9 Fascinating Facts You Never Knew About Bentley
Bentley is a legend among English carmakers. The company, founded more than 100 years ago, has put its winged logo on some of the most beautiful, luxurious, and powerful vehicles to grace the world’s roads. These days, Bentley is also in the process of going all-electric, but, in many ways, business for Bentley is better than ever, with 15,174 Bentleys sold in 2022, the first time the automaker ever sold more than 15,000 cars. That was driven largely by the popularity of the Bentayga, Bentley’s SUV, though the company remains proud that its deepest roots are in racing, on top of decades of experience making some of the world’s most luxurious roadgoing cars.
That’s reflected in today’s Bentley, too, with around a third of sales in 2022 being its Continental and Continental GT, a model name that has been around at Bentley since 1952. A similar proportion of Bentleys sold are Flying Spurs, with a majority of those sold in the U.K. being hybrids. That is a hint to Bentley’s future, as it transitions into an EV company. Bentley has said the future of Bentley is all-electric, if not by 2030 then within a few years after.
Bentley’s first all-electric is thought to be coming sometime in 2025, and will be a new evolution for a resilient company that has survived for over a century through adaptation and also, in many ways, not adapting at all. Bentley is still just one of a handful of ultra-luxury car marques, with Rolls-Royce its primary competitor, along with, to a lesser extent, Mercedes-Maybach.
It didn’t start that way, though; Bentley’s earliest days were full of scrappy racing determination. Let’s look at the history of Bentley to understand more about how this revered car company ended up where it is today.
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