Bentley | Bentley San Francsico

W. O. Bentley

Bentley was founded by Walter Owen Bentley, known to all as "W.O." He was a born engineer, but his first experience was not with motor cars - it was trains. In 1905, aged 16, he set off on his bicycle to work at the Great Northern Railway Locomotive Works in Doncaster, northern England.

Off duty, he soon abandoned the push-bike in favour of motor cycling and with his brother took to racing. In their first event, the London to Edinburgh Trial, they won a gold medal. W.O. raced at the Isle of Man TT event and Brooklands race track, near London.

The internal combustion engine made sweeter music to his ears than steam trains and in 1912 Bentley's family found funds enough to buy a small company importing French DFP sports cars.

It was on a visit to the DFP factory in 1913 that W.O. noticed an aluminium paperweight - and had the inspired idea of using the lightweight metal instead of cast iron to make engine pistons. The first such Bentley pistons went into service in aero engines for the Sopwith Camel, in service during the Great War.

After it, Bentley revived his motor car interests and in London set about development of a racing engine - Experimental Bentley No 1. "I wanted to make a fast car, a good car: the best in its class..."

And he did. In the '20s, with the 3-litre, 85bhp engine providing speeds of 80 mph and more, Bentley Motors set numerous speed and endurance records, competed successfully at Indianapolis, the Isle of Man, and Brooklands - and became inextricably linked with the history of the famous 24 hour race at Le Mans. In the hands of the legendary Bentley Boys, Bentleys achieved Le Mans victories in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930 - taking first four places in 1929.

Yet despite its racing record and public acclaim, Bentley Motors was beset by financial difficulty. By 1931 the golden age was over, but as closure loomed, Rolls-Royce stepped in to save the Bentley name - and a new era began.

                  

Motor Racing

The day Bentley won Le Mans was a day no-one who witnessed it will forget. It might be argued that the same can be said for any team that wins this most grueling of motor races, but Team Bentley is not just any team and this was not just any win. Those at Le Mans were acutely aware of being there at a time when history was actually made, where the present touched hands once more with the past to make a moment of pure magic.

For this was not an event 24-hours in the making nor even two and a half years - that being the time since the company's return to the world's most famous race was announced. Bringing Bentley back to the top step of the podium at Le Mans had taken a lifetime. Literally.

It was the realisation of a dream that, for most people during most of the 73 years that have elapsed since Bentley last won at Le Mans, looked impossible. Designing a car and building a team into a unit capable of winning this most grueling of motor races takes time, money and dedication. Among Bentley people, the will to race again at Le Mans never went away, but it was only when the company passed into the hands of the VW Group in 1998 that the way was provided too.

Any Le Mans is epic in nature and this one had one of the best build ups of any in the 80 year history of the race. It was known from the moment they set the fastest times in qualifying and then the race at the Sebring 12-hours in March that the new 2003 Bentley Speed 8s were sensationally quick cars. But Le Mans would be different.

The opposition was quantified: two Bentleys would line up against three of the Audi R8s that had won the last three Le Mans with ease. It was known also that the Bentley would be quicker over one lap, but not by how much. And would that be enough to offset the Bentley's predicted higher tire and fuel consumption, and the fact that its enclosed bodywork meant more time taken getting its drivers in and out of the cars than the open-top Audi? If you knew the answer to those questions before the race then, in theory, you knew already that Bentley would win Le Mans.

Except Le Mans is never simple. Teams have appeared with pace-setting cars and fallen by the wayside. Others have led with ease only to trip over an errant back-marker. One even printed its victory literature before the race tempting Providence, as it turned out, to breaking point.

Nothing can be presumed at Le Mans except that victory, if it is to achieved at all, will go to the team that works hardest for longest, makes the fewest mistakes and has the best luck.

And Bentley wasn't looking lucky thirty seconds before the pitlane was closed for the race, with the car of Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Guy Smith still being worked on in the pits.

But it made it onto the grid to take its pole position earned in qualifying, to the roar of the thousands of Bentley fans in the grandstands. But still we didn't know what would happen during the race, and an informed body of opinion took the view that the Audis had never been pushed at Le Mans until now and had therefore never revealed their true pace.

At 4.00pm precisely on Saturday June 14th, the race started, the two green Bentleys leading the pack past the pits. Nearly four minutes later the sound of two 4-litre, twin-turbo, 600bhp V8 engines were heard as the Speed 8s of Capello and Johnny Herbert re-appeared. They were still leading but this time by over six seconds. The Bentleys were not just faster than anything else in the field - they were in a different class.

But being fast over one lap is rather different from staying fast for 24 hours and every time the green cars reappeared relief flooded through the team just as every time the number 8 car of Herbert, Mark Blundell and David Brabham made an unscheduled pitstop - and it did so four times - fears that this might spell the end for one of the Bentleys were in every mind. Even after 18 hours of racing there were still four full Grand Prix distances to run.

That's the thing about Le Mans. If you have never been, you cannot possibly comprehend its length. You know what 24-hours are but not in this context. By midnight you feel that the cars have been circulating forever. In fact two thirds of the race has yet to be run.

But the Bentleys kept going, with the number 7 car lapping with the same consistency of which only the Audis were presumed capable. When it was working correctly the number 8 car was at least as fast, indeed it was Herbert who set the fastest lap of the race, but it seemed all Bentley's bad luck was directed at one car only.

First a piece of headrest came loose which needed discarding. Then a low voltage light came on precipitating another stop to change a faulty battery. Unbelievably, the light came on again on the next lap so that was another battery and another stop. Finally the clutch fluid ran low and needed a top up.

Happily, and despite all this, none of its opponents could come close and its second position was never seriously threatened.

And so, at 4.00pm on Sunday 15th June, 2003, two Bentley Speed 8s came first and second at Le Mans, 83 years almost to the day since two Speed Sixes had done no less. It was a euphoric moment but one also of supreme poignancy. When Bentley announced it would return to Le Mans, it was made clear it would be a three year program with the only aim being outright victory. That Sunday it made good that promise, earning the respect and credibility of the whole automotive industry and its millions of fans around the world.

Then on Monday Derek Bell, in true Bentley style, drove the winning car down the Champs Elysees, flanked by two original Blowers with the drivers on board. And on Wednesday the number 7 Speed 8 was guest of honor at a dinner held at the Savoy in London. This dinner followed the style of the 1927 Le Mans dinner held at the same venue. The menu and drinks were identical to those served 76 years ago and in place of the long speeches and corporate communications was a simple toast to WO Bentley.

Then there was a competition to see who could climb aboard the race car fastest followed by the presentation by the winning drivers of a chocolate cake to five times Le Mans winner, Derek Bell. Derek may have chosen to sample the cake in his own time but his team-mates had other ideas and simply pushed it into his face!

It was a magical end to a magical week, a week in which Bentley rediscovered that final part of its soul, lost apparently for good in 1931. Revitalized by this great victory and with over 3200 deposits received for its new Continental GT, the future of Bentley has never looked brighter.

         

Put on your safety glasses and prepare to be impressed, as you enter the state-of-the-art Body Assembly Hall at Crewe. This is an environment in which critical tolerances rule, where precision tooling and skilled operators combine to achieve dizzy levels of dimensional accuracy and integrity. Where gaps are required between steel panels, for example, they are uniform, set at exactly 3.5mm.

Four-axis measuring machines check no fewer than 2,500 measuring points. And the achievement of joins between body panels that are almost invisible is the result of abandoning standard "hot weld" technology, which can cause distortion of panels at the weld points. Instead Crewe has adopted plasma-brazing "cold weld" technology, which leaves a pristine finish ready for painting.

Behind orange safety curtains, the plasma-welding teams can be seen at work on the major body assemblies. Elsewhere in the hall, suspended computer-controlled guns are used to assemble body sections mounted on jigs. These hand-held tools allow accurate positioning of the 6,500 spot welds required to optimize torsional rigidity on each monocoque steel bodyshell. No other manufacturer goes in for spot-welding on this scale.

The visitor will notice that although there are fans to blow any fumes away from the welders, they raise only the lightest breeze. That is to avoid blowing dust around the Body Assembly Hall which, like every other area at Crewe, is conspicuously clean.

Everything here is done by hand, from attaching the 240 individual copper and other metal studs used in the floor pan to hold the wiring looms and carpeting in place, to applying the sealant which will later be baked in the oven. Between 540 and 560 components are used to construct each body. By the time each one leaves the assembly hall, it will incorporate some 3m of MIG wire, 1.5m of brazing, and about 200 nuts.

A computer-controlled Hemming press is an important addition to the Body Assembly Hall. This can do in 12 minutes what would once have taken a day. Loaded and operated by a four-man team, it presses outer skins onto hinged components - doors, boots and bonnets - at up to 100 tonnes. The skins are glued rather than welded, to be set in an oven no hotter than a hair drier. Two hundred and ten "closures" can be completed each week by the team.

Twice a year, a complete body is built in the Body Assembly Hall only to be taken apart again. This is drastic testing, but on an everyday basis, one in five components is chisel-checked for structural efficiency.

"There is a very healthy, competitive atmosphere in the bodyshop," says Team Leader Colin Morrey, who has been with the company since 1974. A look at the wallcharts which plot the progress of each team-member in terms of multi-tasking ability underlines this. There are some 13 teams, each containing ten to a dozen skilled and semi-skilled workers.

The company believes in the values of experience combined with thorough on-going training - and loyalty. Colin, like many others at Crewe, followed his father here, and his father before him.

"Many of the guys had worked in the old machine shop, but when they moved in here, few of them had ever welded before," he says. "At first it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the lid, but they learned - everything has to be done in an exact sequence. They had six months of training, worked on practice cars and went to see how it was done elsewhere." Now, with build rates rising, more people are being taken on.

It takes about three weeks to turn those 540-odd components into a complete, inspected bodyshell ready to go on to the next stage. Working a single eight-hour shift, the teams currently send 35 bodies on their way to the paintshop each week. And as each body goes on its way, it is already earmarked for one particular customer...