Bentley’s Mulliner
department has re-created the 1939 Corniche which was originally lost in a
wartime bombing raid in France. The original car was lost in 1939, at the
outbreak of World War II. The Corniche was extensively damaged in a traffic
accident whilst undergoing road tests. Although the chassis made it home at the
Bentley plant in Derby, the bodywork was destroyed in a bombing raid on Dieppe.
The Bentley
Corniche is considered the missing link between the company’s Embiricos 4¼
Litre and R Type Continental and was conceived as a high-performance version of
the MkV saloon. The project was originally started in 2001 by volunteers of the
WO Bentley Memorial Foundation and the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation but
it was brought in-house in February 2018. Bentley boss Adrian Hallmark asked
Mulliner to finish the project in 2019 in order to participate in the car
maker’s centenary celebrations.
Body panels were
hand-formed by Mulliner’s specialists, while the paint laboratory spent many
hours producing color samples of the original Imperial Maroon and the side
flash of Heather Grey from the limited descriptions available.
The interior design
team produced CAD designs for the seats and door trims following an extensive
historical research, while the trim team used the period-correct Connolly
Vaumol hide, West of England cloth and the carpet from a roll discovered stored
away on site.
Mulliner’s master
carpenter devised a steam booth in order to be able to bend sections of wood
for the interior window surrounds. The front grille was recreated using CAD for
its design and it was then hand-formed by metalworkers over a period of three
months.
The original 1939
Bentley Corniche was privately commissioned by Greek racer André Embiricos, who
wanted a sporting Bentley based on the old 4¼ Litre chassis. The body was
penned by Georges Paulin and built by French coachbuilder Pourtout. The
recreated Bentley Corniche will make its public debut at Salon Privé in
September and then will join the company’s heritage fleet.
