Born for competition more than 90 years ago and built for speed
After reading our cover story on the new Bentley Continental Supersports this week, we thought you might be interested in a bit of history on the model.
The name Supersports has been part of the brand’s history for more than 90 years.
Conceived by the company’s founder, WO Bentley, the original 1925 “Super Sport” models were built on the Bentley 3.0l chassis and were intended for racing.
“Competition is the cheapest way of selling cars,” Bentley once said. We are not sure that is still the case today.
Bentley encouraged his customers to race and built cars designed for competition.
Eighteen customers opted for the Super Sport, with its shortened chassis and straightfour engine. Bentley personally guaranteed that the car would exceed 100mph (161km/h) — a breathtaking speed in 1925, when the fastest anyone had travelled in a car was 150mph (241km/h).
That person was world landspeed record holder Sir Malcolm Campbell, who set the speed at a time when the fastest that most cars could achieve was 50mph (80km/h).
The original model was called the Super Sport but when the name was revived in 2009 it became the Supersports. We asked Bentley executives why it gained an “s” and it appears there is no real answer.
When the company was planning to revive the name it searched around to see if Supersport was used anywhere else and it appears it found that it was and so changed the name.
Could it be that South African sports channel Supersport caused Bentley to change its naming plan? We will never know officially.
And so the Supersports was born in 2009 as the model which was the pinnacle of the Continental GT family. With 463kW and 800Nm, at the time it was the fastest Bentley ever, capable of 328km/h while also setting a new benchmark in terms of handling for the Continental GT.
So there you go — the story of how the Supersport became the Supersports, sort of.