The re-birth of Bentley

AudlemOnline's editor is in hospital this week and is clearly bored, so much so he has started to recall his job in the 1980s with what was then Rolls-Royce Motors. As this represents an important piece of local history, the rest of the web team has decided to humour him and publish. We leave you judge whether or not we allowed sentimentality to rule our editorial judgement.

Today we publish part I of the story – the second and final instalment tomorrow

The inside story,

In late 1981, about six months after I had joined Rolls-Royce Motors in Crewe as their Public Relations & Advertising Director, the chief executive first told me that one of the company's best engineers was turbocharging the 6,750cc engine which would produce a huge increase in power.

"Start working up a launch programme timed for the Geneva Motor Show in March. We don't plan to sell large numbers but a Bentley Turbo model will appeal to younger customers, particularly in industries you know something about, such as Advertising."

The conversation proved to be the first step in changing the company's fortunes, eventually its name and dramatically increasing the number of cars manufactured at Crewe.

At the time, Bentley sales made up little more than 5% of company sales and the Bentley Mulsanne, launched a year earlier which, if truth be told, apart from its radiator and badges, hardly differed from its sister model, the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit.

I met up with the engineer, Jack Read, and it appeared that Geneva in March was a tight but achievable target but it was likely that we would have only a very small number of prototype engines ready for the initial launch.

So, as well as the increased power, what else can we do to differentiate the car from the Silver Spirit in a short time, I asked. One idea came up immediately – change the Bentley radiator to self colour rather than chrome for the Turbo model. We painted one up in British Racing Green, the iconic Bentley racing colour from its successes at Le Mans in the 1920s and Thirties. The result was far better than we dared expect. The look was so much sportier, without a doubt. New badges, with splashes of red, were next on the list but at this stage we avoided major changes such as the suspension to handle the power boost. That would come later.

A new kind of launch

The lack of engines meant we had to come up with a very different launch to the industry's norm. In general, motoring correspondents from national and European newspapers, with a small number of TV crews (such as Top Gear, still a serious car review programme in the early eighties) would be flown out to a glamorous location where, because they were all operating to the same deadlines for their reviews, they might have relatively little time to drive a new model, but all would have cars pretty well at the same time.

Our plan evolved into a preliminary announcement with a car on show in London; then the formal launch in Geneva and a month or so later, by which time we would have half a dozen tried and tested cars, a launch over a month with the motoring correspondents flown in to France in small groups but given the opportunity to drive for a full day each.

After that, one car would be out on loan to other writers, in the hope that the car's hoped for glamour would result in lots of feature articles over many months.

Curiously enough, this somewhat back to front launch forced on us by the lack of turbo-charged engines was a spectacular success, all on an minuscule budget, although my profligate managerial style meant the budget was regarded as 'advisory' by me at the very best!

The London launch took place at the company's Conduit Street showroom, run by Audlem resident Bill Slater. I wrote a short speech for the chief executive which announced that for the first time since the days of Henry Royce, we would announce the power of the engine. Royce, when asked, always responded: "Sufficient!"

George Fenn delivered the required line to perfection. "Breaking a long tradition, I can now announce that the bhp of the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo is..........Sufficient + 50%."
Fortunately, they all loved the tease and it made headlines.

Before heading off to Geneva, the month long driving session that would follow in April had to be planned. Le Mans was the obvious location, home of the 24 Hour race where Bentley had seen so much success. We could roar the cars down the long Mulsanne straight, a public road as was much of the rest of the circuit. The town's airport was small but could take our company's six passenger seater jet, which I booked for a full month – to the considerable irritation of some other parts of the Vickers Group which had merged with Rolls-Royce Motors just a year earlier.

We had found a superb chateau hotel about forty miles away near Angers which had ten bedrooms and top class food, enough for six journalists a night, the capacity of the jet, and four of us, three public relations managers plus Jack Read, the engineer.

Our engineering service team was found a hotel a few miles down the road next to River Sarthe. They would stay there for six weeks in all, by which time they became local celebrities, winning a regional boule championship and infamous for their love of 'cremated beef steak!' They are probably still talked about there thirty years on.

Geneva

Geneva next and, lo and behold, we only had one car for the show stand with a turbo-charged engine. And I hadn't even driven it yet so how could I talk with conviction about the car's amazing power?

I took the possibly fool-hardy decision to take our only car out the day before the show for a high speed run out of the city and along the lake towards Lausanne. I will not reveal the speeds reached in case Swiss law does not have a Statute of Limitations. Fortunately, I not only fell in love with the car, but I drove it back on the show stand in one piece without a scratch. Job saved for now!

The show went well, the car was well received, a small miracle given nobody but me and some of our engineers had ever driven it but, crucially, the journalists all knew they had a full day behind the wheel coming up in a month or so. By luck, something that would be a feature of this unusual launch, there were few other major announcements at Geneva that year which dramatically improved the Bentley's prominence on the motoring pages.

And tomorrow, off to Le Mans which you can read by clicking here.

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