Bentley Motors

I organised a surprise day out for all my staff last Friday. It was to the Bentley Motors factory in Crewe. They knew we were going out for the day but I kept the final destination close to my chest.
As we boarded the train at London Euston the only clue they had was that the train terminated at Manchester. I thought about telling them we we’re off for a trip around the set of Coronation Street!

I was excited and had been looking forward to this visit for a long time. Bentley exemplifies and stands for everything I strive to achieve in our small garage. The attention to detail and quality of product are the characteristics I really relate to and these details strike a chord with me.
Walter Bentley didn’t actually say this, but his buddy, Sir Henry Royce did:

“Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.”

It really was everything I had hoped for. We were only allowed to take pictures in the initial ‘museum’ section. Once into the factory and production areas, cameras were strictly forbidden.

We learned that it takes on average, 4 hrs to make a steering wheel – hand stitched leather, obviously!

We “anoraks” were keen to check out the body and paint side of things. The basecoat (colour) is applied by hand but the lacquer is applied by robot. The entire car is flat and polished (technique for removing ‘orange peel’ in the paint finish to give a true ‘glass’ gloss). This polishing process included the bumpers too. Hardly any manufacturers flat and polish their new paintwork – let alone the bumpers!


I’d recommend a trip to Bentley to anyone who has an interest in cars / prestige cars / car construction. You can check out their website: www.bentleymotors.com for info on public visits. Beware, it’s a very enticing website – make sure you have plenty of time to spare!

Audi A8 W12 Quattro

Just a straight forward job here for us - replacing the driver's side wing and blending the colour into the door. But, what caught my eye was the size of the engine. Wow! A capacity of 6L, provided by 12(!) cylinders set out in a "W" formation. It's probably the biggest engine we've had here!

Here's the interesting bit: Why W12 and not V12??

The advantage of the W12 engine is its compact packaging, allowing Audi to build a 12-cylinder saloon with all-wheel drive, whereas a conventional V12 could only have a rear-wheel drive configuration as it would have no space in the engine bay for a differential and other components required to power the front wheels. In fact, Audi's 6.0L W12 is actually a bit smaller by overall dimensions than the 4.2L V8!

Mercedes SLK

Just a quick 'spruce up' for this one. It was being returned back to a lease company and needed a bit of a going over to make sure no fines were incurred. (Some lease companies penalise every little mark and ding, whilst others are more realistically minded with respect to their fair wear and tear policies.)
Anyhow, we refurbished 2 of the alloy wheels and repaired some damage on the drivers door. The colour was blended into the drivers side wing.