Truly, madly Bentley

The Bentley EXP 100 GT concept

There aren’t too many

Bentley owners in this material world.

But lucky are the chosen few who bask in the luxury and comfort of a Bentley automobile, like Her Majesty Queen of England, that is handcrafted from the ground up by a team tasked to whet their appetite for class and opulence.

Seeing the actual process of how a bespoke model is built gives someone the answer to that question of Bentley’s staggering cost of ownership.

We actually did after being invited to the festivities for the company’s centenary in Crowe in the north-west of England.

The tour of the Bentley factory is like a visit to an art gallery packed with an assortment of masterpieces.

The YR 4575

Things are just so different from a manufacturing plant of mass-produced brands than that of Bentley for the simple reason that at the latter’s factory, there is tremendous pressure to live up to the legacy of an iconic brand.

Manned by a team of about 4,000 highly skilled personnel, chances of quality issues are highly remote as evidenced by the long years of the trust and reliability the most discerning of customers from around the globe have accorded to Bentley.

Haste is never part of the Bentley vocabulary. Perfection is just as the company spokesman declared “we are not a volume brand, we are a quality brand.”

Case in point: it takes 5-6 days to assemble a Mulsanne, and about three weeks to do the trim and leather requirements by separate teams of experts working by hand and by eye in their respective areas of concern, before the finishing touches are made.

The entire process of completing seats, doors and other leather fittings is a long arduous process of stitching and shaping.

As half of the time that is required to build a Bentley model is often spent on its leather interior, it goes without saying that the leather preparation and stitching workshops, are just as vital as the engine and chassis marriage area at the sprawling Bentley factory.

Wood sourcing is crucial to quality

The excellent trim of a Bentley is all because of the meticulous process put into it especially by the Mulliner team. From the veneers used for the dashboard, the bull hides for the leather interior, to the paint finish, everything goes through strict quality control.

The role played by the craftsmen at Crewe has always been credited for the continuing success of Bentley.

Hand-stitching the seats