Mulliner recreates the legendary Bentley Corniche of 1939

The Mulliner department at Bentley has recreated the legendary Bentley Corniche of 1939. This vehicle was originally lost in a wartime bombing raid in France. The original car was lost in 1939, when the Second World War broke out. The Bentley Corniche suffered serious damage in a traffic accident while undergoing road testing.

Although the chassis made it home to the Bentley plant in Derby, the bodywork was destroyed in a bombing raid on Dieppe. The Bentley Corniche has been considered the missing link between the Bentley Embiricos 4¼ litre and the Bentley R Type Continental, and was conceived as a high-performance version of the MkV Saloon.

The Mulliner project was originally started in 2001 by volunteers from the WO Bentley Memorial Foundation and the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation, but was presented internally in February 2018. Bentley chief Adrian Hallmark asked Mulliner to complete the project in 2019 to take part in the celebrations of the car manufacturer’s centenary.

The body panels were hand-formed by Mulliner’s specialists, while the paint laboratory spent many hours producing colour samples of the original Imperial Maroon and the Heather Grey side flash, based on the limited descriptions available.

The 1939 Bentley Corniche, now rebuilt by Mulliner

The interior design team produced CAD designs for the seats and door trims after extensive historical research, while the trim team used Connolly Vaumol hide, West of England cloth and a carpet from a discovered roll stored on site.

Mulliner’s master carpenter designed a steam cabinet so that sections of wood could be bent for the interior window surrounds. The front grille was recreated using CAD for its design and was then hand-formed by metalworkers over a period of three months.

The original 1939 Bentley Corniche was privately commissioned by Greek racing driver André Embiricos, who wanted a sporting Bentley based on the old 4¼-litre chassis. The body was designed by Georges Paulin and built by the French coachbuilder Pourtout. The recreated Bentley Corniche will make its public debut at the Salon Privé in September and will then join the company’s heritage fleet.

“The 1939 Bentley Corniche was a clear step in Bentley’s design language, which is evident when you look past the later and now iconic R Type Continental. It is a fundamental car in the history of Bentley, showing that even then, this great British marque was at the forefront of design and technology,” commented Hallmark. “Mulliner’s stunning recreation of the Bentley Corniche clearly demonstrates our ability to restore the greats from the Bentley catalogue and create beautiful, bespoke modern Bentleys.”

The project naturally fell to the Mulliner division, which since the 1970s has built one-off cars for discerning collectors and royalty, including two state limousines built in 2002. Today, production models are adapted and built to the personal specifications of private customers.