Bentley’s Olympia Collection: 12 Continental GTs honouring a 1926 car and a roadside race

In 1924 W.O. Bentley was driving a disguised six-cylinder prototype from Lyon to Dieppe when, at a fork in a French country road, his team ran into a test car from a rival maker. Both crews recognised each other and raced side by side down a straight lined with trees. Bentley won, but not by enough for W.O.’s taste, so he went home and enlarged the engine. The result, the 6½ Litre, made its public debut at the Olympia Motor Show in London in 1926.

A hundred years on, Bentley’s Mulliner studio is marking that launch with the Olympia Collection: 12 Continental GT coupes, each individually numbered. The roadside duel is the collection’s recurring motif. It is embroidered in the rear ski hatch as a map of the route in gold thread, and an animated version is projected onto the ground when the doors open.

The paint deals with an old problem. Most 1920s Bentleys were British Racing Green, yet there was never one agreed shade, and the copper in period paints faded in sunlight. Mulliner sidestepped the debate with its Ombré finish, a gradient from Verdant to Midnight Emerald that takes 56 hours to apply and, in effect, contains every version of the colour at once.

Other details lean on the same era:

• Champagne Gold badges, pinstripe, seat piping and wheel accents echo the nickel silver of early radiators.
• Black 22-inch Mulliner wheels are styled to recall the spoked wheels of the time.
• Gold box stitching on the steering wheel mimics the rope-wrapped rims of the 1920s.
• The rotating dashboard display gets dials modelled on the 6½ Litre’s speedometer and the car’s own number.
• Inside, a Coach Green hide with an aged patina sits next to Cumbrian Green leather and dark walnut.

Each owner also gets a Brooklands chronograph numbered to match the car, with a strap cut from the same green hide and two swappable bezels named after Brooklands circuits, plus a car cover, a presentation box and a book on the project. Bentley has not published a price, and with only 12 cars it hardly needs to.

The 6½ Litre went on to greater things. In Speed Six form it won Le Mans in 1929 and 1930, which makes it a fitting car for Crewe to celebrate in its anniversary year.

Reported by Bentley Media. Compiled with AI tools.