Bentley Blower Junior EV | PH Review

Tally, bally, ho!

Experiencing the full performance of a new car at the media launch is always hard and often impossible these days. But in the Bentley Blower Junior I’ve ticked that box barely two minutes after I start driving it, despite being in central London.

Using Windrush Car Storage at White City as the handover point – a private garage filled with exotic supercars – means the first bit of public road I experience is the A3220 dual carriageway, the so-called West Cross Route and the former M41. A one-time motorway with a 40mph speed limit corresponds almost exactly with the Blower Junior’s maximum speed, and well before the need to slow for the inevitable jam at the Holland Park roundabout the retro EV’s speedo needle has already stopped travelling upwards at an indicated 42mph. It’s the fastest the Junior and I will go in the three hours we spend together.

Yet that doesn’t mean the experience isn’t a very special one. The Blower Junior is an officially sanctioned Bentley product, but is built by the Bicester-based Little Car Company which has already established a seemingly successful niche selling scaled-down electric classics to the ultra-rich. We’ve already experienced previous LCC products in the form of the Bugatti Baby II, Ferrari Testa Rossa J and Aston Martin DB5 Junior. But the critical difference for the Blower is that it can legally wear numberplates, being registered in the UK under the L7e quadricycle rules. Hence being the first of LCC’s products that can be driven on road.

The resulting car delivers what could well be the worst bang-per-buck of all time in terms of price divided by ponies – 20 hp costing £108,000 for the limited-to-99 ‘First Edition.’ Two figures which, in combination, are likely to cause gallons of tea to be collectively spat. But at risk of putting myself in line for my own flaming in the comments, on a per smile basis it’s damned good value.

I’ve been lucky enough to drive some spectacular cars over the years, but I can honestly say that I’ve never piloted anything that gets as much attention as a slightly downsized 1920s Bentley in central London on a sunny day. You could spend ten times as much on a cutting-edge hypercar and not feel anything like the same level of instant celebrity, pretty much all of which is positive. This is a car that gets pedestrians rushing to take selfies and has enough star power to get normally taciturn cabbies and bus drivers smiling and asking questions. It even had white van drivers yielding gaps.

Proof of the love arrived when driving past Buckingham Palace, and discovering that Constitution Hill had a sizeable line of guests suited-and-booted in their finery for last week’s Royal Garden Party. The sight of the Blower Junior was so compelling I was soon facing a red carpet’s worth of raised phones as I trundled past. Then things got more complicated as the Met’s Special Escort Group turned up on blue-strobing BMW motorbikes, stopping traffic for what, it soon transpired, was Princess Anne being chauffeured in a Bentley Bentayga. Yet even as she swung through the Palace gates the majority of the well-heeled crowd still seemed to be paying more attention to my Mr. Toad impression.

Plenty of high-level craftsmanship has also gone into the Junior’s creation. Unless you have an original Bentley Blower to hand, the shrinkage isn’t that obvious from side-on, the Junior being an 85 per cent replica (while the earlier LCC cars were either 67 per cent or 75 per cent) but keeping the original’s proportions spot on. The big change is the switch to a single central driving position, with a smaller seat offset slightly to the rear. So front or rear it does look smaller. But it’s definitely not lacking in presence, this is a slightly downsized car rather than an upscaled toy.

The Junior is also beautifully constructed, with hand-formed aluminium panels for the folding bonnet, this held shut by Edwardian-appropriate leather straps, and a perfectly scaled-down radiator surround. The pretend supercharger casting is perhaps a little too on the nose for a car that doesn’t have an engine, although – of course – it is where the charging port sits. The bonnet’s prototypical louvres also bring a problem as the lack of an engine means you can see all the way through the car from some angles. Apparently the plan for customer-spec versions is to use the space up front for a luggage compartment in addition to the tiny one within the lockable fold-open ‘fuel tank’ at the rear. The 10.8 kWh 48 Volt battery pack that powers the single rear motor is compact enough to sit up front and leave plenty of space. 

Legal requirements have brought a couple of other anachronisms. The most obvious are the ugly pillars required for the mandated three-point seat belts, but there are also shiny ‘seventies style side mirrors to improve rear visibility. (They are mostly decorative, as you will hear anything beside the car before you see it.) An entirely understandable change is the switch to hydraulic brakes with well-disguised mini discs behind the wire wheels; the original Blower’s feeble cable-operated drums would likely be terrifying in the real world. But the rest of the suspension design stays old school – solid axles at both ends, with semi-elliptical springs and lever-arm friction dampers. It even has the 1929 car’s prototypical positive camber at the front.

The driving experience is both crude and hugely fun. The Blower Junior’s unassisted steering uses a worm-and-gear steering box and is heavy when starting, but quickly lightens once moving. There is some sloppiness around the straight-ahead, but it doesn’t take much directional correction through the string-wrapped four-spoke steering wheel to keep on a chosen course at urban speeds. The ride is jarringly firm over imperfections, bumps passing into the Junior’s structure seemingly unfiltered, but the well-padded seat base takes the edge off them. The Junior’s skinny track brings both the disadvantage of being unable to pass over single-lane speed bumps without making jarring contact, but also the distinct plus of being so much narrower than six-foot width restrictors that they can be taken without the need to slow down. 

Off-the-line starts are keen thanks to the motor’s peak 98 lb-ft of torque, but the Blower Junior’s lack of power soon tells – a 550kg-ish kerbweight gives a power-to-weight ratio of around 36 hp per tonne. The demonstrator also had very little regen when the accelerator was lifted – not enough to actually register on the vintage-style analogue power flow meter – but the friction brakes are good. Pushed hard I’ve little doubt that the front axle would run short of grip first, the knock-kneed camber seeing to that. But I didn’t push it hard, nor feel any need to beyond confirming it could dispatch the corners of Hyde Park’s twisty West Carriage Drive while pacing a low-flying Deliveroo moped. But even at 20 mph, this car honestly feels like an adventure.

Range? Although there are no official figures available yet, LCC is targeting 65 miles on WLTP – a figure that would seem ludicrously short in any other EV, but seems likely to be more than plenty in this one. I did a total of about 15 miles in central London, using a third of the battery’s charge in the process. The 48 Volt architecture means there won’t be any fast charging capability, either – taking a minimum of around three hours to recharge the pack. So it is probably best if owners don’t plan any cross-Continent touring, especially as quadricycles can’t be driven on motorways.

There were a couple of other complaints. The Blower Junior’s tiny aero screen doesn’t seem to do anything to judge from my brief max-speed run, when the slipstream battered at undiminished speed. The demonstrator’s monotonous, always-on EV compliance noise also got boring quickly, especially when sitting in traffic jams. Yet despite that, and the green-flash EV numberplates, very few of the many onlookers drawn to ask questions realised they were looking at a modern, electrically-powered replica. Something which disappointed the Notting Hill schoolkids who demanded I rev it up for them.

Yes, the Bentley Blower Junior is ludicrous on many levels – a crazily expensive indulgence for the sort of people who can literally afford to scratch any itch. But that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in a car. It doesn’t matter how many supercars or exotics buyers already possess: they won’t have anything else like this.

Specification | Bentley Blower Junior

Engine: Electric motor
Gearbox: Single-speed gearbox, rear-wheel drive
Power: 20 hp (total system peak)
Torque: 98 (total system peak)
0-60mph: N/A
Top speed: 42mph (observed), 50mph (target)
Kerbweight: 550 kg 
Range: 65 miles (WLTP, estimated)
CO2:: 0 g/km
Price: £108,000 (First Edition)

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