There is a place where tradition and technology meet. It is the Bentley factory in Crewe, home of models such as the Continental GT, Bentayaga and Flying Spur and where the first electric cars of the historic English company will see the light of day in 2025. The first thing to catch the eye around the warehouses and workshops in Crewe is the high level of craftsmanship involved, with the car from an industrial product it becomes a work of craftsmanship. There are numerous peculiarities of the Bentley factory-workshop, enough to present it as a small jewel on the international scene.
The processing chain
As soon as you cross the threshold of the Continental GT assembly rooms, you immediately feel the air of a workshop rather than a factory. There is no shortage of machinery for automated handling, but every single operation carried out on the cars is manual. From fixing the engine to sealing the bottom through the electrical system, everything on a Bentley is assembled strictly by hand. It almost sounds out of place to call it a production line, while a manufacturing line is a much more appropriate term.
Along the line you may come across spectacular views, such as that of the latest W12 engines waiting to be picked up for coupling with the body. What is surprising, however, is above all the diversity between the cars being assembled. All over Crewe and believably all over the world in fact no two Bentleys are the same. This is because the combinations of colours, internal and external, are almost infinite. Rather than customization, we can easily talk about production made to order by the customer, like a suit made to measure by a tailor.
The tail of the Continental GTs in progress looks very colorful. Not only can Bentley offer a wide range of colors and shades to choose from, but when needed it can create new shades upon customer request, perhaps to match a specific item of clothing or an accessory. However, the same freedom is also present for other components. Every car in the factory has a story to tell, like that of the eccentric rims of a GT designed to recall the starting propellers of an airplane.
The centrality of wood
From the entrance of a Continental GT to the exit from the production line, 2 to 3 days pass, depending on the complexity of the customer’s order. However, next to the main warehouse there are others workshops dedicated to the creation of interiors, where times are considerably longer, up to five weeks in the case of carpentry. Wood is not the first material we usually think of when talking about cars, but for Bentley it constitutes a distinctive feature, which stands out from the dashboard and the inside of the doors.
Customers fly personally to Crewe from all over the world, eager to arrange their orders down to the smallest detail. This is not a simple decision however, having to choose for example not only between countless types of wood, but also theand veins to highlight. From the original wood, Bentley workers then obtain very thin sheets with a thickness of fractions of a millimetre, which are then cut, glued and polished by hand. However, the process can change depending on the desired final result. Thanks to the use of numerically controlled cutters, for example, it is possible to obtain three-dimensional surfaces with the most disparate patterns from a block of wood, which can be installed on the dashboard or in the doors.
Wood however is not the only option for interiors, with stone being an equally popular choice, always following a rigorous process of laminating, gluing and polishing by hand. There is also room in the same rooms the only robot on the Crewe site, Giulietta, used for applying lacquer to surfaces. Its presence, however, is dictated solely by quality, to prevent the chemical agents of human personal care products from affecting the perfect adhesion of the lacquer. For the rest, every single interior manufacturing process is carried out by the craftsmen, some of whom undergo a training course that can last up to nine months.
The tailoring
Another central room in the birth of a Bentley is the shed used for leather processing. For the interior coverings, the English company uses exclusively bovine leather, the coloring of which is entrusted to an Italian dye house located in Valli del Pasubio, near Vicenza. For the rest, everything happens on the Crewe site: from quality control to leather cutting, through tracking. In true Bentley style also each seam is done by handas evidenced by the rows of benches at which dozens of tailors and seamstresses sit.
Even in the field of leather goods, the customization options are immeasurable: primary and secondary colors, finishes and decorative motifs. To be able to satisfy the requests of its customers, Bentley has developed some new technologies for the creation of drawings and graphics increasingly elaborate. This is the case of Thread Color Fade, a technique that involves the instant coloring of the cotton thread depending on its position on the design to be created. A real textile printer.
Sustainable craftsmanship
Despite the materials that distinguish the creations of the English house, Bentley does not fail in its commitment to environmental sustainability. The Crewe workshop factory has already achieved carbon neutrality for five years, which the company aims to achieve globally by 2030. It is therefore not surprising to find that the raw materials for the interior, including cowhides, they are obtained as by-products of other industries.
Wood is no exception, carefully avoiding encouraging deforestation. For some types, for example, Bentley uses exclusively fruit trees that are 80-100 years old, whose growers would still proceed with felling them having lost their productivity. For protected species such as sequoias, however, agreements are in place with local authorities for the removal of wood only following falling trees due to natural causesthus removing them from the black market.
However, the workshop atmosphere that permeates the Crewe factory does not only shine through in the materials or manufacturing techniques. In fact, there is an air of great cordiality among the staff, indicative of an environment that stimulates the cultivation of social relationships. Furthermore, they follow one another in the same sheds entire generations of workers, children and grandchildren who inherit the profession of the family members who preceded them, sometimes even working alongside them. Bentley is currently experiencing a period of profound transformation, with the complete electrification of the range by 2030. However, even with the advent of electric, it seems that tradition will always occupy a special place in the Crewe factory.
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