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Bentley Car Clubs
The company’s founder Walter Owen Bentley, a former apprentice railway engineer, began his motoring career selling cars with his brother Horace Millner Bentley in 1912. The cars made by the French manufacturer DFP (Doriot, Flandrin and Parant) however did not meet Walter’s high standards and he set about remaking the pistons from aluminium and tuning the camshaft to improve performance, he took this machine to the Brooklands racing circuit and soon broke several records. From this moment on Bentley’s motto was "To build a good car, a fast car, the best in class." This idea would become the foundation of the Bentley Brand. During the First World War Bentley also improved the design of Clerget aeroplane engines used in the Sopwith Camel and Snipe models, this assistance to the war effort saw him receive an M.B.E. W.O, as he became known, decided to form his own company in 1919 and Bentley Motors was created. A New factory was built in Cricklewood, London and the ‘Flying B’ logo was first seen in 1920. The first car to be made was the ‘Bentley 3 litre’ and won the Le Mans race for the first time in 1924. By 1925 a wealthy businessman Woolf Bernato had refinanced the company and became chairman of Bentley Motors helping the company to create the new ‘4 ½ litre Bentley Blower’ and ‘6 ½ litre’ models, however it was to be the flagship ‘8 litre’ Bentley which would shape the future of the company as arch rivals Rolls Royce feared this new model would affect sales of their ‘Phantom II’ and decided in 1931 to buy out the Bentley brand and move production to Derby. W.O stayed with the company until the racing division was axed in 1935 when he moved to Lagonda where he would later design the 2.6litre engine in David Browns new Aston Martin ‘DB2’. In 1939 a new factory was opened in Crewe and by 1946 the ‘MKII’ was the first Bentley to be made using Rolls Royce components, until this time all new Bentleys were delivered to the customers choice of coachbuilder for a bespoke body to be fitted. Sales fell during the 1970’s and only 5% of cars built by Rolls Royce were sold with the Bentley badge but a take-over by Vickers in 1980 saw the rebirth of the marque with production of the Bentley ‘Mulsanne’. This was followed in 1998 by another take-over, this time by the Volkswagen group. Later models included the ‘Continental GT’, the ‘Flying spur’ and the ‘Arnage’. Today these expensive, luxury cars are heralded as the finest examples of motoring glamour and enjoy a worldwide fan base of owners and enthusiasts, many of which belong to the ‘Bentley Drivers Club’ car club and the ‘Bentley owners club’ car club which are both featured in this directory. |
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