Why Bentley Is Putting a 1929 Roadster Back Into Production

In June 1929, a correspondent for The Motor magazine tucked away his notebook and hurried back across the English Channel to file the biggest story of the summer. The British racing team of Bentley Motors Limited had won the 24-hour race at Le Mans, the most prestigious victory (then and now) in the world of motorsports. “British Victory at Le Mans,” declared the ensuing headline. “Bentley Cars Sweep the Board.” The victory itself wasn’t the only news. Bentley—a fledgling automaker begun 10 years earlier in a north London garage—had already taken the laurels in France for the two previous years. This time, what turned the heads of racing fans was the revolutionary car that driver Sir Tim Birkin—a white silk scarf around his neck—had taken first place with. The forest-green racer sported a 6.5-liter straight-six engine that chewed up Le Mans’ 1,765 miles at an average speed of 73.6 mph. It was jaw-dropping performance for the era. Company founder and chief engineer Walter Owen Bentley dubbed his new machine the Speed Six. Floating on the patronage of wealthy gentleman motorists known as the “Bentley Boys,” the automaker was never a high-volume builder. Its factory turned out a mere 182 Speed Sixes. Today, even potentate collectors would face a tough time getting their hands on an original. But on June 24, Bentley announced it was giving them another shot. Drivers Sir Tim Birkin (l.) and Woolf Barnato pose with the Speed Six they drove to victory at Le Mans in 1929. Using original shop drawings, Bentley and its coach builder Mulliner will manufacture 12 entirely new Speed Sixes. Each car will be an accurate replication—down to the bolt—of “Old Number 3,” an original Le Mans speedster preserved in museum condition since 1930. In the unlikely event you’re now dialing the nearest Bentley showroom, save yourself the trouble. All 12 of the $1.8 million cars have already been spoken for. Profits other than dollars It’s tempting to dismiss a project like this as little more than another flashy gadget built to titillate the ruling class—the automotive equivalent of a Gulfstream III or a ticket to space on Virgin Galactic. Bentley would not discuss profit margins on the new Speed Sixes but does maintain the project is “cash positive.” But the company’s resurrection of a 93-year-old car (the project’s official name is the Speed Six Continuation Series) is just as much about marketing as it is about selling a few costly automobiles. Like other high-end automakers, Bentley has stated its intent to shift its offerings exclusively to electric vehicles in just a few years’ time. (Bentley’s and Mercedes’ target is 2030; Audi has pledged 2026.) Bentley execs saw this year as a timely opportunity, then, to remind consumers of the depth of its heritage. “You can't work out where you're going if you don't know where you came from,” head of product communications Mike Sayer told Adweek. “Bentley is in the middle of undergoing the biggest transformation in its history as we start to move toward battery-electric vehicles and away from internal combustion. It is important to have this heritage background, and to know what your brand values are built upon.” It took 40,000 hours to build a new Blower (r.); duplicating the Speed Six will doubtless take about as long. Look what we can do Another force behind the project is a little bit of showing off—but an important bit. It’s no easy task to dust off crumbling blueprints from the interwar years, run 3D CAD modeling of a racing car that’s just as old, then grind and mill thousands of requisite parts before assembling the vehicle by hand. Mulliner, the coach builder that Bentley has owned since 1959 and today handles bespoke orders for top clients, is among the world’s most experienced builders. Recreating the Speed Six is a very public way to prove it. “If you think about the challenges of recreating designs from the 1920s and ending up with cars that are exquisitely beautiful,” Sayer said, “that is a great demonstration of the capability of what we can do.” Bentley plans to reproduce every detail of the Speed Six, down to the gauges and the leather stitching. Act two, same show The Speed Six Continuation Series is not the first time Bentley has demonstrated manufacturing prowess of this sort. In December 2020, the company announced that it would be resurrecting the 1929 Bentley Blower, the 4.5-liter car that Sir Birkin fitted with an Amherst Villiers supercharger and also took to Le Mans. (Bentley Blower No. 1, as it’s known, sold for $7 million in 2012.) This first Continuation project required engineers at the automaker’s Crewe, Cheshire headquarters to completely disassemble the original Bentley Blower No. 2 it had on hand and then scan each part in order to reproduce it. The effort—which will yield 12 cars in total—is still ongoing. Bentley's Mulliner division is already experienced in building bespoke cars. Jag has done this, too Coincientally or not, it was another famous British marque that first demonstrated the branding power that resurrecting a classic model can have. In 2015, Jaguar (a division of Indian conglomerate Tata) built six entirely new E-types, reproductions of its illustrious 1964 model, but with a few engineering updates. Price: about $1.8 million. Handpicked collectors snapped those cars up immediately, but the publicity was arguably as valuable. “For an automaker to turn the calendar back and build exactly what it built many decades ago would take a great amount of courage,” Motor Trend said at the time. “Jaguar, it seems, has that courage.” The added cachet for Bentley, however, is that 1920s racecars are far more fickle beasts than daily drivers from the ’60s. “Nobody had ever attempted to do a continuation series of a prewar car,” Sayer said. “We realize now why that might have been—because it turns out it’s really difficult.” The Speed Six cockpit harkens to the day when driving was was an entirely manual operation. Do we have Wolfsburg to thank? Today, Bentley is two decades down the road from its 1998 acquisition by Volkswagen, a bitter pill to swallow for many proud Britons who didn’t much like one of their country’s legendary marques going to the Germans. Even so, observed Hayes Roth, principal of marketing firm HA Roth Consulting, the Speed Six project is only further proof that VW knew what it was doing. For decades, Bentley was little more than “the off-brand Rolls Royce—basically the same car without the winged hood ornament,” Roth said, referring to the period from 1931 to 1998 when the two brands were the same company. After being spun off, “VW very wisely decided that this car had a heritage. It was luxurious, but it wasn’t about that—it was about performance. And they started coming out with these amazing cars—high powered, sleek, fast machines.” The Speed Six Continuation Series, then, is “reinvesting in that brand persona they were founded on,” Roth said. Thanks in large part to the historic wins at Le Mans, “these cars were cool, are cool, and are completely representative of what Bentley wants to be known for. It’s a brilliant move on their part.” Reebok’s New Sneakers Are Inspired by Midcentury Modern Eames Furniture. 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