Bentley recreates ‘Corniche’
In the ongoing celebrations for their centenary year, Bentley recently unveiled a reborn model from their past in the form of the Corniche.
A model name rightly associated with Rolls-Royce these days, Corniche actually graced a Bentley first - decades before it appeared on a Rolls. But for the intervention of World War II, it would have likely become a standard model in the Bentley range, too.
The Greek and the French
The impetus for the Corniche came from a one-off Bentley belonging to Greek shipping magnate Andre Embiricos in the late 1930s. Embiricos had commissioned designer Georges Paulin to create a sporting body for a 4 ½-litre Bentley chassis, and French coachbuilders Pourtout to build it.
With its streamlined style, the ‘Embiricos Bentley’ drew attention far and wide, including from within Bentley itself. That led the company to seriously investigate producing a sporting version of their upcoming Mark V saloon.
Called the Corniche, the sporting MkV started with a lighter-than-standard chassis, to which a tuned version of the MkV‘s 4.25-litre six-cylinder engine and a four-speed transmission with overdrive were added. Bentley commissioned Paulin to design the car but chose Parisian coachbuilders Vanvooren to build it.
Completed in May, 1939, the Corniche was shipped to France for road testing two months later. A minor accident there saw the car sent to Vanvooren for repairs, but almost immediately after these were completed in August, 1939, the car was damaged again, this time more seriously, leading to the body being separated from the chassis and sent back to Vanvooren, while the chassis was returned to the UK.
The outbreak of war in September, 1939, didn’t stop Vanvooren from completing the body repairs, but while in Dieppe awaiting shipping back to the UK, a German air raid on the French port destroyed the body and it was lost forever.
The war also ensured the Corniche project never went ahead, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that a sporting Bentley re-emerged in the form of the R-Type Continental.
Bentley had been serious about the Corniche project, though, producing chassis, engine and other mechanical components, all of which remained in company storage until the 1970s.
Corniche Recreation
The idea to recreate the Corniche using what few original parts remained dates back to 2001 and was started by volunteers from the WO Bentley Memorial Foundation and the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation. In 2008, Bentley provided funds to keep the project going, but it was still a long way from completion when, in February, 2018, the project was brought entirely in-house, with the goal of getting it finished in time for this year’s centenary celebrations.
Entrusted to Mulliner, Bentley’s in-house bespoke and coachbuilding division, the Corniche would be their first historic project and would require the sort of hand skills, like steam-forming the timber body frame, that hadn’t been employed in Bentley manufacturing for more than 50 years. Nevertheless, the various specialty craftspeople at Mulliner rose to the challenge.
“It’s been a fantastic team effort,” said Stefan Sielaff, Design Director at Bentley and Director of Mulliner. “We have highly skilled craftsmen within Mulliner and around the rest of Bentley Motors, and they all have massive pride in what they’ve achieved with this car.”
Team members from across the wider Bentley Motors business dedicated personal time to work on the Corniche, with staff from other divisions joining in, too. The Mulsanne body-in-white team, where panels are still hand-formed, helped with finessing the Corniche’s panels; the paint laboratory spent hours producing colour samples of the original Imperial Maroon and Heather Grey paint; Interior Design produced CAD plans for the seats and door trims; and the Mulliner trim team created a period-appropriate interior using correct hides, cloth and carpet.
Corniche Tour
Following its public debut at the Salon Prive Concours in London this September, the Corniche will join the Bentley Heritage fleet and be presented at Bentley events globally in years to come.
