Rolls-Royce secretly bought Bentley so its quiet 8-litre car would stop competing
When Bentley went into receivership in 1931, the winning sealed bid came from a body called the British Central Equitable Trust. Not even W. O. Bentley knew who was behind it until the deal closed. It was Rolls-Royce, whose founder had admitted that Bentley's new 8-litre car could beat his own most expensive model.
Walter Owen Bentley sold French DFP cars with his brother before the First World War. Spotting an aluminium paperweight at the DFP factory in 1913, he wondered whether the metal could make lighter pistons than cast iron, and his aluminium pistons ended up in Sopwith Camel engines. He founded his own firm on 18 January 1919, the day the Paris Peace Conference opened, and built a new three-litre engine; the first customer car went to Ivor Llewelyn, father of the actor Desmond Llewelyn.
Money was always short until Woolf Barnato, heir to a South African mining fortune, took control in 1926, putting in more than 100,000 pounds and becoming chairman. Barnato belonged to the Bentley Boys, wealthy amateurs who raced the cars with great success. Bentley won Le Mans four years running from 1927 to 1930, and in 1929 Speed Six and 4½-litre cars took the top four places. Barnato also bet 100 pounds that he could drive from Cannes to his London club before the Blue Train express reached Calais, and won. Not every idea worked. Tim Birkin's supercharged Blower Bentley, which W. O. said corrupted his design, proved fast but fragile and never won a race.
The 1929 crash killed demand for expensive cars, and a receiver was appointed on 10 July 1931 when mortgage payments could not be met. Napier planned to buy the firm, but the Rolls-Royce front outbid it with 125,000 pounds. Bentley had never registered its trademark, so the new owner promptly did, sold the Cricklewood works and moved production to Derby. W. O. left for Lagonda when his contract ended in 1935.
The marque stayed tied to Rolls-Royce until Vickers sold the business to Volkswagen in 1998, keeping Bentley's name but not the Rolls-Royce one. Today most Bentleys are built in Crewe.
Source: Bentley
