The First Bentleys: A Passion for Performance

In 1919, in London, engineer Walter Owen Bentley—known to all simply as W.O.—founded the company that would bear his name. In the wake of the First World War, the automobile was on the cusp of rapid development across Europe. While car ownership was beginning to spread, thanks to brands like Austin and Morris in Britain, Bentley’s ambitions were aimed squarely at the elite.

From the outset, the first Bentleys were high-performance, sophisticated machines designed for racing. Bentley pioneered the development of its own engines, featuring four-valve-per-cylinder heads—an extraordinary innovation over a century ago! The efforts of the small team led by W.O. quickly paid off: between 1924 and 1930, Bentley won the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times—the most prestigious race in the world.

Unfortunately, while W.O. was a brilliant engineer, he lacked the business acumen needed to secure the company’s finances. As early as 1927, control of the firm passed to gentleman driver Woolf Barnato, who cemented his place in Bentley legend by famously beating the “Blue Train” in a race across France, driving a Bentley Speed Six uniquely bodied by Gurney-Nutting. Sadly, the 1929 crash spelled the end of Bentley’s independence, and after financial collapse, the marque was acquired by Rolls-Royce in 1931.

With Volkswagen, a New Dimension for Bentley

Owned by the aerospace group Vickers since 1980, the company was sold eighteen years later in an unexpected transaction that pitted two German automotive giants against each other: while Volkswagen won the bid by acquiring the Bentley name and factory, its rival BMW asserted its exclusive rights to the Rolls-Royce name, resulting—against all odds—in the separation of the two brands, 67 years after their merger.

BMW then built a brand-new plant in Goodwood, while VW committed to modernizing the Crewe facilities, where Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars had been produced since 1946. Bentley subsequently expanded its lineup downward with the launch, in 2003, of the Continental GT, developed on a platform shared with the Volkswagen Phaeton, and also powered by the fabulous W12 engine.

The new Continental enabled Bentley to reach a new customer base, and production volumes rose significantly, from two thousand to over eight thousand cars per year. Since then, the Bentley lineup has expanded to include the Flying Spur sedan and the Bentayga SUV; benefiting from the Volkswagen Group’s technical and industrial synergies, the British marque is now firmly preparing to embrace electrification!