The life and times of Honeysuckle

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Expensive cars may frequently be described as being fit for a king, but a far more challenging aesthetic exercise is building a car fit for a couturier. Honeysuckle, the 1939 Bentley 4¼ Litre with handsome Vanden Plas Open Tourer bodywork built for Paris-based fashion designer Edward Molyneux, certainly fitted that bill. However, for reasons best known to himself, Molyneux never took delivery of it, preferring instead to order another 4¼ Litre of marginally newer specification, with the Thrupp & Maberly Sedanca Coupé body he’d originally had in mind for Honeysuckle.

The future for Honeysuckle was chequered, as it passed between many owners, mainly high-end dealers, but other owners included businessmen and suave actor Hugh Sinclair, without ever settling with one for any significant length of time. That changed in 1952 when it was bought by Johnnie Green, who would form a very strong attachment to the car, reputedly driving it round the clock twice. In Green’s hands, Honeysuckle showed up at many Bentley Drivers’ Club events and soon came to be coveted by connoisseurs of the marque.

Recently restored for a second time, Honeysuckle has remained an object of desire on concours lawns around Europe. Malcolm Bobbitt charts the fascinating history of this masterpiece of coachbuilding in the February issue of The Automobile, available now.

Words by Zack Stiling. Photographs by Reverendpixel.

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