Bentley

A man who believed in aluminum. A group of wealthy young men who partied as hard as they raced. A rivalry with Rolls-Royce that ended with both brands owned by Germans. That is where Bentley begins. Walter Owen Bentley, known to everyone as W.O., started as a railway apprentice at sixteen. He was the youngest of nine children, born into a middle-class family that somehow produced a genius for machinery . In 1912, he and his brother started selling French DFP cars in London. But W.O. was never satisfied with just selling. He wanted to improve. At the DFP factory in 1913, he noticed an aluminum paperweight on a desk and had a thought. If you could make pistons from aluminum instead of cast iron, they would be lighter, stronger, and more efficient . He tried it. It worked. During World War I, Bentle... More