Istorie
Bentley Mark VI was the first car from Rolls-Royce with all-steel coachwork and the first complete car assembled and finished at their factory.
Full description
The Bentley Mark VI 4-door standard steel sports saloon was the first post-war luxury car from Bentley.
Announced in May 1946 and produced from 1946 to 1952 it was also both the first car from Rolls-Royce with all-steel coachwork and the first complete car assembled and finished at their factory. These very expensive cars were a genuine success, long-term their weakness lay in the inferior steels forced on them by government's post-war controls. Chassis continued to be supplied to independent coachbuilders.
This Bentley factory finished car was given the name Bentley Mark VI standard steel sports saloon. This shorter wheelbase chassis and engine was a variant of the Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith of 1946 and, with the same standard steel body and a larger boot became the cautiously introduced Silver Dawn of 1949. The same extended-boot modification was made to the Mark VI body in 1952 and the result became known as the R type Bentley.
Mark VI engines and chassis were modified to provide higher performance and sold to be bodied by selected coachbuilders as the first Bentley Continentals, the most expensive production cars in the world and the world's fastest 4/5-seater saloons.
The Mark VI was introduced at a time of steel shortage across Europe which translated into a serious shortage of new cars for sale on the UK market. A Used Car report in 1951 of a three-year-old example with 10,450 miles (16,815 kilometres) on the odometer noted that a car which had, when new, retailed for £4,038 including sales taxes, was now offered for sale at £5,335. This was seen as a comment on the quality of the car but also on the continuing shortage of cars for sale. By the end of 1952 order-books had shrunk and the Mark VI was replaced by the R-Type, featuring an extended trunk, along with other less visible modifications and newly available home-market options, leading up to the introduction of the completely redesigned S series in 1955.
This car has covered 42,584 km.
