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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 43 I n the original Pink Panther movie, with David Niven as the suave, urbane, risk-taking jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton, and Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau earnestly determined to arrest him, there is an elaborate scene where Clouseau has to follow the notorious Sir Charles to a costume ball. So, of course, the Inspector goes dressed in a suit of armor, complete with a massive helmet whose visor keeps slipping down at inopportune moments. Director Blake Edwards clearly chose the costume to highlight the hilarious ineptitude of Inspector Clouseau. The very first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, has a detail that—unintentionally— makes me think of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards. The suave, urbane, risk-taking 007 is specifically described as driving a Bentley 4½ liter "Blower." For those of you unfamiliar with the 4½ liter "Blower," it was a rare (only 55 of them were ever built), 1930 modified super-racing version of an archetypically British two-seater already intended for racing. The regular, original 4½ liter (almost as rare, with only 665 built between 1926 and 1930) was longer than a long-bed super-cab pickup and nearly as heavy, meaning it was a large, gaudy, beautiful, and impractical eye-catcher. As a racing car, even in 1930, the "Blower" (the name is a reference to the enormous front-mounted supercharger, which added almost two feet to the overall length) was about as suitable for everyday use as a Formula One would be on the streets of Manhattan today. By the time Casino Royale was written (1953), the "Blower" was almost as subtle—and out of date—as Inspector Clouseau's armor, and considerably less practical. As a vehicle for a "secret agent," it could only be surpassed by having Bond drive, oh, say, a monster truck with five-foot tires. Inconspicuous; that's the word I was groping for. But author Ian Fleming was clearly going for romantic imagery, not practicality, using both car and hero to bolster the sad and faded image of a Great Britain with undiminished pre-war importance and power, where the sun never set on the British Empire. Never mind that any halfway competent driver in a Deux Chevaux could Sporting BrAKES By jAmESon pArKEr The BenTley BenTayga Fly Fishing model FeaTures everyThing you need– and Then some!–For a day on The spey. have outmaneuvered Bond's mammoth machine on the tiny, winding, sunken roads of northern Normandy and southern Picardy. As they say in Hollywood: It is more important to look good than to be good. Popular movies have inextricably linked Bond to the Aston Martin, but in the books he was always a Bentley man, proving that MI6 paid its secret agents far better than the CIA does ours. After his "Blower" was crushed by giant rolls of newsprint (don't ask), Bond moved on to a Mark VI. What happened to it is not delineated in any of the books, but by the time of Thunderball, Bond was driving his final Bentley. Fleming described it as a Mark II Continental, which I believe was a conflation by the author of two different and discrete models. No matter; it's the image that counts. Today, if he were still around, Bond would be driving . . . well, in reality he would be driving a second-hand Ford Fiesta and would be lucky if he could afford to play the quarter slot machines in the lobby of the Motel 6 in Winnemucca. But sticking with the romantic imagery, he would be driving a Bentley Bentayga Fly Fishing model