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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