Bentley Motors has so much to tell. Let’s journey back to where it all started. Before World war I , Mr. Walter Owen Bentley had a dream of designing and building a range of cars in his own name. At this time he was in a partnership with his brother H.M Bentley in the business of selling French DFP (Doriot, Flandrin & Parant) cars. This was a French car based in a place called Courbervoie.

In August 1919 Bentley Motors was registered and a chassis with dummy engine was exhibited during the London Motors show of October 1919. A running engine was built by December the same year and orders were taken starting June 1920, but it took a little long for the first cars to be ready, they finally were in September 1921.

This was not the only hiccup, the company was underfunded and so Mr. W.O .Bentley sought financial help from at the time Millionaire Woolf Barnato which resulted into Mr. Woolf being the chairman of the company. More storms came in form of ‘The Great Depression’, which is was the largest economic downturn in the 20^th Century, that started on October 29^th 1929 , mostly known as Black Tuesday. This destroyed the demand for the company’s products, since they were expensive and most likely not a priority at the time. So the company was sold to Rolls- Royce , a rival car, in 1931.The sale was secret, so much that the buyer was only discovered after the sale.

In 1998 Volkswagen group purchased Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors from Vickers (the owner since 1980) following a bidding war with BMW. In 2003 demand had been so great that the company could not meet its orders despite an installed capacity of approximately 9500 cars per year! There was a waiting list of cars to be delivered that was over a year. In April 2005 Bentley confirmed plans to produce a 4 seat convertible model -the Azure. Let’s look at the transformation of some of its models.

One of the famous models is the Bentley Arnage, this is a model that was developed in the 90's and can trace its lineage back to 1920's during the time of W.O. Bentley. But it came as a replacement to

the Bentley Brooklands which was introduced in 1992, this is a full size luxury car that came in replacement of Bentley Mulsanne and Bentley Eight models. It was intended to be a slightly cheaper alternative to Bentley Turbo, but was replaced by Bentley Arnage. Which is a luxurious car produced by Bentley Motors in Crew England, it was introduced in the Spring of 1998 with its Rolls- Royce branded sibling the Silver Seraph. They were the first entirely new design of that brand since 1980.

The Bentley Continental GT is also another product of Bentley Motors; this is a two door, 2+2, meaning it only has four seats, two at the front and two at the back as opposed to the usual three seats at the back. It was produced in 2003 replacing the previous Rolls-Royce based Continental R and T. It is equipped with a 6.0 liter, twin Turbocharged W12 engine producing 552 hp, (412 k W), with a top speed of 198 mph (319 Km/h). IT shares many technical components with the Volkswagen Phaeton.