Only two examples of James Young’s Design No. CT150 were ever built on the Bentley S3 Continental chassis, making it one of the rarest coachbuilt designs to come out of Bromley. One of the pair made its debut at the 1965 Geneva Motor Show before being delivered to its first owner. Here’s the story behind one of James Young’s last great designs.
The Bentley SSS C2 race car manufactured in 1965 is a rare find with only two units ever built, although neither vehicle was ever raced formally. There is one of them in the Bentley museum in the U.K., and the other, imaged below, has recently been sold, “Somewhere in the U.S.A.”, is all I could come up with. The company had a long standing policy of not participating in racing, however, the two cars were produced in defiance of that ban. Each of these is powered by a blueprinted 6.23 L all aluminium, dry sump, solid lifter, V8 engine. The intake manifold sports a supercharged twin four barrel carburetor arraignment to provide maximum power for the track. Also included is a single four barrel carburetor set-up along with fenders (not shown) to make it roadworthy for a Sunday solo jaunt. The latter two items were produced to make the vehicles legal for public sale, but only as an after-thought, thereby conforming with managements no racing edict.
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Two cars. One design number. A coachbuilder that was already winding down its most ambitious work by the time these were finished. The James Young design shop in Bromley had spent years dressing Bentley and Rolls-Royce chassis in some of the most striking bodies of the postwar era, and Design No. CT150, built on the S3 Continental platform, stands as one of the very last projects the firm completed before its coachbuilding era came to a close. Only two examples were ever built, and their paths diverged almost immediately, one now sits preserved in a museum, the other vanished into a private collection somewhere in the United States. What made this particular design worth building twice, and never a third time?
Design No. CT150: James Young’s Late Masterwork
James Young of Bromley had spent decades building coachwork for Bentley and Rolls-Royce chassis, producing limited runs of hand-formed bodies for buyers who wanted something the factory catalog didn’t offer. Design No. CT150, built on the S3 Continental chassis, came near the very end of that era, as coachbuilding gave way to factory-bodied production across the British luxury car industry. Only two examples of CT150 were ever completed, making it one of the rarest designs James Young produced in its final years of independent coachbuilding.
A Geneva Motor Show Debut Before Delivery
The second of the two CT150 cars, chassis number BC12XD, was completed in March of 1965 and didn’t go straight to its first owner. Instead, James Young displayed it on the company’s own stand at the 1965 Geneva Motor Show, putting the car in front of the international press and collectors before it was ever driven on public roads. That kind of debut underscores how significant the design was considered at the time, a send-off appearance for one of the last true James Young creations before the firm’s coachbuilding chapter came to a close.
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