Bentley’s 200,000th car, a Bentayga Hybrid, meets its oldest surviving – the Bentley EXP2

The 200,000th car produced in Bentley’s history, a Bentley Bentayga Hybrid, rolls off the production line and meets the Bentley EXP 2.

In the first 83 years of Bentley’s history it produced a total of 44,418 cars, but in the years since Volkswagen started to build Bentleys, 2003, it’s built a further 155,582 cars in Crewe. Which, if your mental arithmetic is up to scratch, you’ll know makes a grand total of 200,000 Bentleys built to date.

The 200,000th Bentley has now rolled off the production line in Crewe and showcases how different the Bentley of today is from the Bentley of yesteryear, as this milestone car is a Bentley Bentayga Plug-in Hybrid, not just a Bentley SUV but a Bentley SUV with plug-in electric power mated to a V6 petrol engine. How times have changed.

To mark the production of the 200,000th Bentley, Bentley had a bit of a photoshoot at Crewe to show it posing alongside its oldest-surviving sibling the 1920 Bentley EXP 2 which, as the second Bentley ever built, was bolted together at Bentley’s Cricklewood Works complete with a chassis exhibited at Olympia the year before and a 3.0 litre monobloc engine with aluminium pistons.

Bentley’s CEO Adrian Hallmark said:

This production of the 200,000^th car is just the latest landmark on the extraordinary journey that Bentley has been travelling since its foundation in 1919. In 2003 the introduction of the Continental GT represented a transformative moment for the brand, and this Bentley alone has represented 80,000 sales of our total 200,000, and created both a new segment, and a contemporary image foundation for the Bentley business.

The pace of progress has accelerated significantly since 2003 and we are now entering the next period of transformation as we pursue our Beyond100 strategy, with the aim of positioning Bentley as the global leader in sustainable luxury mobility.