The ‘Enduring Power’ Exhibition

Crewe has been the home of Bentley since 1946 but the company’s origins date back to 1919, when founder Walter Owen Bentley declared his aim to make ‘a fast car, a good car, the best in its class’.

The Lineage area is periodically redesigned to feature different aspects of the company’s history. The previous exhibition in 2010 focused on Bentley’s key engineering achievements and cars from over 90 years of history.

‘Enduring Power – from flying machines to FlexFuel’ shows the many iconic cars and engines of Bentley’s past and present, from the 1917 rotary-radial engine that ‘WO’ designed for the Sopwith Camel fighter to the 2010 Mulsanne V8 engine with its variable valve timing and flexible cylinder activation.

Bentley Motors owns several key historic cars, including EXP 2, the oldest surviving Bentley, a supercharged 4 ½ Litre ‘Blower’ driven by Tim Birkin and the Bentley 8 Litre owned and driven by WO himself. Other lineage models appear by the kind permission of owners; as a result the cars on show are constantly changing, but the presentation standard and significance of the cars on show remains consistently high.