Vehicle Description
Post World War II, Rolls-Royce wound down production in their
airplane factories and began to retool to produce vehicles again.
The Bentley Mark VI was introduced as the very first
Rolls-Royce-built motor car with standard coachwork by Rolls-Royce
Ltd. The VIN identified each vehicle as it came off the newly
installed assembly line. For this VIN, B1BG, the first B is for
Bentley as opposed to RR for Rolls-Royce. The number 1 indicates
the sequence in the batch of cars produced. The last two letters,
BG, were used on cars produced between 1946 and the beginning of
1948. Therefore, when this car rolled off the assembly in 1946 it
was the very beginning of a new dawn for Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
The original owner, T.E. Davies, purchased the car for Mrs.
Mondron-Lethbridge, stated to be a French countess assigned to
South Africa, which accounts for the right-hand drive but an
odometer reading in miles per hour. In the 40 years that she owned
the vehicle, she put approximately 12,000 miles on the odometer.
When she sold it to Bloomsbury Investment Cars, Cape Town, South
Africa, in 1987, she told them that she disliked the car and rarely
drove it because being a right-hand drive, and the stick shift just
inside the door opening interfered with her dress while getting in
and out of the car. They did no repairs to the vehicle, and it was
purchased as an investment in 1987 by John Haag, the brother of
Robert Haag, the "Meteorite Man," who found the car while searching
for meteorites in South Africa. The car was shipped to his
residence in Tucson, AZ. It was later sold to Robert E. Lundquist,
an attorney, in 1988. Lundquist stripped the paint down to the
steel and repainted the car with acrylic enamel ivory. He also
removed and cleaned the engine-head covers. He put about 2,000
miles on the car, using it primarily to go to the opera house. The
car was sold to Robert Burch, a car dealer in Atlanta, GA, in 2006
with 15,300 miles. Burch stored it in a warehouse until his death.
The present owner purchased the vehicle in 2008 with 15,600 miles.
He rebuilt the water pump, replaced the working fuel pump with an
electronic pump, replaced the weatherstripping and added new tires.
This car was manufactured without an air conditioner and is missing
the cigarette lighter. A radio was added to the car at some point.
18,053 miles (title reads exempt).
