Ridiculous Rebadges: A Tale of Two British Luxo Barges

"Amoore100" (amoore100) 06/20/2016 at 22:17 • Filed to: Ridiculous Rebadges, Bentley, Rolls Royce

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Welcome to Ridiculous Rebadges, a series of articles in which I go through and examine the details and circumstances surrounding some of the more infamous and some of the more esoteric vehicular rebadges throughout automotive history.

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As car enthusiasts, you likely are aware that Bentley today is a bit of a mass-market alternative to Rolls Royce, what with its VAG W12 engines and parts bin switchgear paling in comparison to Rolls’ BMW V12s and bespoke handcrafting. Despite the large chasm which divides these two small British manufacturers between two German giants today, in the past Bentley and Rolls Royce were more linked than you may have expected.

Let’s jump back in time to 1965. Rolls Royce had just released the new Silver Shadow, a successor to its Silver Cloud. Instead of its tried-and-true, old-as-the-Earth body-on-frame structure, the British manufacturer decided to introduce an all-new unibody frame upon which to produce its new flagship. This made it more difficult (well, impossible) for the company to simply pull off the body and transplant it with a new one.

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You see, Rolls Royce had taken control of Bentley in 1931 after the smaller company went into financial issues following the beginning of the Great Depression; however, for the next thirty or so years, while the cars came from the factory wearing the same standard bodywork, coachbuilt models were popular and differentiated the models enough that the brands were still distinct.

With the unibody frame, coachbuilding was no longer as easy or viable as it was previously, so more owners began opting for the factory bodies once the Silver Shadow was released. Its Bentley counterpart, the T Series, was identical, save a few bodywork alterations such as the grille and badges. Contemporary critics, though, saw the T Series as a return to Bentley’s sporting form because the unibody frame allowed much better handling characteristics than the body-on-frame chassis used previously as well as the fact that Rolls equipped the Bentley with slightly tighter underpinnings. While the Silver Shadow was to become a runaway sales success which would ironically tarnish the exclusive nature of the brand, the T Series remained a symbol of understated class, i.e. the VW Phaeton to the Bentley Continental today.

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It wasn’t until 1998 when Bentley was bought out by Piech (who was apparently fulfilling his German instinct of taking over everything during that time) and the era of rebadged Rolls Royces ended. However, before ‘98, there was one more car that was strikingly similar.

This was the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit/Spur which shared more than a passing resemblance to the Bentley Eight, Mulsanne, Turbo R, and Brooklands. The Bentley remained priced slightly cheaper than its counterpart SZ Series Spirit/Spur (which IMO looks like a Town Car mixed with Cressida and W126) but kept its reputation as a choice for the less ostentatious individual.

Nowadays, this notion of Bentley being a more understated alternative to Rolls Royce has gone by the wayside with the somewhat plebeian Continental based on the D1 platform has become the token vehicle of those with too much money who don’t necessarily know how to spend it. Meanwhile, Rolls Royce has once again regained its status as The Ultimate Being Driven Machine.

Birddog > Amoore100 06/20/2016 at 22:34

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Excellent as usual!

Your boy, BJR > Amoore100 06/20/2016 at 23:06

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You forgot my personal favorite! The Silver Seraph/Arange and Corniche V/Azure

Nauraushaun > Amoore100 06/20/2016 at 23:20

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Excellent! I’ve often wondered at the exact nature Bentley and RR shared during these years.

DINO666TheKingOfSoul > Amoore100 06/20/2016 at 23:21

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“Plebian” Continental...as in “bourgeois”, “peasant”, “mediocre”? If I could find an http://urbandictionary.com I would #BitchSlap some sense in you.

DINO666TheKingOfSoul > Amoore100 06/20/2016 at 23:37

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here...I looked it up for you: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?ter…

Amoore100 > DINO666TheKingOfSoul 06/21/2016 at 00:08

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Just a bit of tongue-in-cheek snarkiness from me, no need to take it at face value...besides, I see about one per week here in the Bay Area yet it seems like perhaps only twice a year that I see a Rolls, so yes, it’s definitely a new money-mobile and not an inheritance barge.

Amoore100 > Nauraushaun 06/21/2016 at 00:09

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I did too! That’s why I ended up composing this write-up! ;)

Amoore100 > DINO666TheKingOfSoul 06/21/2016 at 00:09

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Thanks I think

Amoore100 > Birddog 06/21/2016 at 00:11

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;)

Nauraushaun > Amoore100 06/21/2016 at 00:22

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:D

Amoore100 > Your boy, BJR 06/21/2016 at 00:56

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You’re totally right! I can’t believe I missed the Seraph and Arnage, I guess it was too modern for me to realize it was actually a shared design; kudos to you sir!

RT > Amoore100 06/21/2016 at 06:44

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This is also the reason why a few early Bentley Arnages got BMW engines.

BMW and VW had a bit of a takeover battle for these brands and even threatened to stop supplying engines to each other.

Thankfully it all worked out in the end.

Amoore100 > RT 06/21/2016 at 12:04

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Ah, that’s probably what confused me...I didn’t include the Seraph and the Arnage because I saw the engine confusion and I’m not old enough to remember the details of that fiasco between VAG and BMW.

RT > Amoore100 06/21/2016 at 19:46

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No worries, I had to research it to check anyway.

Nauraushaun > Amoore100 06/26/2016 at 03:12

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I’m watching episode 3 of James May’s Cars of the People and they touch on this content quite heavily :)

Amoore100 > Nauraushaun 06/26/2016 at 03:29

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Haha, I love Cars of the People! That plus Clarkson’s Car Years is how I get my Top Gear fix before The Grand Tour is released ;)

Nauraushaun > Amoore100 06/26/2016 at 03:40

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Oh I’ll have to have a look at Car Years

Amoore100 > Nauraushaun 06/26/2016 at 03:42

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It's pretty great IMO, classic Clarkson wit with a lot more information than Top Gear. Be warned though, he has some unpopular opinions on everything ;) but I'm sure you already knew that.

Nauraushaun > Amoore100 06/26/2016 at 05:56

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It was made so long ago, I was wondering how I’d feel about it. I know of at least one particularly awful old video where he heads to Japan and is bewildered by things like Skylines and cars making 300hp from a small turbo engine. As someone with the internet and Gran Turismo, the fact that these exists not shocking, and I resent young Clarkson pretending he’s uncovered a great secret.

But the descriptions seem good so we’ll see :P

What I’m getting from Cars of the People so far is a lot of drudgery about how England is a terrible place that makes terrible cars, and was trudging along for decades before the Japanese and Germans finally beat them down. It’s fascinating though.