Bentley Motors: a century of British grand touring
Bentley Motors Limited builds every one of its cars at Pyms Lane in Crewe, Cheshire, where around 4,000 people work. Walter Owen Bentley, known as W.O., founded the company on 10 July 1919, working with his elder brother Horace Milner (H.M.) Bentley, who had run their London business selling French DFP cars since 1912. The brief W.O. set himself is still quoted by the company: to build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class. Bentley Motors was established by October 1919, and the first production car was delivered to Noel van Raalte in September 1921 for 1,050 pounds.
Bentley has been owned by the Volkswagen Group since 1998 and has been part of the Audi Group since January 2022. It sells through 229 retail partners in 61 markets, and in 2025 it reported revenue of ~$2.94 billion (2.6 billion euros), an operating profit of ~$244 million (216 million euros) and 10,131 deliveries. In September 2026 it revealed the Torcal, its first fully electric car.
The Bentley Boys and six wins at Le Mans
W.O. Bentley used racing as his engineering proving ground. His first engine, a 3 litre with four valves per cylinder and an overhead camshaft, made 85 bhp and about 80 mph, and the cars that followed were driven by the Bentley Boys, a group of wealthy amateurs including the diamond heir Woolf Barnato, who became the company's managing director from 1926 to 1931, and Sir Henry Tim Birkin, who pushed for the supercharged Blower against W.O.'s own preference for larger engines. Ettore Bugatti called the cars the world's fastest lorries. The record says otherwise:
- Wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930, the first taken by John Duff and Frank Clement in a 3 Litre.
- A return to Le Mans in 2001, third place that year, then a one-two finish on 15 June 2003 with the EXP Speed 8, the winning car shared by Tom Kristensen, Rinaldo Capello and Guy Smith. It was Bentley's sixth win, 73 years after the fifth.
Receivership, Rolls-Royce and Vickers
Racing success did not pay the bills. The Depression cut demand, Bentley could not meet its mortgage payments and the company went into receivership in 1931. Rolls-Royce bought it for 125,275 pounds, bidding through a front company called the British Central Equitable Trust so that the rival bidder Napier would not learn who was behind the offer. Production moved to Derby, where the 3.5 litre car was sold as the Silent Sports Car, and W.O. himself worked under contract until 1935 before joining Lagonda.
Car production moved to Crewe in 1946, to a factory built in 1938 to make Rolls-Royce Merlin aero engines; 26,065 Merlins were built there between 1938 and 1946. The first Bentley built at Crewe was the Mark VI, the first model sold as a complete car rather than a chassis for outside coachbuilders. The 1952 R-Type Continental, bodied by Mulliner, reached just under 120 mph and was the fastest four-seater in the world, but for the next three decades Bentleys were largely rebadged Rolls-Royce models.
That changed under Vickers plc, which bought Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd in 1980 and chose to rebuild the Bentley name. The 1982 Mulsanne Turbo produced 300 horsepower, 50 per cent more than the equivalent Rolls-Royce, and the Turbo R followed in 1985. By 1989 half the cars leaving Crewe were Bentleys, and within a decade Bentley was outselling Rolls-Royce two to one.
The 1998 takeover and the Continental GT
Vickers put the car business up for sale in October 1997. BMW, which already supplied engines for Rolls-Royce and Bentley, bid ~$449 million (340 million pounds); Volkswagen bid ~$568 million (430 million pounds) and won. On 3 July 1998 Volkswagen took the Bentley brand, the Crewe factory and the right to use the Rolls-Royce name until the end of 2002, while the aero-engine company Rolls-Royce plc licensed the car name to BMW, which opened its own Goodwood factory for 2003. Bentley says Volkswagen immediately invested over $1.32 billion (1 billion pounds) in the site, bringing V8 engine production back to Crewe.
The result arrived in 2003 as the Continental GT, the first car of the modern Bentley era:
- A 6.0-litre twin-turbo W12, in effect two narrow-angle V6 engines on a common crankshaft and 24 per cent shorter than a conventional V12, hand-built at Crewe in about seven hours from 2,600 components.
- 552 bhp, 479 lb ft of torque from 1,600 rpm, all-wheel drive and a near-200 mph top speed.
- Volume growth from under 1,000 cars a year to more than 10,000, creating the modern luxury grand tourer segment.
Bentayga and the move into SUVs
Bentley's SUV began badly. The EXP 9 F concept shown at Geneva in 2012 was criticised for its styling, and within days the company confirmed an alternative design was in progress. The restyled car launched in 2015 as the Bentayga and has been Bentley's best-selling model ever since, taking 44 per cent of deliveries in 2023, ahead of the Continental GT and GTC on 31 per cent and the Flying Spur on 25 per cent. The Bentayga Speed reached key markets at the end of 2025.
Mulliner and the economics of personalisation
Bentley Mulliner traces its origins to a saddlery of 1559; the coachbuilder H.J. Mulliner & Co. was bought by Rolls-Royce in 1959 and merged with Park Ward in 1961. Since 2020 it has run three portfolios:
- Coachbuilt: very small series such as the 12 Bacalar roadsters, with a 659 PS W12, and the Batur, 18 coupes and 16 convertibles powered by the most potent W12 Bentley built at 750 PS and 1,000 Nm.
- Classic: continuation cars built to original drawings, including the Blower and the Speed Six, the first new Speed Six delivered in 2024 for the first time since 1930.
- Collections: limited editions and individual commissions, from paint and hide combinations to marquetry and embroidery.
The commercial point is revenue per car. Bentley said three-quarters of 2023 customers explored its options list, which offers 46 billion configurations, and that 70 per cent of 2024 customers chose a Mulliner option, taking revenue per car to a record, 10 per cent higher than two years earlier. Average revenue per car worked out at about 217,000 euros in 2023.
The financial record
Bentley's results move with product cycles rather than fashion. The figures below are the Bentley brand's reported revenue and operating result:
- 2018: revenue ~$1.75 billion (1.548 billion euros), operating loss ~$325 million (288 million euros), after delays to the third-generation Continental GT including WLTP homologation.
- 2020: revenue ~$2.32 billion (2.049 billion euros), operating profit ~$22.6 million (20 million euros), with a record 11,206 deliveries despite a seven-week factory shutdown.
- 2022: revenue ~$3.82 billion (3.38 billion euros), record operating profit ~$800 million (708 million euros), 15,174 cars, a 20.9 per cent return on sales.
- 2023: revenue ~$3.32 billion (2.938 billion euros), operating profit ~$666 million (589 million euros), 13,560 cars, 20.1 per cent return on sales.
- 2024: revenue ~$2.99 billion (2.648 billion euros), operating profit ~$421 million (373 million euros), 14.1 per cent return on sales.
- 2025: revenue ~$2.94 billion (2.6 billion euros), operating profit ~$244 million (216 million euros), 10,131 cars, an 8.3 per cent operating margin.
The 2025 result was held back by expenses tied to the Volkswagen Group's decision to discontinue a D-segment platform, by United States tariffs and by currency movements. It was still Bentley's seventh consecutive profitable year, and in March 2026 the company said an efficiency programme could remove up to 275 indirect, non-manufacturing positions.
The end of the W12 and the Ultra Performance Hybrid
Bentley built its last 12-cylinder engine at Crewe in July 2024, more than 100,000 W12s after the unit's 2003 debut, making it the most successful 12-cylinder engine of the modern era. Over its life power rose 34 per cent and torque 54 per cent while CO2 fell 25 per cent. It was replaced by the Ultra Performance Hybrid, a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 with an electric motor producing 782 PS and 1,000 Nm, the highest output Bentley has put in a road car, with WLTP CO2 of 50 g/km. The Continental GT, GTC and Flying Spur are now sold only in that form.
Torcal: the first electric Bentley
Bentley revealed the Torcal in London on 23 September 2026. It is the fourth model line in the current range, designed, developed and built at Crewe, and the least expensive new Bentley on sale, from about 173,000 pounds:
- A 113 kWh battery of 192 lithium-ion pouch cells on an 800-volt architecture, with 400 kW charging, 10 to 80 per cent in 16 minutes and about 100 miles added in seven minutes.
- Up to 375 miles of WLTP range.
- 821 PS and 1,194 Nm in standard form, 0 to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds; 888 PS and 1,350 Nm as the Torcal S, 0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds, the highest torque figure of any production Bentley.
- Bentley's first fully active suspension, two-valve dampers in place of anti-roll bars, rear-wheel steering, and a ten-year or 100,000-mile battery warranty.
First deliveries are due in 2027. Bentley said about 40 per cent of the people registering interest have never owned a Bentley.
Beyond100+ after the deadline slipped
The Beyond100 strategy announced in 2020 committed Bentley to carbon neutrality by 2030 and an all-electric range by the same year, with the first electric car due in 2025. On 7 November 2024 the plan became Beyond100+: the all-electric ambition moved to 2035, plug-in hybrids were extended to at least that date, a new hybrid or electric model was promised every year, and the first electric car was confirmed for 2026. At the Torcal launch in 2026 Bentley went further and dropped the fixed date, saying the electrification timeline had lengthened again and that no new date could yet be set; chief executive Frank-Steffen Walliser said no further electric model is planned before 2030.
What has not slowed is the Crewe rebuild, funded from Bentley's own profits under a 2.5 billion pound ten-year programme: a Design Centre opened in July 2025, the site's oldest building, A1, is being converted into the electric assembly line, and a new paint shop offering close to 100 individual colours opens in 2026. The factory has been certified carbon neutral since 2019 and runs 20,815 roof solar panels plus 10,000 in a solar car port, supplying up to 65 per cent of its electricity.
Where Bentley stands
Bentley sells roughly 10,000 cars a year against Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and the top of the Porsche range, and its position is the middle ground its 1920s cars invented: fast, heavy, quiet cars that owners drive themselves. The brand's economics now rest less on volume than on what each buyer adds to the order, and its next test is whether the same customers will pay for an electric Bentley.
