9781422270271

ALFA ROMEO: A LEGACY FROM MILAN BENTLEY: THE BEST IN ITS CLASS MASERATI: ITALIAN STYLE AND PERFORMANCE PORSCHE: THE ULTIMATE SPEED MACHINE RANGE ROVER: THE ULTIMATE IN LUXURY ROLLS-ROYCE: INNOVATION AND ASPIRATION TESLA: THE FEELING IS ELECTRIC

Carlie Lawson

MASON CREST M I A M I

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Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-4784-6 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4785-3 Series ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7026-4 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7027-1

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CONTENTS

Introduction .....................................................................6 Chapter 1: The History of the Bentley.............................15 Chapter 2: Bentley’s Iconic Models.................................33 Chapter 3: Worldwide Sales and Fame ...........................51 Chapter 4: The Future: Technology, Desirability, and ......... Sustainability ..............................................69 Series Glossary of Key Terms ..........................................92 Further Reading & Internet Resources.............................93 Index ..............................................................................94 Author’s Biography and Credits ......................................96 KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR: Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher level books and articles in this field.

M ost businesses fail the same year their founder starts them, so when you learn of a business that has lasted past 100 years of successful operation and growth, it says a lot about that business. That’s the case of Bentley Motors, established by a motorcycle racing military hero who picked up engineering knowledge while still in high school and then built on it at college. In 2020 and 2021, Bentley Motors succeeded while many other businesses failed. Amidst the backdrop of a scary pandemic, the business not only survived but turned around lagging sales in multiple regions.

The COVID-19 pandemic was catastrophic for many businesses, but Bentley prevailed, with an increase in sales. A Bentley Continental GT Convertible V-8 at the Brussels Motor Show in 2020.

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Bentley: The Best in its Class

Bentley fulfilled its racing credentials. This 4½ liter supercharged model race car from 1930 still runs in the Mille Miglia rally in Italy.

Bentley Motors ties together the fighting spirit of the English people, a young engineer, his business-minded brother, and the British love of luxury. It begins with a group of brothers monkey wrenching around the motorcycles they love riding, and moves to the business of customizing imported French cars. The inception of Bentley in 1919 moves the reader into the world of high-speed, long-distance racing at sites like the breathtaking Le Mans track, which offers more than eight miles of treacherous terrain, winding through forests and valleys, past streams, and by jam-packed grandstands. The complexity of the contests belies the simplest of their goal— to drive the farthest during a 24-hour period. Not once nor twice, but an amazing six times, Bentley has won this dangerous road race. The story of Bentley Motors also extends to cutthroat business deals, one of which resulted in the purchase of the company by one of its rivals, only to find itself buried amidst the rival’s car models. With no way to innovate, and locked in by its new owners, the company treaded water for nearly 50 years.

Introduction

7

The Mark VI four-door standard steel, sports sedan was the first postwar luxury car from Bentley.

Suddenly, a ray of light appeared when another rival purchased it. This second rival saw competition as more of a friendly undertaking where collaboration could occur, too. That much-larger rival noted the value that Bentley offers—to both consumers and the auto industry. Rather than competing, it offered its growing array of subsidiaries to work with and rebuild the company’s once proud heritage. Partnering with its second corporate owner, Bentley Motors found the benefits in being the tiny upstart owned by a massive corporation. Slowly, after more than five decades without its own flagship vehicle, the motoring company began to restore its name.

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Bentley: The Best in its Class

Through the decades, it had still provided gorgeously appointed vehicles that had used someone else’s design. Now, owned by a corporation that encouraged its racing heritage and engineering team known for innovation, Bentley Motors returned to its proverbial drawing board to design first one, then another groundbreaking design. It unveiled what the first corporation to buy it had known it was capable of building—a new class of vehicle. Establishing a class that it had held by itself for years, the company began to rebuild, attracting more than local artisans. Bentley began to attract the innovative minds who could and would help it re-establish itself as a leading English brand. While across the world, drivers in many regions shopped for a Bentley, in its own country, the automaker continued to lose sales. It needed more than a creative license to re-create itself. It would need ideas it could provide worthy of driving.

The Bentley brand has always been synonymous with high-end luxury.

Introduction

9

The two-door performance Bentley such as the Continental GT 2019 model has opened up the market to a different clientele.

Investing in a Bentley means spending the equivalent of a U.S. starter home on a car. The hand-built luxury vehicles still carried cachet in other areas, but sadly, in the U.K. the company kept losing sales. As its second corporate owner helped it discover new confidence in itself, Bentley began to release one vehicle after another that shook off the shackles from its first corporate owner and fitted itself for a crown from its second corporate owner. Just as the company seemed to re-establish itself with three original vehicles in its line, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The plans of the company, like those of many, went on hold. The plans to introduce the first of the company’s hybrid vehicles went on hold. Its entire development halted. Its plan to go electric got put on hold. Just to keep pace with its orders, the company had to transform its production process. Unlike other car makers, Bentley uses no

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Bentley: The Best in its Class

automation. People still make many of the parts in a Bentley. They hand-stitch the leather of the upholstery. They hand-build some of the mechanical parts to this day. To save itself, the company had to remake its entire production process during the seven weeks it was closed for the pandemic. All of the new procedures had to account for social distancing procedures, which had never before presented a concern. As one business after another closed, the automaker worked harder to make the ever-increasing number of orders coming into its tiny 4,000-person operation. For comparison’s sake, Ford Motors employs about 88,000 individuals and automates many of its processes.

Bentley is a world-leading brand for the luxury car market. It has showroom outlets all over the world.

Introduction

11

When a factory automates a process, a machine takes care of it. Using automation doesn’t require special pandemic protocols, since the human involved never interacts with anything but a machine. At Bentley, 4,000 people drill, sew, and interact, and for production to resume, the close interaction had to end. Bentley Motors did it. In 2020, after seven weeks closed, the automaker re-opened, having worked around the clock to remake its manufacturing process with social distancing implemented. It fulfilled orders as quickly as possible, finding at the close of the year that it had set a record for sales and production—by hand, social distanced, and with all new procedures.

The Volkswagen AG headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. The German automotive manufacturer currently owns Bentley.

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Bentley: The Best in its Class

Far from a fluke, the automaker proved itself again the following year, when it again set new records from the small town of Crewe, England (population: 73,241, according to its 2016 census data). By pulling together, the factory’s workers outpaced the prior year’s production and turned everything around. Bentley Motors had set another sales record, beating its own record from the year before. Whether the world simply wanted luxury in the face of rationing, toilet paper shortages, hospital stays, and general impending disaster, or recognized the toughness of this small city and company, the world bought Bentleys. Even in its home country, sales resurged to their prior levels—the ones before the sales lag. Everyone cheers for the underdog. Everyone should. Someday, the underdog could be you. This book recounts the story of an unlikely company, founded by an unlikely young genius who began his engineering journey at age nine. W.O. Bentley established the automaker in 1919, and today Volkswagen Group owns it but hesitates to change it too much. Read on to learn the details of the auto company that almost wasn’t, and how British ingenuity and determination saved it at a time when all seemed lost throughout the world.

Introduction

13

A 1923 Bentley 3-4 1 ⁄

2 -Liter competing in the 2017 Flying Scotsman Rally, in Scotland, for prewar cars.

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Bentley: The Best in its Class

THE HISTORY OF THE BENTLEY The Bentley line of vehicles begins with its founder, Walter Owen (W.O.) Bentley, who set a goal “to build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class.” The youngest of nine children, the enterprising entrepreneur founded Bentley Motors on July 10, 1919, at the age of 32. Gas-powered cars had only

existed for three years when W.O. Bentley came into the world on September 16, 1888. Privately schooled, he focused on engineering while racing motorcycles, then cars. His background as a racer led to his interest in engines, but he took his initial engineering job in aeronautics. The first vehicle made by Bentley Motors pulled out of its New Street Mews manufacturing

W.O. Bentley.

The History of the Bentley

15

facility in London the same year he founded the firm. The automaker first focused on power. Although W.O., as he preferred people to call him, built racecars, he wanted to provide the car buying public with a powerful performance vehicle that also offered comfort. In the early 1900s, an automaker could easily place design focus on those three priorities, since only the wealthy could afford vehicles. That made every car a luxury car. Bentley succeeded quickly. His vehicles won the famous Le Mans auto race five times during the 1920s, a feat that the manufacturer did not repeat until 2003, five years after German automaker Volkswagen AG bought it out. The company first changed hands in 1931, when W.O. sold it to British Central Equitable Trust, a shell company for Rolls-Royce Motors. Rolls-Royce merely rebadged most of the powerful Bentleys

The facade of the Bentley Motors factory in Crew appears traditional. The interior, however, is state-of- the-art.

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Bentley: The Best in its Class