W. O. Bentley

Walter Owen Bentley (1888 to 1971), usually called W. O., was a British engineer and the founder of Bentley Motors. Born in Hampstead, London, he served a premium apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster, then raced motorcycles and cars and worked on taxi cabs. In 1912 he joined his brother in selling French DFP cars and, finding them slow, designed aluminium alloy pistons and a tuned camshaft for the DFP engine, taking records at Brooklands in 1913 and 1914. In the First World War he served in the Royal Naval Air Service and helped improve the Clerget rotary aero engines used in the Sopwith Camel and Snipe, which became the Bentley Rotary BR1 and BR2, and he received an MBE and an award from the Commission for Awards to Inventors. After the war he founded Bentley Motors and designed the four-cylinder 3 Litre car, whose models won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1924 and from 1927 to 1930. The company was sold to Rolls-Royce in 1931. He then worked for Lagonda, where he designed a V12 engine, and later at Aston Martin and Armstrong Siddeley before retiring.