Bentley
Bentley has become a well known maker of luxury touring cars. Despite the companies long history the recent success is really quite surprising. For most of its history Bentley was little more than a maker of slightly cheaper Rolls-Royce's. That changed when the company was sold and they were able to get back to their roots making high performance cars. The results have been spectacular and sales have soared in the last decade, to the point where they are now more successful than there former owners Rolls-Royce.
Bentley was founded in the early part of the twentieth century in England and like many car companies of the time they initially focused on selling cars made by other people. However they eventually came to the decision that they could make cars that were better than the ones they were selling. Unfortunately they couldn't get production started before the First World War started and Bentley turned to producing airplane engines. In some ways this may have turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the company. While building airplane engines they were constantly looking for ways to save weight and eventually hit on the idea of using aluminum pistons. This became a hallmark of the post war Bentley's and really made their reputation.
Like most early car makers Bentley made their name building racing cars. In their case they got involved in sports car racing, in particular Le Mans. They were very successful there because they built cars that were so reliable. They were far from sporty cars but they certainly lasted longer. They also put very big engines in their cars making them very fast. During the twenties Bentley enjoyed strong sales, unfortunately during the depression there was little demand for their high priced cars.
With sales declining during the depression Bentley was sold to Rolls-Royce. The result that Bentley's became little more than lower priced Rolls-Royce's. Not surprisingly this really hurt sales and there were very few cars being produced. Oddly despite the low sales under Rolls-Royce ownership they maintained the Bentley Marque for nearly seventy years. Eventually Volkswagen purchased Rolls-Royce and set out to rebuild the Bentley brand. This was mainly because of a complicated chain of ownership BMW actually had the right to produce cars under the Rolls-Royce name. Therefore the Bentley car could no longer be a cheaper version.
Under the ownership of Volkswagen they decided to return Bentley to its roots and build luxury touring cars. This combined with a massive increase in advertising and an increase in dealerships has resulted in a massive increase in sales in recent years. In fact they have been so successful that Bentley now sells more than Rolls-Royce do. The key to the success has been building high performance cars rather than cars that are strictly devoted to luxury. With several new models in the works the future looks very bright for Bentley.