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Bentley Borders

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Description

One of only 63 built, this is certainly a rare machine to find on the streets of Mayfair, rarer still, it's one of the earliest Corniche's, distinguishable by the separate reverse lights from the main tailights, even rarer still thanks to Anton Van Luijik's extra info, it's one of only 27 RHD cars built! But by a stroke of luck, this lovely old example was trundling sedately down the road and happened to stop off right in front of me to pick something up from a nearby store.

Functionally, this car is exactly the same as the Rolls Royce Corniche, minus a few trim changes and a different badge and grille. Production spiritually began on the Corniche in 1966, in the form of the Bentley T1 Coupe, a two door Coupé version of the popular Bentley T-Series of which only 15 were built. However, unlike the T-Series, the car came with both a drop head (convertible) and fixed head version. With the introduction of the Corniche brand in 1971 by Rolls Royce, Bentley followed suit with cars of this example here, of which 140 examples were built between 1971 and 1977, with 63 fixed heads and 77 convertibles.

Essentially, these cars were built without major change until 1995 when production of both this and the Rolls Royce Corniche ended, although the most noticeable change came with the name. In 1984, the car's name was changed to the Bentley Continental, but technical changes only occurred in tandem with those done to the Rolls Royce Corniche. In 1977 rack-and-pinion steering was added, alloy, rubber and composite bumpers were constructed to comply with new American safety legislation, the radiator was changed from steel to aluminium, an oil cooler was installed, and bi-level air conditioning that was pioneered on the Camargue was added.

The next major change came in 1986 at the same time as the development of the Corniche II, with technical changes such as the addition of anti-lock brakes and new reverse/warning light clusters being added to the rear. In 1989 with the Corniche III, changes included new alloy wheels, colour-coded bumpers, advanced suspension, MK-Motronic fuel injection and, for the first time, the installation of air bags. Eventually the end came for the Continental at the same time as the Corniche in the summer of 1995, the Continental being replaced by the Bentley Continental R and T series. The last examples of the car were a set of 8 built as the Bentley Continental Turbo from 1992 till 1995, these last few being built with Turbochargers.

After a production run of 24 years and keeping the original T-Series coachwork design alive 15 years after the T-Series went out of production, the last Corniche and Continental examples rolled off the production line with 140 Bentley Corniches and 421 Bentley Continentals being being built.

Today Corniche's and Continentals are very hard to come by in the UK as the vast majority of examples were built for the foreign market, however if you live in the sunny state of California, or reside in the south of France, chances are you'll bump into a fair few of these magnificent little cars. :)
Image size
2304x1296px 1.78 MB
Make
Panasonic
Model
HC-V500M
Shutter Speed
1/250 second
Aperture
F/1.8
Focal Length
2 mm
Date Taken
Nov 5, 2014, 3:32:19 PM
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G4MM43T4's avatar
mmmm that flying b