Really usable toy
The Little Car Company mainly builds large scale models of cars from yesteryear, but also recently made its debut with a crazy product that can simply have a license plate on it. Now the company is doing it again. And how! Meet the Bentley Blower Jnr, an electric classic Bentley – but 15 percent smaller – with an electric driving range of just over 100 km and a top speed of 72 km/h.
Only recently, The Little Car Company (LCC) introduced the Tamiya Wild One Max: a life-sized, radio-controlled car that can no longer be controlled by radio, but can actually be driven by a person – and that on public roads. The Wild One Max has a modest electric powertrain and ditto battery pack for ditto performance that is nicely sufficient for a license plate: you can drive it on public roads in both the United Kingdom and the EU with a B driving license for passenger cars.
Now The Little Car Company is introducing another product in that category. The Bentley Blower Jr. That is a scale model of the original 1929 Blower, because everything about the car is 15 percent smaller than the original. It is 3.72 meters long, 1.48 meters wide and 1.27 meters high: about the same length as a Toyota Aygo X, but as wide as a Fiat Cinquecento. It weighs about 550 kg and has a modest 10.8 kWh battery pack on board. A 22-hp electric motor on the rear axle helps the Blower reach a top speed of 72 km/h. If you take it a bit easy, you should be able to travel more than 100 km on one battery charge. Recharging takes a while: LCC says about 4 to 6 hours.
A charger in the supercharger
The British have done their best on the details of the Blower Jnr. Just like the original, it has a rope-wrapped steering wheel and the meters that tell you how much battery charge you have left look like meters from a classic Bentley. The Blower Jnr is also partly made of carbon fiber and has its charging port in the front of the quasi-supercharger, which gave the original Blower its name. The battery pack is located at the bottom of the car and the electric motor on the rear axle, so we wonder whether the classic nose has a modest frank accommodates.
In any case, there is a reversing camera (really) and in the interior you will find a USB port to charge your phone and a Garmin navigation system. Also nice: it is a two-seater, but you do sit behind each other.
As mentioned, the Little Car Company Blower is therefore street legal and you can get a Dutch passenger car registration on it – no moped registration as on an Opel Rocks-e, so. The car – or the toy – is said to cost a pretty penny: at least £90,000 (around €105,000) excluding taxes. But then you have something special.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl