development was halted. W. O. believed Barnato had bought a substantial shareholding in Rolls-Royce just before pulling out his support while visiting New York. Barnato was invited to become a director of the new Rolls-Royce subsidiary, Bentley Motors (1931) Limited. W. O.'s winter of 1931/1932 was hard, his wife divorced him and he lost any form of personal transport, when he was asked to return his personal Bentley 8 Litre. Hearing of this W. E. Rootes arranged for him to test a new Hillman each weekend. Lock-out As obliged to do by the court he joined Rolls-Royce under a contract extending from 1 May 1932 to the end of April 1935. Rolls-Royce isolated him in London and Europe, keeping him occupied as liaison between customers and—at long range—the works, to test drive vehicles at Brooklands and for long test runs across the Continent and the Alps. While he worked on testing the prototype he was only permitted to comment on the design of what would become the new Derby -litre announced in October 1933. Around that time he managed to begin to report in person to the design teams at Derby making friends in the process. Among them Harry Grylls and Stewart Tresilian who did some design-only work on a short-stroke replacement for the V12 engine for their Phantom III. W. O. had been effectively sequestered from the design team of the new car bearing his own name. But, he did admire their achievement. Rolls-Royce promoted its new line of Bentleys as "The Silent Sports Car". W. O. left Rolls-Royce at the end of April 1935 with a sense of freedom. Lagonda, Staines, Middlesex A Lagonda M45R Rapide with a Meadows engine won the 1935 Le Mans 24-hour race, and a week later Lagonda was saved from receivership by Alan P Good. W. O. joined the new board as Technical Director and moved to Lagonda with the majority of Rolls-Royce's racing department staff. W. O. again went racing. Unable to persuade Harry Grylls to join his engineering staff at Staines, W. O. obtained Stewart Tresilian's services from February 1936. Tresilian brought Frank Stark and Reg Ingham with him., and Donald Bastow joined them. W. O. made Tresilian chief designer of the V12 project, and the engine was launched in 1937. Displacing 4480 cc, it delivered 180 bhp (134 kW) and was said to be capable of going from 7 to