wonderful, a glowing example of how an electric powertrain can be a wonderful, fun, exciting, characterful thing. The Bentley you’re looking at here is an 85% scale replica built by The Little Car Company, and it’s glorious. And unlike the company’s past offerings, which have traditionally been built as vehicles for fun, this new Bentley version will be road legal. How very exciting!

‘Blower Jnr’, a recreation of the 1929 4½-litre Supercharged Team Car No. 2 in Bentley’s Heritage Collection, is the first road-legal car from The Little Car Company and the most sophisticated city car ever built.

Crafted by hand to the same standards as any Bentley, and adorned with beautiful details all inspired by the original Team car, Blower Jnr is built around a 48V electric powertrain with a 15 kW (20 bhp) motor, meaning a top speed of 45 mph / 72 km/h in the UK and EU (25 mph / 40 km/h in the USA due to legislation) and an expected range of around 65 miles, with tandem seating for two adults.

Blower Jnr is a collaboration between The Little Car Company and Bentley’s Heritage Collection. The original Team Car from 1929 – insured for £25m – was used by The Little Car Company to master the design of Blower Jnr, with details recreated at a sizeable 85 per cent scale. The result is a vehicle that will have even experts looking twice – with the car measuring 3.7 metres long and 1.5 metres wide. Unlike The Little Car Company’s other products, Blower Jnr is fully street legal and designed specifically to be used on the roads.

Now, are you honestly going to tell us that you don’t love this? Let us not forget that the real car on the left is insured for £25,000,000. Plus, we don’t think Bentley is planning on selling it any time soon, so it’s a fantasy for people like you and us. But this new, smaller version isn’t. Nor will it be £25,000,000. Though prices haven’t been announced yet. But we’re pretty confident in out assumption all the same. And this Baby Blower is still a spectacle, it’s still going to capture looks, generate conversations and remind people of how fantastic Blower 2 was and indeed, is. Plus, you’re not going to be driving the Baby around with the real one next to you, so that 85% scale is going to look pretty darn convincing.

We applaud this, wholeheartedly. It’s fun, which is what we have come to expect from The Little Car Company, it’s utterly stunning and the fact it has been built hand in hand with Bentley itself just makes it even more special. And it has sat-nav and USB ports – the original doesn’t! The first 99 will be a direct homage to Car #2, and will feature First Edition badging on the hood, door sill plate and dash as well as an engraved and numbered ‘1 of 99’ plaque. All First Edition models will be finished in Blower Green, with matching painted chassis and wheels, and a Union flag hand-painted on both sides of the body as per the original, while the seats and interior are upholstered in the Dark Green Lustrana Hide used by Mulliner for the Blower Continuation Series.

If you have the means, this is something you should absolutely pounce on. Fun, infinite smiles per silent mile, a celebration of heritage and of future technology, and all without anyone yanking the engine from a genuine pre-war car. This is how a ‘classic’ EV should be done. Seriously, kudos by the truckload to everyone involved. This has to be the best new car of 2023, surely?