A question I get asked a lot is: what classic car should I buy? A lot of people think they want a classic until they drive it, and go: hey, why is the brake pedal so hard to push and why does it steer so hard? So here’s my idea of the perfect classic: an ’80s or ’90s Bentley, either Turbo R or Brooklands.
Back in 1988 I ordered a brand new Bentley Turbo R. At that time in America it was the fastest four-door sedan you could buy. I still own the car and drive it quite often. A lot of the cars I’ve bought over the years have gone up in value substantially; the best example, of course, is the McLaren F1. The Turbo R is not one of them. I see them for sale in the $10,000-30,000 range. For the price of a new subcompact car, you can get the best of what Britain had to offer 20 or 30 years ago.
I enjoy doing my own work on my cars and I’m very impressed with the Bentley’s build quality. Recently, both my front power seats began to move on their own. It’s a weird feeling as you’re driving along and suddenly have the seat push you up against the steering wheel. I called some dealers and received ridiculous quotes. So I decided to try to fix it myself. The dealers I spoke to told me they would remove the power seat memory control module and send it out to be rebuilt. Not the mechanical part, just the electronic box, again validating my mantra that mechanical things break, electronic things erode. It made no sense to me that they were going to send it to someone else to fix because I could do that.
I started to disassemble both front seats and was impressed with the level of detail in the wiring. Things that the customer would never see were just as detailed and meticulous as those they would. The power module was sealed in a metal box, and opening it showed me two batteries that had been soldered in place. Some great YouTube videos told me that my problem was most likely leaking batteries shorting out the circuit board.
Carefully using my soldering iron, I removed the batteries, ordered new ones, cleaned where I believed they may have shorted the circuit board, then put it back together. It worked perfectly. The problem was not with the Bentley-manufactured parts but obviously some outside vendor. I truly believe if this had been a lesser car the wiring u
