Bentley is marking 80 years of automobile production at Crewe with a one-off Continental GT Azure whose specification reaches back to the first Bentley built at the factory. Created by Mulliner, the car takes its colors and materials from a coachbuilt 1950 Mark VI in Bentley’s Heritage Collection.
The anniversary Continental GT Azure will appear alongside the Mark VI at the International Club for Rolls-Royce and Bentley Enthusiasts’ 80th anniversary celebration at the British Motor Museum on August 29. Rather than simply adding commemorative badging to a current model, Mulliner used the historic car as the basis for a specification that translates its understated postwar character into a modern Continental GT.
The most obvious connection is the exterior. The Continental is finished in solid Barnato Green with a contrasting Mulliner Black roof, mirroring the green and black treatment of the Heritage Collection car. The Azure’s bright exterior trim remains, but Mulliner has combined it with Bentley’s carbon-fiber Styling Specification, black-painted and bright-machined 22-inch ten-spoke wheels, black brake calipers and self-leveling Bentley wheel badges.
Inside, Mulliner again followed the Mark VI’s palette rather than a contemporary color trend. Cricket Ball red is used for the main hide with Beluga secondary leather, recalling the deep red leather cabin of the older car. Contrast stitching and piping, Azure embroidery, diamond quilting and perforated upholstery bring the execution firmly into the present.
The Mark VI’s burr walnut dashboard also provided the direction for the Continental’s trim. Dark-stained burr walnut sits above Grand Black piano veneer, with the two separated by a chrome pinstripe continuing across the dashboard and into the waistrails. Bentley’s Rotating Display is particularly appropriate here: with the screen rotated away, the driver can choose either three analogue instruments or an uninterrupted section of veneer.
The specification is otherwise appropriately comprehensive for an Azure. Front-seat Comfort and Wellness specifications, an air ionizer and Naim for Bentley audio are fitted, while unique treadplates carry outlines of the Mark VI and Continental GT together with the inscription, “Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of production in Crewe, 1946-2026.”
The car that inspired it has a particularly direct connection to the anniversary. Bentley began automobile production at Pyms Lane in 1946, after the factory had originally been constructed in 1938 to manufacture Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines. The Mark VI became the first Bentley produced there.
Bentley offered the Mark VI with its standard steel body or as a chassis for traditional coachbuilders. The Heritage Collection example is one of 241 four-door, six-light saloons bodied by H.J. Mulliner. Finished in two-tone green and black and powered by Bentley’s 4,257cc six-cylinder engine, it was delivered in January 1950 to William Lount of Alabastine Co Ltd. Bentley acquired the car for its Heritage Collection in 2021.
Production of the Mark VI continued through 1951, with 4,001 examples built. Eight decades later, the anniversary Continental GT Azure makes an effective bookend: not a recreation of Bentley’s first Crewe-built model, but a modern Bentley specified using the same colors, materials and visual restraint.
