Bentley

Bentley has been synonymous with big, fast and expensive cars since its founding in 1919. In part, that’s because the British automaker’s first decade left an indelible mark on the automotive world.

Founded Walter Owen (“W.O.”) Bentley in 1919, the company’s first cars were big, imposing sports cars that crystallized the experiences the founder had gathered as an engineer maintaining everything from locomotives to taxicabs to sports cars.

The original Bentley 3 Litre was a sports car, but one much larger than spindly French sports cars that dominated racing in that era (the most famous exemplar being Bugatti). It was as durable as a fire engine and depending on the buyer’s preferences it could be limousine luxurious without compromising speed, and it won the 1924 24 Hours of Le Mans, which only boosted its profile and following among rich racing playboys.

The most notable of those was Captain Woolf Barnato, who bought his first 3 Litre in 1925 and soon provided financial backing to the underfunded company. With Barnato’s W.O. expanded the range of cars to include the 4+½ litre, Supercharged 4+½-liter “Blower,” 6+½-litre, Speed Six, 8-litre and 4-litre models. The result was that the cadre of “Bentley Boys” won four straight Le Mans victories from 1927 to 1930, firmly cementing the cars’ legend.

But the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent great depression destroyed the market for such cars, particularly the costly 8-litre limo, and drove the company into bankruptcy. While W.O. favored selling to rival Napier, Rolls-Royce scooped up the company via a shadow buyer in late 1931. Production moved from the original facility at Cricklewood in North London to Roll-Royce’s factory in Derby. W.O. wasn’t a fan of this arrangement and left the company in 1935.

A new line of cars was developed as a smaller, faster and lighter companion to Rolls’ models, the “Derby Bentley.” While the Derby wasn’t really a racer, it sold well considering the economic climate of the era, and new versions of the Derby were rolled out steadily until the outbreak of WW2 in 1939.

With the United Kingdom facing considerable economic austerity after WW2, Bentley rolled out its first design with a factory body (all previous cars had coachwork done by independent firms like Mulliner, Freestone & Webb or Vanden Plas), the Mk VI. Though smaller and cheaper than previous models, the Mk IV proved a huge hit, and quickly spawned a Rolls-Royce derivative, the Silver Dawn. Both were built in a centralized facility in Crewe, about 40 miles southwest of Liverpool.

After the success of these two models, Bentleys would end up being much closer to Rolls-Royce designs for many years afterward, but the company still built special and fast vehicles, most notably the Continental coupe, which lasted through four evolutions, the R-Type, S1, S2 and S3 from 1954 to 1965.

In the 1960s and 1970s Bentley faded as its designs, particularly the 1965 to 1980 T-Series, grew a little too close to their Rolls-Royce siblings. The parent company, which made aerospace engines, also faced insolvency, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars and Bentley Motors were sold to another Aerospace company, Vickers, in 1970.

In the early 1980s the T-Series gave way to the Mulsanne, which while closely based on the Rolls-Royce Silver Spur, had an appreciably more sporting character. This was followed up by the Mulsanne Turbo and ultimately the Turbo R, which restablished Bentley’s popularity and bona fides as a maker of legitimate supersedans.

The Continental returned in 1991 as an all-new coupe design with no Rolls-Royce sibling, and in time also got a convertible variation. The Continental R, which referenced the 1950s R-Type, also helped Bentley’s resurgent popularity.

In late 1997, Vickers announced that it wished to sell Rolls-Royce and Bentley, and BMW and Volkswagen got into a bidding war for the joint companies. When the dust cleared, BMW had ended up with the Rolls-Royce trademarks but Volkswagen got the Crewe factory and the Bentley brand. Thus began the most successful period in Bentley’s history since the 1920s.

Volkswagen spent nearly $2 Billion dollars renovating Crewe and designing new models, starting with 2003’s Continental GT. A high-tech, all-wheel drive, twin-turbo W12-powered interpretation of the previous Continentals, the model was a smash hit for Bentley and was soon followed by the four-door Flying Spur. The two cars were popular enough to generate an 820% increase in production, to more than 9,000 cars a year by 2006, by far the highest totals in the company’s history.

Bentley’s trajectory has continued to trend upward, and both the Continental and Flying Spur are still big sellers in 2023. In 2016, the company introduced its first SUV, the Bentayga, which proved to be yet another blockbuster, quickly accounting for 40% or more of the company’s sales. In 2023, it introduced the long-wheelbase Bentayga EWB as a replacement for the long-running Mulsanne limousine.
Although known for its big gas engines, the company also introduced a raft of plug-in hybrids in the early 2020s, and plans to go fully electric by 2030.