Bentley Continental R, T and Azure: the hand-built nineties (1991–2003)

In 1991 Bentley did something it had not managed since the fifties: it launched a car that was not a rebadged Rolls-Royce. The Continental R, drawn by Ken Greenley and John Heffernan and cheered onto the Geneva stand loudly enough that the Sultan of Brunei bought the show car, gave the winged B its own body, its own identity and its own future. The Bentley Continental R family, the R, the S, the ferocious T and the Azure convertible, closed the hand-built Crewe era in style, and the market has finally noticed.

The Bentley that got its body back

The R arrived from the Project 90 concept as a genuine event: a vast fastback coupe on the Turbo R’s running gear, the turbocharged 6.75-litre V8, a new four-speed automatic, and a fastback shape owing nothing to any Rolls, the first such Bentley since the S-series Continentals faded. At launch it cost more than anything else in the catalogue and sold anyway, nearly 1,900 R-family coupes across eleven years, with the marque’s revival, begun by the Turbo R, sealed by a car that finally looked as singular as it went.

R, S and T: the escalation

The family escalated rather than aged: the intercooled Continental S of 1994 previewed more power, and the 1996 Continental T cut four inches from the wheelbase, flared the arches, swapped veneer for turned aluminium and wound the V8 towards 420 bhp, the fastest, dearest Bentley of its era with only around 350 built. Mulliner’s revived name delivered widebody and bespoke commissions, the Brunei court ordered wonders the public never saw, and the 2001 Le Mans editions saluted the racing return. Every step up the ladder is rarer, and the values run in exact order.

The Brunei effect

No account of the nineties Bentleys is complete without their greatest patron: the Sultan of Brunei’s household bought the Geneva show car on the spot and went on to commission cars by the dozen, standard models alongside bespoke machines, estates, four-doors and prototypes run in tiny secret batches, that the public never saw. The royal orders bankrolled engineering the company could not otherwise have afforded and kept Crewe’s craftsmen at full stretch through lean years, and their echoes surface at auction occasionally as right-hand-drive specials with extraordinary specifications. For the mainstream cars the effect was simpler: development money flowed, the variant ladder kept climbing, and the hand-built era ended at full creative throttle rather than in decline.

Azure: the open Continental

The 1995 Azure completed the family: the R’s platform and turbo V8 under a four-seat convertible body whose hood, engineered with Pininfarina, folded away electrically into a clean tail, creating one of the costliest open cars on earth and, with roughly 1,400 built to 2003, the biggest seller of the whole programme. It is the softest of the family in character, a boulevard tourer more than a bruiser, best sampled two-up on a warm evening with the exhaust murmuring, and today it typically trades above the equivalent coupe, sunshine carrying its usual premium in the British classic market.

What they are like to drive

The experience is force majeure: 2.4 tonnes gathered up by a wall of turbocharged torque, a distant V8 whoosh, steering and ride tuned closer to grand touring than sport, and a hand-trimmed cabin that makes every journey an occasion. The T adds real aggression, firmer, faster, louder, while R and Azure waft with intent. None of them are delicate: they are the last Bentleys built entirely in the old Crewe way, and they feel machined from something denser than other cars, which is exactly their appeal. Modern traffic flatters them, because the torque does its work from idle and the size that once seemed outrageous now merely seems substantial.

Buying into the hand-built nineties

The rule is simple and absolute: buy the history, not the car. Consumables are supercar-priced when deferred, so a thick specialist file beats any discount; check the brake and self-levelling hydraulics, cooling and head gaskets under turbo load, the climate and hood electronics, and originality against the build records the specialists keep. Storage and light use suit these cars poorly, because seals and hydraulics prefer regular exercise, so a driven example with bills usually beats a garaged one with promises, and a pre-purchase inspection by a marque specialist is the cheapest money in the whole transaction. Ts and Mulliners deserve expert verification, replicas of neither exist but specification matters enormously to value.

On money, the badge and the roof decide almost everything: the open Azure sells for nearly half as much again as the coupe it is based on, and the short-wheelbase T for roughly twice. This is also the one market in the marque’s classic range with no cheap end at all, its lowest recorded sale being £17,042. The full record, 499 recorded sales, is on the page covering what a Continental R sells for.

More photos