Equity Magazine November 2017

AUTOMOBILE
CREWE’S
MISSILE
We find out if the third-generation
of the Continental GT is Bentley's finest
grand-tourer yet
By Varun Godinho
They called them the Bentley Boys. The motley bunch of
wealthy playboy racers were a rambunctious lot who
lived like rock stars and drove hell for leather each time
they stepped into their modified Bentley racing machines.
They first won the Le Mans in 1924 and then on four
consecutive occasions between 1927 and 1930. These
were the gentlemen that lent Bentley, which was only a
decade old at the time, its earliest identity as a racing
marque which was primed for the privileged.
It was during the Roaring Twenties when the marque’s
founder Walter Owen Bentley, a Bentley Boy himself,
coined the term “Continental”. All of Bentley’s cars were
built in Cricklewood, North London, and a select few
which were taken over to mainland Europe and personally
tested by W.O. received the continental moniker.
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