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Undoubtedly, the 1926 Bentley 3-Liter is an iconic vintage car.

It wasn’t actually a "lorry" per se. The 1926 Bentley 3-Liter is a sports car that was manufactured by the British automaker Bentley. It’s not surprising that Bentley 3-Liter was nicknamed a "lorry" due to its weight and size. The car was developed in 1919 and began selling from 1921 through 1929. It first appeared at the 1919 London Motor Show, where the sophisticated Clive Gallop-designed engine and unique chassis made it the center of attention.

The chassis was not immediately made available to coachbuilders as it took the newly-minted marquee another two years to systematize the engine. Built specifically as a Le Mans endurance racing prototype sports car, the 3-Liter was among the pioneers of overhead camshaft featuring 4 valves per cylinder. Also, the upper part of the engine (the cylinder head) and the lower part (the block) was cast as one piece with space for two spark plugs per cylinder.

This avant-garde engine design plus the Vanden Plas bodywork helped propel Bentley 3-Liter to the finish line at the 1924 Le Mans and another win by the Super Sports trim in 1927. During its long production run, 1,622 examples were produced, including 513 short-chassis Speed models and 18 Super Sports.

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Do you mean the world's fastest lorry as in the quickest truck or Semi? Well, that'd very likely be Volvo’s custom-built Iron Knight. The Knight’s aerodynamically optimized cab and fiberglass body allow it to cover 62 miles from a standing position in 4.6 seconds and achieve a top speed exceeding 171 mph.

If any other Semi can beat Iron Knight's 2,400 horsepower, we haven't heard of it yet, and the Bentley 3-Liter has never claimed to be an actual truck or lorry. Bentley’s “lorry” boasted an untuned power output hovering around 70 hp, giving it the oomph to reach a top speed of 80 mph. The 1926 Speed Model could reach 90 mph, while the Super Sports model could go even further.

No need to get confused over the terms “Lorry” and “Truck” or “Semi.” It was the German automaker Ettore Bugatti that used the word "lorry" to describe the 3-Liter. It was a compliment, mind you. If Bentley had been an American brand, Bugatti would’ve called 3-Liter the fastest truck. So, seeing as Bentley was British, it was either that or “der schnellste Lkw der Welt.”

But how did the 3-Liter sports car get the fastest lorry nickname? Because it beat Bugatti at the race tracks, although it was significantly larger than the 1,368 cc Bugatti racers that dominated the circuits at that time. Weighing a solid 4,000 lb, the 3-Liter could beat the lighter racing giants because it compensated for its weight and size by doubling its engine size and body strength, thanks to the Vanden Plas bodywork.

Vanden Plas was the go-to British coachbuilder for up-market automobile manufacturers before making a name for itself as a premium badge on luxury brands like the British Leyland and latterly, the Jaguar XJ. Driven by John Duff and Frank Clement, Bentley 3-Liter won the 1924 Le Mans. It won again in 1927, driven by Dudley Benjafield and Sammy Davis.

The car had three official variants identified by colors – Blue Label, Red Label, and Green Label – of which the 1926 Bentley 3-Liter fell in the Red Label and Green Label bracket. The 117.5 inches wheelbase chassis featuring a 5.3:1 high compression engine got the Red Label designation. They were produced between 1924 and 1929.

The Green Label Bentley 3-Liter was also produced within the same period as the Red Label but featured a shorter 108 inches wheelbase chassis and 6.3:1 compression engine. The Green Label could guarantee 100 mph and thus the most coveted and rarest 3-Liter. Unlike the Red and Blue labels sold with a 5-year warranty, the Green Label carried a one-year warranty, indicating the latter's high state of tune.

The name, Bentley 3-Liter, does sound like a curious case. It was derived from the 3.0L 2,996 cc inline-4 engine. The designer was a member of the defunct Royal Flying Corps who succeeded in presenting Bentley with the most technically sophisticated engine of that era. A goodly portion of the 3.0L inline-4’s DNA contains German engineering, as Bentley had benefitted from lessons gleaned from dissecting the guts of Grand Prix winner, a 1914 Mercedes Daimler M93654 racing engine.

At the instigation of Royal Naval Air Service member Walter Owen Bentley, the Service seized and proceeded to disembowel and scrutinize the Grand Prix-winning Mercedes displayed at the marque’s Long Acre London showroom. Subsequently, elements like the cast-iron monobloc engine configuration and aluminum-enclosed camshaft were borrowed from the German-made Mercedes.

The engine produced a bore of 80 mm (3.1 in) and a stroke of 149 mm (5.9 in). The thing is that the Mercedes was a racing prototype, making the Bentley 3-Liter one, if not the first production vehicle to feature an engine of that power and performance. Bugatti’s race cars shared a similar engine design featuring twin carburetors and optimization for low-end torque. Bentley mated the engine to a 4-speed gearbox.

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The 3-Liter is undoubtedly an enduring classic. A copy with chassis number 3 was sold at a 2011 auction for $962,500, including a buyer's premium. That's nearly a million dollars, which is just as well, considering that it was the oldest surviving production Bentley 3-Liter with a body by English coachbuilder R. Harrison & Son.

You know what else is significant about that coachbuilder we mentioned earlier, Vanden Plas? Customers at that time didn’t visit a dealership to order themselves a brand-new Bentley 3-Liter. Instead, Bentley delivered the chassis to the customer’s preferred coachbuilder. As it turned out, Bentley referred many of its customers to Vanden Plas, most likely as they were neighbors.

The customers were not always private buyers. Dealers ordered chassis mostly the simplest and cheapest variants, especially tourers. The best part of this arrangement is that two 3-Liter cars are hardly the same since they were the craftsmanship of various coachbuilders and usually customized to a dealer or customer's distinctive design.

If there was a classic car event with attendees showing off their Bentley 3-Liters, they’re likely to spend most of their time admiring and checking out the variations in each other’s cars.

Owners included Prince George, Duke of Kent, Gertrude Lawrence, and Beatrice Lillie. You can view an original, unrestored 1927 3-Liter Speed Model (Red Label) at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The Museum’s copy with chassis number 1209 DE competed in pre-war road racing completion in America, the only Bentley to do so.

Philip Uwaoma, this bearded black male from Nigeria, is fast approaching two million words in articles published on various websites, including toylist.com, rehabaid.com, and autoquarterly.com. After not getting credit for his work on Auto Quarterly, Philip is now convinced that ghostwriting sucks. He has no dog, no wife- yet- and he loves Rolls Royce a little too much.