My father-in-law liked to make grand entrances wherever he went.  He enjoyed attracting the gaze of fellow automobile enthusiasts, and whenever one would compliment him on the car he drove he beamed for the rest of the day.  So it is not hard to understand why a 1961 Bentley S2 Standard Steel Saloon caught his fancy.

 

He was drafted into the Army, served in the Signals Corps as a telephone man in Vietnam, received an honorable discharge, married, landed a steady job with Bell Telephone Co., started his own telephone company in Fullerton, closed it and opened another one, and closed it and opened a third one that thrived in Brea.  Along the way he and his wife bought a home in Diamond Bar and had four daughters.  The American Dream was theirs, and to prove it he acquired B512CU in 1979 "from a little old lady who only drove it on Sundays," as he once told me.

 

My mother-in-law delighted in telling the story of how they took family drives on the highways of southern California with their girls.  (Their oldest became my wife.)  “Lisa and her sister would sit cross-legged in the backseat with the reading lamps on reading their Little Golden Books.  Lisa remembers it was a copy of Little House on the Prairie that her father had given her when she was nine.  People in other cars would look over, smile and wave, and make ‘oh, how sweet!’ faces at the girls.”  

 

My wife was the first of her siblings to marry.  I still count myself blessed that she said, "Yes!"  For the big day, her father put on his chauffeur's cap and drove us in style from the ceremony at the Los Angeles Temple to the wedding luncheon at El Torito in Brea, and then to the reception at the church in Diamond Bar that evening.  Remembering the day, I still feel the unmatched contentment of sitting in the backseat of the Bentley with my gorgeous bride in her beautiful white gown at my side as we cruised smoothly at speed down the freeway.

 

Lisa remembers her father loved to put on his chauffeur’s cap for special events like that.  He wore it for all of the girls’ 8th grade dances and middle school graduations, when he drove her sister and her date to the high school Homecoming Dance, and would have driven Lisa to Prom except she got sick and couldn’t go.

 

The years since were not been kind to the Bentley.  This once proud automobile ceased to grace the roads of America and sat in the garage.  Sometime around 2005, I had a feeling my father-in-law had had enough of trying to get it running again and was inclined to sell it, so I mentioned that if that time came I'd like a chance to make an offer.  Before he passed away, he told his wife, "Remember, Michael wants the Bentley."  In 2016 I reached an agreement with her and the family, and B512CU passed to me.

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I am committed to returning it to its former glory and taking to the road once more.