The Bentley Flying and Winged B

In the 1920s, a bonnet mascot was the ultimate automotive accessory. These miniature sculptures embodied effortless power and speed and announced your arrival in style.

As well as creating Bentley’s winged B badge, celebrated artist F. Gordon Crosby also designed an ‘Icarus’ bonnet mascot. This appeared in some of the first Bentley catalogues but never went into production, perhaps because of copyright infringement.

Instead, owners of Cricklewood-era Bentleys from the mid-1920s were offered the option of the first company-approved Flying B mascot – an ornate, upright brass ‘B’ featuring wings held horizontally, also thought to be a Crosby design.

In 2019, Bentley’s Centenary year, the new Flying Spur took the definitive four-door grand tourer in a new direction – accompanied by a new iteration of the Flying B. To mark the occasion, we held a competition among all Bentley designers to redesign the mascot for our second century. The winning design, by Hoe Young Hwang, was inspired by the owl.

Poised and serene when stationary, the owl reveals immense power and agility in motion – much like the new Flying Spur. The minimalist, contemporary shape of the new design represents an owl gliding over a calm lake in pursuit of prey, the mascot’s widening base tracing out the wake created on the water. With every detail of this captivating car designed around the driver and passengers, particular attention was paid to creating a breathtaking wing span when viewed from the cabin.

Cast out of stainless steel, the new Flying B is hand-polished and crafted using a process normally reserved for turbine engines. It fuses the traditional asymmetrical feathers with a distinctly modern touch – when the car is unlocked, the mascot is electronically deployed and the feathers illuminate in a carefully choreographed welcome sequence perfectly synchronised with the lighting of the headlamps.