#and two more half-finished
Is there anything more iconic in Good Omens than David Tennant driving a flaming Bentley down an English road while Bohemian Rhapsody plays?
Possibly, but it’s still an awesome moment.
Especially when our lanky demon steps out, swaggering like an action movie star here to save the day, giving the one-liner he clearly spent half the journey thinking up: “You wouldn’t get that sort of performance from a modern vehicle.”
I wrote “In Love with My Car” because Crowley loves his car, period. It’s his home, in a way his flat never really is. When filming it’s final destruction, David Tennant’s only acting direction was: you are the Doctor and you just saw the Tardis destroyed. (Side note: that is the perfect kind of direction to give DT, not because he used to be the Doctor, but because he’s a huuuuuge Doctor Who fanboy and has probably written that fanfiction.)
Now, I learned more than I really ever thought I’d need to know about vintage cars while researching this story, but for those who have not, in the book Crowley has a 1928 Bentley, and on the show a 1933. This is rather a big difference.
I mean the ‘28 is cute and all. It’s like an old timey cartoon of a car. If I saw one of these on fire driving down the road, I’d be like “no, that’s fair, I expected that.”
The ‘33 is, if nothing else, much more in line with modern ideas of what a cool car should look like. Graceful, curving, solid. This was a car that was made to have good performance - above average, but you know, not German automobile levels - but also made to make you look rich and awesome in a decade where most people were not.
But book or TV show, it does NOT change the fact that Crowley loves the Bentley. Perhaps even more so in the book - like scroll back up and look at that thing. It’s like a sports-tractor. Book Crowley is very concerned with always having the latest, coolest flashiest things, yet he has a car that looks like it frequently gets outpaced by snails. Even TV Crowley, with his fondness for mementos and antiques, is constantly changing and updating his look to match the height of cool in every era, and the vintage Bentley look probably peaked in like the 1960s in the James Bond era.
What I’m saying is, if the point was to just look cool, both Crowleys would probably be driving some model of Jaguar at the very least.
But also in both - though you can obviously see it better on the show - the Bentley performs like a modern Jaguar (or, whatever). Like, Crowley shouldn’t be able to do 90 in Central London for the simple fact that a vintage Bentley can’t reach those speeds. The ‘33 could, as its max speed, under ideal circumstances which included “going downhill” and “perfectly smooth and straight road.” But Crowley drives it, screeching up the road, handling corners perfectly, at speeds that would make any driving instructor pass out.
But the Bentley is the Best Car. Crowley knows this, believes it, feels it in his soul. So when other cars start getting better, the Bentley does too, to match them. No fancy foreign Ferrari is going to outperform his awesome Bentley!
There’s been a lot written about how Crowley interacts with the spaces in his apartment. He keeps everything clean and open and minimalist, because space is such a luxury in Hell. He shouts at his plants because he’s reliving the abuse he suffers in Hell, and the rejection he received from Heaven.
The Bentley, though, represents the face he shows the world. Dark and powerful and cool and a little out of place but full of so much unmistakable style that really you have to question what every other car is doing wrong by not being a Bentley. This is exactly the kind of being Crowley wishes to be. The kind that turns every head when he comes in a room, the kind that always handles everything with effortless grace and style, the kind that everyone makes space for and just watches pass in utter awe.
Even when he talks to the car, primarily during the bits where it’s on fire, he’s encouraging it, telling it how good of a car it is, how it can do this utterly insane thing that it really, really can’t. It’s the complete opposite of how he treats his plants (degrading and berating them when for every tiny failure), because while the plants represent a part of himself he’s trying to distance himself from, the Bentley allows him to be who he wants to be.
And that is something that he would never, ever exchange for any other vehicle.
Anyway, you can read more about my thoughts on Crowley’s thoughts on his car in my fanfiction, “In Love with My Car” over on AO3!
(Note to readers: looking like a very good chance of no update this week. I will post this evening with current progress on my upcoming stories.)
