Bentley

When you think about Bentley motorcars you think luxury and elegance, and the name has been one of the standard bearers for true quality automobiles since their founding back in the 1920s. Like a lot of businesses that started up in those days, Bentley was hard hit by the Great Depression, but they were aided but a consortium of investors that came to be knows as the "Bentley Boys." They were huge automobile racing enthusiasts who poured their passion for the sport into the Bentley brand, and it paid off: they won the LeMans twenty-four hour endurance race four years in a row beginning with a win in 1927.

Rolls-Royce wound up purchasing Bentley and they released a model with a 3.5 litre engine in 1933 that was fashioned after the Rolls 20/25, and it got mixed reviews, especially from Bentley purists. Classic Bentley automobiles remain popular with collectors and project car enthusiasts, including the Mulsanne, 3 Litre, Brooklands, Continental, Corniche, and Mark V. These days, the Bentley brand is going strong. They sold over 10,000 cars in a year for the first time in 2007, with models like the Flying Spur, Continental GT, and the Continental Supersports leading the way.