Text | Shushu
Every time I want to talk about super luxury brands, the most annoying thing is to write the beginning, writing well is the reproduction of feelings, and writing badly is vulgar money.
Is it the pot of history, no, it is my pot, blame me for expressing too much materialism, but it is not irrefutable, the words of rebuttal are just a sentence, it is Bentley eh.
Say in my heart that I don't like the propaganda of some electric vehicles now, I really don't like it, it seems that the century-old history of fuel vehicles is a bit of a "wading the wrong river" taste, which makes me a loyal supporter of fuel vehicles a bit acidic, keep up with the times to take a good step, pull the predecessors of this kind of thing we are not happy to do.
Bentley brand in 2021 global sales of 14,659 units, compared with 2020 year-on-year growth of 31%, operating profit more than double the previous record growth, of which, the Chinese market annual sales reached 4,033 units, an increase of 40% year-on-year, accounting for 28% of global sales, China has become bentley motors' largest single market in the world.
It stood there silently, entering China for twenty years, with a thousand storms, and it silently grew sharply at the moment when most automakers were crying bitterly, and even the old rivals of Rolls-Royce had to throw some envious eyes at it.
The high and carefree present can be traced from the past and entered into history, which is the trace of a hundred years of Bentley.
past
Any ultra-luxury brand has its own unique totemic spirit, and there is a founder and two or three things worth telling, Bentley is even more so.
What is the totem of Bentley, those who have seen its story will understand.
Walter Owen Bentley, born in 1888, grew up in a middle-class family in London with nine siblings, and not only was he the youngest, he dropped out of school at the age of 16 and dropped out of school to start studying engineering at the Northern Railway.
We learn this spirit of learning to work hard, it is not advisable to drop out, after all, after dropping out of school, you can learn the skills to learn exquisite, people are talented, and people's favorite things in their spare time are to design and manufacture some small motorcycles, and actively participate in small long-distance competitions.
By 1912, Walter Owen Bentley had raised a sum of money from family members, and his brother Horace had begun a career in the automobile business, initially becoming an agent for the French brand Doriot, Flandrin & Parant, opening a store in central London selling French-made DFP cars, and the following year he found an aluminum paperweight when he visited the manufacturer's French office.
Albert Einstein said that the person who is always curious is the one who is always progressive, and there are countless examples in the process of human history and civilization that prove Einstein's foresight. Just as Newton discovered gravity to think about why he was hit by an apple, Watt invented the steam engine to think about why the lid of a boiling kettle would jump, Meldock found that gas was to see a stone that could ignite a fire and think about whether it could be boiled, and so on.
Walter Owen Bentley had the opportunity to start Bentley Motors, also thanks to his curiosity about the aluminum paperweight on the desk, and he wondered if the lightweight material could make a piston better than steel or cast iron.
And then he built it.
Keeping in mind this aluminium piston, which was mounted on an aero engine during World War I and played an important role in Britain's performance in World War I and created great value, the engine carrying this piston was more powerful and reliable than any previous version, this design was soon widely adopted by aircraft engines, and replaced older versions of engines that were prone to failure due to overheating in battle.
In 1919, Walter Owen Bentley was awarded the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for this aluminium piston, in addition to the £8,000 prize from the Invention Prize Committee, which translates to today's renminbi, which is irresponsibly tens of millions of yuan.
This money naturally became the starting capital for his founding of Bentley Automobile Company in the same year, and in 1919, Bentley Automobile Company was officially established, which was also the year that the first car named after Bentley was born.
Bentley said at the time that he was going to create a fast car, a good car, a best car.
Bentley's first production car was called the Bentley 3-Liter, which was the 3-Litre prototype, and the name was mainly because the model names of that year were based on engine displacement, as if bentley also introduced the 6.5-Litre in 1926, which was a reason, and it was brought back to the Bentley store on Baker Street in London, and it began to be sold in September 1921, which was the most expensive in the car market at that time.
I said that the aristocracy is ancestral, and this is how it is born.
Of course, it is entitled to be expensive, it is reasonable to be expensive, it is reasonable to be expensive.
A hundred years ago, bentley 3 liters or supercharging, the maximum power to achieve 85 horsepower, the maximum speed of 128km/ h, it was the world's fastest production car at that time, and because of the fastest, Bentley 3 liters at that time almost broke all endurance and speed race records.
Later, the 3-litre bentley-derived model also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930 for Bentley.
Interesting things to say casually two things.
One is that Noel van Raalte was the first customer to order a Bentley car, buying a Bentley 3-litre chassis with the number 1, which is certainly not an ordinary person, his family owns brownsea island near the port of Porte in southeastern Dorset, England, and he previously drove Sunbeam to the 1915 Indianapolis 500 race.
However, although he was the first to order, he was not the first owner to get a car, the first owner of the car was Ivor Llewellyn, who received a Bentley 3-litre model in August 1921, which was equipped with the third production chassis in the history of the Bentley brand, which was also the world's oldest surviving Bentley production chassis, and Ivor Llewellyn also ordered two other Bentley 3-liter models.
As for Noel van Raalte, his car was supposed to have been available in June 1920, but delivery was delayed due to engine problems, and by 1921 the nobleman had been informed of the price increase before delivery, and the car had risen from the initial £750 to £1150, of course, the nobleman was not bad.
Later, our noble racing driver equipped this car with a special maintenance team, and often appeared in major car races with this Bentley 3 liter of no. 1 chassis, and he once praised it in a reporter interview and wrote a passionate letter -
"I own or use a lot of brands of cars. But the reason I bought Bentley is that it excels in every aspect of the road," Noel van Raalte wrote in his letter. "There's nothing lacking about steering, suspension, grip, braking, shifting and engine efficiency, and in my opinion, it has a higher level of craftsmanship than any car."
Unfortunately, the last appearance of this No. 1 chassis car was in the French race in 1931, which was also the final battle of bentley 3 liters in France, and the whereabouts of the Bentley 3 liters of this No. 1 chassis are unknown, but the world knows that the first pair of eyes staring at Bentley and owning a Bentley 3 liter is full of praise for Bentley.
If to put it mildly, it is love.
Making car owners fall in love with themselves, Bentley has done a great job in the past hundred years from the beginning to the present.
The people who owned the Bentley 3-litre model at the time had Prince George (later duke of Kent), prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and duke of York, and later King George VI.
The second interesting thing is the Bentley that chased the blue train in 1930 (as if suddenly knowing that some car manufacturers now like to pull cars, where the marketing inspiration for pulling airplanes comes from).
The Blue Train is not an obscure little train, but a luxury train that began to operate between Nice and Calais in France (paris and Manton in the earliest), and passengers on it can not only enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Mediterranean "Côte d'Azur", but also enjoy comfortable and elegant interior facilities and meticulous service.
The Duke of Windsor, Charlie Chaplin, and Chanel were all its guests, and it has also appeared in many well-known films, novels and ballets, and Agatha Christie has used the train as the scene of the murder and wrote the suspense novel "The Mystery of the Blue Train".
One night, woolf Barnato, the heir to the Kimberley Diamond Mines, the heir to the Kimberley Diamond Mines, took up a makeshift idea, and was having dinner with friends at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cannes, he bet that the Bentley Speed Six coupe he was driving could set off at the same time as the blue train, all the way north through France, and reach the Royal Automobile Club in London before the blue train arrived in Calais, with a bet of £100.
Then after a series of accidents like torrential rain, searching for a gas station, fog, punctures and more, he really won, with bentley Speed Six arriving at the Royal Motor Club in the city of London at 3:20 p.m., four minutes before the blue train arrived in Calais, and the club's doorman stamped a badge on Banato's card showing their Bentley average speed of 43.43 mph, including parking.
Named the "Blue Train", the two-door Bentley that took part in the challenge became one of the most famous cars in Bentley's history, and it also announced the advent of the era of car travel in a sense.
What's even more interesting is that someone later found that according to the records of the Bentley factory, the Gurney Nutting, which has been regarded by the public as a real "blue train" so far, is still in assembly, and it is almost unlikely to appear in that race, and the years cover the truth of the story, revealing that unless there is a time machine, it is a Bentley.
Later, Barnato died of cancer in London, and the hearse carrying the coffin at the funeral was his own "Old Number One" Bentley.
What is Bentley's totem, the story of the past ends, I privately think, is aristocratic and performance.
As for the later Bentley, from the brand node, after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 1929, the capital of Bentley Automobile was only enough to support Bentley at that time until 1931, so in November 1931, Bentley was taken over by Rolls-Royce.
In 1998, volkswagen wanted to buy Rolls-Royce and Bentley, but because BMW bought out the rolls-royce trademark rights, Volkswagen quickly invested in Rolls-Royce's crewe plant to increase Bentley's production capacity, and since then, the story of Bentley and Rolls-Royce has opened a new chapter.
Entering China
To talk about Bentley's past at such a large length is because the opening paragraph said that it really does not like the "depreciation" of the history of fuel vehicles by some electric vehicle manufacturers in propaganda, and at least it must walk through the footprints that Bentley has walked to know the direction it has reached today.
In the twenty years since entering China, we have witnessed these footprints of Bentley.
In 2003, the first generation of continental GT came out, since then people know that the new ultra-luxury running travel car is also a market segment, and later there are more Continental GTC and European Supersports models, the latter even has 621 horsepower power, also because of the new European series of cars, Bentley in 2003 or 437 annual sales, in 2007, its annual sales of 4000 vehicles.
In 2002, Bentley customised its own State Limousine model for the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, and a few months later, the car won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the sixth time.
What was said earlier, nobility and performance, Bentley interpreted vividly, this is the arrogance flowing in the bones and blood.
In 2015, bentley Bentayga models arrived, which was unique in the ultra-luxury SUV market, and later Bentayga also launched the V8 model and PHEV plug-in hybrid version.
In 2019, Bentley launched the most innovative ultra-luxury four-door sedan ever launched on the occasion of its centenary, the new Flying Spur, followed by the Launch of the Bentley Mulliner Bacalar in 2020.
Whether these cars are selling well or not, or take the sales of the past 2021, Bentley Bentayga accounted for 40% of sales, and the Continental GT model accounted for 33%. Among them, the Continental GT and Continental GT Convertibles accounted for 60% and 40% respectively; the sales of Bentley Flying Spurs accounted for 27%. By the end of 2021, Bentley Motors has established 240 authorized dealers in 67 countries and regions around the world.
In terms of global markets, Bentley delivered 4,212 new vehicles in the Americas in 2021, an increase of 39% year-on-year; in europe, 2,520 units, an increase of 15% year-on-year; sales in the UK market reached 1,328 units, an increase of 14% year-on-year; in the Asia-Pacific market, a total of 1,651 units were delivered, an increase of 37% year-on-year; and sales in the Middle East were 915 units.
To put it simply, you see more Continental and Bentayga on the road than Rolls-Royce.
Of course, I also love Rolls-Royce, the history is not inferior to Bentley, but here in the most intuitive way to tell you, Bentley into China in these years, in China and even the world has sold well.
Because it is a special node of 20 years of entry into China, Bentley has created a variety of models tailored for Chinese customers this year, just like the Bentley Ice GT, which has a limited edition of the world, aiming to pay tribute to the Continental GT racing car that has competed in the Ice and Snow Grand Prix.
There are also four 20th anniversary editions to be released this year, including "The Pall Mall", "The Guard", "The Carnaby" and "The Savile Row", which are based on the Bentley Flying Spur, Continental GT, Continental GT Convertible and Bentayga series, respectively, and will widely use bentley's 20th anniversary logo on these bodies.
To remind the big guys, there are only 80 of these four 20-year-old models in total, and only 20 units are produced for each model, and I look forward to seeing you on the message board.
At the Beijing Auto Show, which is due to arrive in April, Bentley is also expected to launch a blockbuster new car in the world.
However, looking at this epidemic situation, the auto show may not arrive as scheduled, but it does not hurt that the beautiful things arrive later, anyway, none of the exhibitors at the Bentley booth will miss it.
future
At the end of the book, nature is bentley's future, where there are three words - electrification.
Some people can accept it, some people can't accept it, but it will be like that in the future.
Bentley launched its "Beyond100" business strategy at its centennial anniversary and announced at a recent new car preview event that it would say that
In 2022, the Bentley brand will accelerate the implementation of the "Beyond100" business strategy, which includes announcing production plans for pure electric models, increasing investment in sustainable transformation, and steadily advancing the goal of comprehensive carbon neutrality. Bentley expects to launch its first all-electric model within three years and one pure electric model every year for five years from 2025.
In addition, the design, development and manufacturing of all pure electric models will be completed at the Bentley Crewe headquarters plant, which plans to invest £2.5 billion in sustainability over a decade to transform Bentley's entire product lineup and production facilities, while building the Crewe headquarters plant into a world-leading next-generation digital "dream factory".
A hundred years of Bentley has never stopped the pace, into the second hundred years of Bentley, what has changed is the strategy and business model, and what has not changed is the totem in the bones and blood.
Having been lucky enough to drive a Bentayga, you will only understand that even if bentley in this era adds "electrification", it is still the nobleman who loves racing.
As Bentley said when he created Bentley, he wanted to create a fast car, a good car, a best car.