Bentley – Restoration to a T…

You can only truly appreciate where you are by taking the time to look at where you’ve come from. And while that would be a glorious means by which Car & Classic could segue into some sort of deep, psychological dive into the fragility of the human condition or… something, it’s not. It is, you’ll be pleased to hear, a statement we use in relation to cars. Carmakers the world over are the product of their past successes, their designs and their breakthroughs. Some manufacturers celebrate their past with their designs, some take a more nostalgic approach by acquiring tidy examples of their past cars and running them on heritage fleets. Bentley, however, has gone several steps further. Not only has it acquired the first T Series it ever built, it’s also restoring it from the wheels up. Fair play, Bentley. Fair. Play. 

Completed on the 28th of September, 1965, Bentley T Series VIN 001 was celebrated and fawned over when it was new, but as the years rolled on, the glitz and glamour faded and eventually, it found itself in storage, where it would remain for decades. An unfortunately familiar fate for many classics, such a long time off the road can mean its the end of the road. Sure, many of these cars emerge as ‘barn finds’ but honestly, how many make it back onto the actual road? Very few. Not VIN 001 though, as it was bought back by Bentley in 2016, and Bentley was not going to let this hugely significant machine rust away into the history books. 

Instead, Bentley has vowed and indeed, has started to restore the car to its former glory. Work did start back in 2016, but due to other company-impacting projects like new models and a focus on electrification and the programme that will support it, the T Series was once again hidden away. However, it’s back in the workshops at Crewe, and has been afford a focused eighteen months of activity. Bentley, neatly bookending the old and the new, will bring in apprentices as well as time-served craftspeople to bring the car back to showroom specification. The company is hoping to have the car completed by 2023, at which point it will be entered into Bentley’s heritage fleet (and you can bet we’ll be going to do a video on it). It will then live out the rest of its days under the caring eye of the company that built it… twice. 

The T-Series was originally announced and displayed for the first time at the Paris Motor Show on 5 October 1965 and was significantly different from its predecessor, the S-Type. Notably, the T-Series was the first Bentley to use a unitary construction method, using a monocoque in place of the separate chassis and body technique of every Bentley before it.

The 225 bhp, 6¼-litre V8 was originally designed and introduced in 1959 in the Bentley S2. At the time the engine achieved the highest specific output by weight of any production car in the world of 2.7 lb/hp (1.2 kg/hp). The engine was considered over-engineered at the time, but its inherent strength, reliability and development potential led to it becoming Bentley’s mainstay engine for the next 50 years. By the time the engine was retired in 2019, it was delivering more than double the amount of power and three times the original torque whilst producing 99 per cent fewer emissions.

The Bentley T-Series was hailed as a clear example of revolutionary engineering given it was the first Bentley to move away from a separate chassis build, and tis relatively lightweight construction gave impressive performance for a four-sedan in 1965, with a maximum speed of 115 mph and 0-62 mph achieved in 10.9 seconds.

1,868 examples of the first-generation T-Series were produced, with a pre-tax list price of £5,425 and the majority being standard four-door saloons. A two-door version was created in 1966, and a year later a convertible version was launched, although production numbers were kept low at just 41 cars. A second-generation car, known as the T2, was launch in 1977 and stayed in production until 1980.

The fact Bentley has gone out and saved this T Series is nothing short of incredible. Some manufacturers, in the light of electrification and other environmental factors, are ditching their heritage cars, which seems so wrong. The cars of the past were a product of their time, and while they might not satiate the zero emission needs of the modern day buyer, they were an import step in the journey to get there. The past should be celebrated in all its forms, and Bentley understands that. This T Series is a magnificent celebration of Bentley’s evolution, it’s a brilliant way for the company to have its young staff interact with and understand the past and most of all, it’s going to be the foundation of another great story for the pages of Bentley’s history. Bravo.