We like expanding our automotive horizons when possible, so after we were told that a copy of the limited release book, “The Man Who Supercharged Bond: The Extraordinary Story of Charles Villiers” by Paul Kenny was available if we wanted it, we snapped at the chance. An English mechanical genius, Villiers developed the vaunted Blower Bentley racing engine, designed a clean sheet airplane engine, worked on space programs for the United States, and championed the cause of superchargers for road cars all the way back in the first half of the last century. It is an amazing story about a man whose mechanical genius was balanced by his horrible business sense. 

A distant cousin of Winston Churchill, Villiers came from a wealthy English family, which allowed him access to a great education as well as the means to pursue his true loves, cars and racing. His earliest racing activity was based around popular hill climb events held all over the English countryside. Modifying a 1.5L Bugatti owned and driven by his friend Raymond Mays, Villiers was free to experiment with all of his mechanical ideas and eventually had the little car making more than twice the power it had stock and revving nearly double the original red line. He modified the camshaft by hand, designed subtle changes to the oiling system that allowed the motor to make the extra revs without blowing to pieces. The car was so bad ass that Bugatti himself had Mays and Villiers as personal guests at his estate and the factory. Villiers lectured the factory workers on his updates and changes.

After a couple years of hill climb domination, the little Bugatti was getting long in the tooth and newer cars were beginning to run as well, and sometimes quicker. One that caught Villiers attention was a 1924 Sunbeam that wore a curious device, a supercharger. This led to a factory deal with AC where Villiers was allowed to develop a blower to top their race car. High hopes were replaced with crushing frustration as the team could never sort the car. One interesting thing is that Villiers is credited as being the guy who invented the practice of “O-ringing” cylinder bores in an attempt to get the AC’s brass cylinder head to seal with its aluminum block. Yes, we just said brass head and aluminum block. 

Boiled down, this guy was a hot rodder. He worked during a time where nothing was taken for granted, nothing was considered impossible, and as long as someone found a guy with some bucks to pay for it, they could invent, create, and innovate anything.

Villiers took his early experience and parlayed it into ever larger and more important automotive gigs, then he moved to air planes, and the to the ultimate breeding ground for brilliance, the US space program. His life was an incredible series of great ideas, bad business decisions, and mechanical advancements that few others who have ever walked the face of the Earth can lay claim to.

If you’re not committed to learn about someone you’ve never heard of, from an era of automotive technology that’s murky at best, who lived in a foreign country, and had some hoity toity lineage, leave this one on the shelf.

We’ll admit to struggling through a first chapter that lays out the man’s entire family tree in a level of detail that could even tire the relatives actually named in the book. Once through that though, it is an enthralling read about a brilliant guy whose mind was capable of dreaming up and creating just about anything from a roots blower for a Bentley to a rocket five times the size of the Washington Monument.

We took away a sincere appreciation for the guy after finishing the book and are very happy that we took the literary trip. This man was a hot rodder long before anyone ever dreamed up the term.

This book is available from Motorbooks.com, Amazon, and other retailers.