Wallpaper* + Bentley Motors
As part of its centenary celebrations Bentley Motors has made an exhilarating short film, shot with the thrilling velocity of a Hollywood movie trailer.
With materials and craftsmanship at the core of a pedal-to-the-metal narrative, the story begins with an ingot of aluminium that would become the dynamic component of a grand touring phenomenon.
At top speed, Bentley’s finely tuned combination of racetrack performance, intelligent design and innovative engineering is revealed. The exquisite crafting of wood and leather. The elegant manipulation of ductile metal. New standards in manufacturing, luxury, pace and pleasure.
With aluminium as his raw inspiration, founder Walter Owen Bentley began working on cars from a humble London mews garage back in 1919. Determined to ‘build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class’ he used his aviation engineering know-how to build the first Bentley 3 Litre. A hundred years of manufacturing excellence and garlanded motorsport eminence would follow.
In a thrilling blur, Le Mans heroes are made. Bentley Boys and Bentley Girls become motorsport legends. The film races around hairpin bends and past chequered flags towards the power and refinement of modern-era 200 mph, 4 and 6 Litre Bentley GTs. Hold tight as you watch.
The next chapter of the Wallpaper + Bentley 100 story launches in the fall. Inspired by W.O. Bentley’s passion for the flexibility and material potential of aluminium, Wallpaper* will be engineering a technically synergetic conversation between Bentley Motors’ British head of exterior design John Paul Gregory and California’s Alex Rasmussen, brand director of the Neal Feay Company.
Specialising in the cutting-edge sculpture and creative fabrication of anodised aluminium, the Neal Feay Company, founded in 1945 by Rasmussen’s grandfather, personifies WO Bentley’s pioneering approach to design and manufacture. With a portfolio that includes commissions for Louis Vuitton and Design Miami, the Neal Feay Company is applying the aluminium aesthetic to the design of premium hi-fi, the beauty and strength of architectural structure, into the art world and beyond. The Santa Barbara-based studio presented The Wave, a 2.90m-tall, Pacific Ocean-inspired, anodised aluminium installation at London Design Festival 2015 and the Jean Nouvel-designed aluminium ‘asterisk’ furniture for Wallpaper* Handmade, Salone del Mobile, 2016.
Before joining the team at Crewe, Bentley Motors’ advanced exterior design leader JP Gregory spent four years as an exterior designer for Volkswagen in Wolfsburg. With a master’s degree in Automotive Design from Hochschule Pforzheim University, Germany, Gregory’s mission is to take Bentley Motors’ ‘instantly recognisable, distinctive design language’ into the future. Expect a discourse on contemporary automotive design, the subtle difference between ‘aluminum’ and ‘aluminium’, California v Crewe as creative hubs, and some serious metallurgical debate. §