MARQUE HISTORY CLASSIC CORNICHE
AN ANATOMY OF THE…
THE BENTLEY CONTINENTAL R AND T Bentley’s late 20th century rebirth may have started with turbocharging, but it took an even more significant step forward with the distinctive-looking Continental R and T models WORDS: RICHARD GUNN
T
P H OTO G R A P H Y: K E L S E Y A RC H I V E /R I C H A R D G U N N
hroughout the 1980s the Bentley marque, for so long overshadowed by its RollsRoyce parent, enjoyed an unprecedented revival. While Crewe had at least kept the name alive, the Bentley T-series cars of 1965 to 1980 were little more than rebadged Silver Shadows, with virtually nothing to make them distinctive. By 1981, despite the launch of the Silver Spirit and its Bentley Mulsanne equivalent, interest in the Winged B – heirs of the cars that had once been champions at Le Mans – had fallen so low that they represented just five per
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cent of factory output. A mere 151 Bentleys were sold that year as opposed to 3014 Rolls-Royces. It was woeful figures like this that made Rolls-Royce sit up and realise that something had to change. Traditionally, Bentley had been about performance, Rolls-Royce the provider of sumptuous luxury. Would re-injecting Bentley with a sense of sportiness be enough to kick-start the brand’s renaissance? Thankfully for all those who loved
Bentley, it was. The introduction of turbocharging, coupled with styling tweaks that helped make the SZ generation Bentleys look a little different from their Rolls-Royce counterparts, raised both interest and sales. By 1986, the sales ratio of Bentleys to Rolls-Royces was 40:60; by 1991, the two marques were level-pegging. It was quite an achievement in just a decade. The year 1991 was significant for something else too, for it marked
M AY/ J U N E 2 0 2 2 R R & B D
