Bentley Corniche: recreating a missing link

Monday, 12 August 2019

Only one Bentley Corniche was ever built, and it was destroyed in WWII. Now Bentley has built a new one.

As part of its 100th birthday celebrations, Bentley has re-created a long-lost car from its past that the company says provides a crucial link in the history of its most important models.

The ground-up rebuild of the only 1939 Corniche ever made was carried out by the company's Mulliner bespoking division, and connects the fabled Embiricos 4¼ Litre and R Type Continental.

In the late-1930s, Greek racer André Embiricos commissioned a sporting Bentley, based on the old 4¼ Litre chassis. Styled by designer Georges Paulin and built by French coachbuilder Pourtout, the car was much-admired and secretly encouraged among Bentley engineers and management, who were convinced that the factory should produce a more sporting version of the forthcoming MkV saloon.

Bentley built a single Corniche in 1939, with the intention of creating a high performance version of the MkV saloon.

Eventually management agreed that the Corniche should be built to investigate the idea. It would have a lightweight chassis, built from thinner-than-standard gauge steel, fitted with a tuned version of the MkV engine matched to an overdrive gearbox. The car was completed by May 1939 and tested at Brooklands race circuit, where it achieved well over 100mph – a significant improvement on the standard MkV.

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The Corniche was heavily damaged in an accident when a test driver rolled it avoiding another car.

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The styling of the Corniche was a radical step forward from the traditional Bentleys of the 1920s and '30s, introducing 'Streamlining' to help deliver greater speed and performance. Streamlining had only just started to be adopted on production cars of the period, so the smooth lines of the Corniche were well ahead of their time - particularly in conservative Britain.

Mulliner worked from the original technical drawings to recreate the Corniche in every detail.

It had been recognised that the huge upright radiator of a traditional Bentley adversely affected its top speed, and the smoothed nose of the Corniche was a direct reaction to that understanding.

The pillarless body, with front and rear-hinged doors was also extremely innovative for the period, and the complicated curves of the front wings and the long sweeps of the rears were a long way from the typical designs of the period. In staid 1930s Britain, this was pure fantasy-made-real.

After Brooklands, the Corniche went to France for road testing, but on August 8th was extensively damaged after rolling when a test driver had to swerve to miss a car that had pulled out in front of him.

The Corniche was due to be displayed at the Earls Court and Paris motor shows later that year, so repairs had to be made quickly - the body was removed from the chassis, and the chassis returned to Crewe, while the body went to a local repair shop in France.

After it was repaired, the body was transported to Dieppe to be shipped home. However, an administration error at the docks caused a delay, and while it was stored waiting to be shipped the body was destroyed when Dieppe was heavily bombed following the the outbreak of WWII.

The project to restore the Corniche was originally started several years ago by volunteers from the WO Bentley Memorial Foundation and the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation, but was brought in-house in February 2018 under the watchful eye of Chairman and Chief Executive Adrian Hallmark, who asked for it to be completed in 2019 to celebrate Bentley's centenary.

'The 1939 Corniche was a clear step in Bentley's design language which is evident when set aside the later and now iconic R Type Continental. It is a pivotal car in the history of Bentley, demonstrating that even then, this great British marque was at the cutting edge of design and technology,' said Hallmark.

'Mulliner's stunning recreation of the Corniche clearly demonstrates our skill in restoring the greats from Bentley's back catalogue as well as making beautiful personalised modern Bentleys.'

The Corniche will make its first public appearance at Salon Privé at Blenheim Palace in September and will join Bentley's Heritage fleet, which already includes WO Bentley's 8 Litre and the Birkin Team Blower, to be used and exhibited at events around the world.