Bentley Centenary to Be Marked at Goodwood Festival Of Speed With Cars Young And Old On The Hill!

The latest part of Bentley’s year-long centenary celebrations has been confirmed. A vast program of displays and dynamic car demonstrations, with machines from right across Bentley’s 100 years, will feature at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, taking place on July 4 to 7. The popular Goodwood event always seeks to celebrate motoring’s past and present, so is an appropriate place to pay homage the inimitable British luxury marque.

The centerpiece of the celebrations will be the Centenary Concours, a display of 30 of the most iconic models from right across Bentley’s past up to the current day. It will include one of the rarest and most valuable Bentleys in the world, the 4¼-Liter Embiricos Special, and this will be alongside Bentley’s recently-unveiled Flying Spur. Other rare highlights will include a Gurney Nutting Speed Six, a 1948 Pininfarina Mark VI, a Continental GT Zagato and WO Bentley’s own 8-Liter from 1930. In addition, there will be the Cartier Style et Luxe Lawn featuring at least six R-Type Continentals as the centerpiece of this year’s Concours d’Elegance. Only 208 R-Type Continentals were built, and they now are one of the most desirable Bentley models.

And of course the Goodwood festival not all about the cars staying stationary, as its main feature is machines young and old taking to the Goodwood hillclimb course. And this year there will be more Bentleys on the hill than ever before, and the selection is specifically to represent the various chapters of Bentley’s history.

There will be the oldest surviving Bentley in the world, the EXP2–the second experimental prototype built by WO Bentley. EXP2 was the first Bentley to go racing, throughout 1921 and 1922, and this will be its Goodwood dynamic debut. It will be joined by the 1929 Birkin Blower, one of four race cars built for noted Bentley Boy Tim Birkin’s racing career. It raced at Le Mans in 1930, and is now insured for £25m. It will be driven up the hill by Katarina Kyvalova, the founder of the Bentley Belles–a group of female racers of historic Bentleys internationally.

More from the modern age, the 2003 Speed 8 #7 will also be driven up the hill. This is the very car that won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2003, culminating a program restarting Bentley’s association with the race after decades away. The Speed 8 scored a 1-2 for Bentley’s sixth Le Mans win and its first since 1930. Returning for driving duty is Guy Smith, part of the victorious 2003 line-up. And there will also be the 2018 Continental GT3—the second generation of GT3 racer, now built from the current Continental GT road car. It’s fresh from winning the 1000km Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup Race at Paul Ricard in the hands of Steven Kane, who will also take the wheel at Goodwood.

The racing Bentleys will be joined on the hill by four powerful Grand Tourers from the current model range: the Continental GT and new Continental GT Convertible, the latter being piloted by Abbie Eaton, as well as the latest additions to Bentley’s range—the Bentayga Speed and Flying Spur—which will make their UK dynamic debuts.

Images courtesy of Bentley