Discover this unique Bentley S2 Continental

By Martin Buckley

| 27 Jan 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Unique Bentley S2 Continental: chop and change

The world of Rolls-Royce and Bentley has always attracted its fair share of eccentrics, probably because the sort of wealth associated with the cars tends to bring out the extremes of behaviour associated with the kinds of big egos that (usually) go hand-in-glove with big money.

Derby (and Crewe, post-1945) was always mindful of the effect that oddball demands from oddball customers might have on its well-groomed, carefully manicured image.

Thus, it was an unspoken policy that any body style, feature or even colour scheme that was deemed to be extreme enough to bring the name into ‘disrepute’ was to be either politely discouraged or its patron threatened with having his or her factory warranty revoked.

Eccentric enthusiast Captain RG McLeod’s series of Manx-tailed Bentley Specials reached its zenith with this unique S2 Continental

Having said all that, it is surprising how many curious-looking one-offs did slip through the net.

Some were attributed to overseas coachworks over whom, presumably, Rolls-Royce management had less control.

Post-war, Chapron and Franay of France committed some horrors on Silver Wraith and Phantom chassis; ditto, in Turin, Vignale and Ghia.

At their best, British coachbuilders had a natural feel for what was required and created some of the most elegantly restrained and well-proportioned shapes ever conceived.

At their worst, they could be frumpy and municipal or, in the case of Hooper with its sweeping Empress wing lines, slightly flouncing and camp.

‘As a way of getting all of the quality, longevity and reliability of a Bentley into a more compact package it was not without merit’

You had to be a Liberace – or a diamond-encrusted, mink-stole-wearing ’50s starlet – to look at home in some of its creations (even one of the well-proportioned examples).

Then there were the dotty millionaires cast in the mould of Nubar Gulbenkian, whose slab-sided Silver Wraith Sedanca de Ville must have caused outrage in the Crewe boardroom.

The firm’s relationship with a certain Captain Roderick George McLeod is harder to fathom.

Born in 1891, the Australian businessman’s penchant for bobtailed Bentleys ran to at least six examples in the UK from 1936-’64.

Most of them wore his famous ‘H1’ numberplate while in his ownership, and all had a good 9in (229mm) or more removed from behind the rear wheels in the search for reduced weight and greater manoeuvrability.

The effect of the Bentley S2 Continental’s tail chop is most pronounced in profile

Both aesthetically and financially this appeared a high price to pay simply to make a car easier to park, but as a way of getting all of the quality, longevity and reliability of a Bentley into a more compact package it was not without merit.

A high-mileage motorist more into austerity than glamour, Captain McLeod was faithful to the marque for its reliability, but considered the length of its cars to be excessive.

He was looking for a wheel at each corner, shorter overhangs at both ends and the trademark upright driving position.

A “Talking of Sports cars” feature published in the 8 November 1940 issue of The Autocar gave a rare insight into the man’s thinking.

He stated that he didn’t want a car to be decked in chrome and ‘lit up like a Christmas tree’.

This unique Bentley S2 Continental’s Perspex roof panel floods the cabin with light

It appears that he enjoyed the feel of an open car, but not the draughts (he suffered from rheumatism) so, as a means of bringing in light, he specified a Perspex panel let in to the forward edge of the roof as a compromise.

This ‘Hi Vision’ modification was fitted to other Derby Bentleys – a group of cars always noted for their profuse variety of generally graceful bodywork.

Not so the McLeod cars, which tended to be uncompromisingly boxy two-seater, two-door saloons reportedly to the Captain’s own design.

The first, 3½-litre chassis B177AE, was laid down in 1934 and fitted with a spare (but much less severe than later McLeod cars) four-door body by HJ Mulliner, featuring conventional rather than cutaway front wings, standard Lucas headlamps and a glossy paint finish.

Despite the exterior changes, the Bentley S2 Continental’s interior remained mostly standard

When the 4¼-litre was announced in 1936, McLeod had the razor-edged four-door body removed and refitted to the more powerful chassis, B82GA; in this form it was later sold to Land Speed Record hero George Eyston, having been traded against another 4¼-litre chassis, B171LE, in September 1938.

This car had a more radically austere body to HJ Mulliner design number 6097, complete with a 32-gallon fuel tank, low-mounted Marchal headlamps and very thin windscreen pillars: good vison was another one of McLeod’s preoccupations when it came to car design.

Also, because he usually travelled alone and used the back seat to carry luggage, he saw no requirement for a large boot.

McLeod’s dummy tailpipes and reversing lights are gone

Described by The Autocar as ‘stark and free of trimmings’, it was painted camouflage green, weighed in at 31cwt (1575kg) and, claimed McLeod, could top 97mph and return a regular 18mpg.

This body, somewhat akin to a garden shed in its aesthetics, was moved after six months to McLeod’s new overdrive 4¼-litre, chassis number B142MR.

His previous cars had the registration mark CUL 11, but this car was the first to wear the H1 plate, plundered from a veteran Wolseley he had spotted in a garden in Hertfordshire.

Another source suggests that McLeod ran both 4¼-litre cars at the same time but sold them during WW2, switching his allegiance to a Lancia Aprilia, because it was more sparing with fuel in times of rationing, and Citroën Light 15s – presumably for the same reason.

The Bentley S2 Continental’s unmodified, 6.2-litre, V8 engine

The overdrive Bentley 4¼-litre found its way to Argentina, where, painted black and white, it was raced in the ’50s.

Meanwhile McLeod, an influential figure who lived in Harrow and owned a factory in King’s Cross, working in the field of toolmaking for aircraft production and metallurgy, doubtless had a standing order for one of the first post-war Bentley chassis.

He took delivery of a Bentley MkVI in ’46 and immediately had HJ Mulliner knock up another angular two-door.

He had his latest ungainly dream car on the road for March the following year, content to have paid £4000 for this one-off when he could have had a handsome MkVI Standard Steel saloon for £3k, returning it to HJ Mulliner after three months’ worth of shakedown use.

This Bentley S2 began its life with an HJ Mulliner Continental body

Painted ‘fish’ silver metallic and wearing Citroën Traction-inspired black wings, the car featured a pre-war-style, wind-out windscreen, as well as a riveted bonnet, while the more prominent cutaway in the driver’s seat was to accommodate the right-handed gearchange in the narrow body.

It turned up for sale in May 1963 at Coombs of Guildford, a snip at £625, and is still alive and well.

With an all-up weight thought to be no more than 1500kg (3307lb), it was likely a lively machine on the road; indeed, the 94-year-old McLeod remembered it well when approached in the mid-’80s by its then owner.

‘More into austerity than glamour, McLeod stated that he didn’t want his cars to be decked in chrome and lit up like a Christmas tree’

For his next two cars, McLeod became less severe in his approach.

His 1952 MkVI was simply a HJ Mulliner ‘Lightweight’ limousine body adapted to the shorter chassis, with a curtailed bootlid and McLeod’s trademark Perspex roof panel.

His ’55 Bentley R-type Continental, while not as graceful as the standard Mulliner car, was a genuinely good-looking fastback with a wraparound rear ’screen, two full-sized front seats and a rear bench for occasional use.

The spare wheel appeared to take up most of the space in the boot, but the basic outline was balanced rather than freakish, not unlike the Farina R-type Continental.

This Bentley S2 Continental’s front is faithful to the Mulliner original

Painted dark green it was, sadly, destroyed in a fire in August 1960 when in the hands of its second owner.

When thoughts turned to a replacement, the car you see here, the approach was to adapt an existing body – S2 Continental design 7514, one of 71 right-hand-drive cars – rather than produce something new.

Timing, as much as money, was likely the issue.

HJ Mulliner, by then part of Rolls-Royce, was probably not thrilled by the idea of making a Manx-tailed version of one of the best-looking cars it had ever produced; it is also possible it was either too busy to take on the job (the official line) or simply no longer set up to produce unique designs.

The Bentley S2 Continental’s smaller boot is dominated by its spare wheel

Whatever the case, it dodged the issue by subcontracting the task to FLM Panelcraft of Battersea.

The resulting vehicle, painted matt black and delivered to McLeod by Jack Barclay in June 1960, was not an aesthetic success or, in some ways, even a practical one: as before, the spare wheel took up most of the luggage area and the reduction in rear-wing size meant the fuel filler was relegated to the boot.

Shorter by almost 2ft (610mm), it had a different bootlid, its reversing lights fitted in the space between the lid and the bumper, and odd-looking circular overriders with rubber inserts at the front.

Additionally, the side lamps were mounted lower in the wings and the foglights were of a different, square rather than circular design.

McLeod’s one-off Bentley S2 Continental is 2ft shorter than the standard model

The interior, with Reutter reclining front chairs, was largely standard, with full-sized rear seats and one of the best-looking Crewe Bentley dashboards, complete with a rev counter.

It also had electric front windows: McLeod was evidently softening his views on weight-saving and superfluous luxury, but he remained insistent on the light-giving Perspex roof panel.

Chassis BC106AR went into the trade some time in the 1970s and has only had one registered keeper since 1978 (when the logbooks were computerised), after a Jack Barclay rebuild in 1973-’74, having been sold via the now long-defunct Clarendon Carriage Company.

Classic & Sports Car – Unique Bentley S2 Continental: chop and changeClassic & Sports Car – Unique Bentley S2 Continental: chop and change

This Bentley S2 Continental was originally painted matt black

It had its first outing since the late 1980s when it turned up at an H&H Duxford auction in 2023, painted silver and with various minor modifications; the front indicator units, for instance, are from a Silver Cloud III/S3.

Approaching obliquely from the side you don’t notice the lack of rear overhang at first, but there is no escaping the fact that the out-of-balance side elevation is all kinds of wrong.

Panelcraft did its best with the rear wing and bootlid treatment, but the overall effect is unavoidably freakish and stunted: worse, in many ways, than McLeod’s early attempts, which at least had the amateurish charm that is part of the Bentley ‘Special’ tradition.

FLM Panelcraft of Battersea created this reworked Bentley

The last of these strange confections, based on an S3 Continental, possibly lent itself to the McLeod approach a little more sympathetically.

Once again FLM Panelcraft was commissioned to perform the necessary modifications on chassis BC38XC, sweeping the bootlid down from the rear window in a semi-fastback style between curtailed rear fins that retained the same general architecture of the standard design.

As with the S2, the Bentley’s big rear overriders were dispensed with, the ‘H1’ numberplate was attached directly to the bootlid (with no surround) and filling up required that the boot – which looked as if it had been pinched from a BMC 1100 – be raised on its somewhat incongruous-looking outside hinges.

From the rear three-quarter view, the effect of the Bentley’s tail chop is less obvious

Design 2023/F was ordered with sliding front seats, McLeod’s trademark second ‘dummy’ exhaust tailpipe and the batteries moved to the centre of the boot floor.

Perhaps the most intriguing fact about this final one-off is that it was bought by singer Engelbert Humperdinck in 1979; he sold it through Bonhams in 2018.

One of the many useful things about having near-bottomless pockets is that you can have pretty much whatever you want, pretty much whenever you want it.

The notion that just because something can be done, does not mean that it should, is not a concept that would resonate with the kind of tycoon who was determined to have something different and hang the expense.

Images: Max Edleston

Thanks to: Telchristie Car Sales; Nubes Argentea Books; Klaus-Josef Rossfeldt; The Real Car Co

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