The founders of Bentley Motors, Walter Owen Bentley and his brother, Horace Millner Bentley, once made their living selling French cars during the years before World War I, but their ultimate goal was to design and build a line of cars of their own, and by 1921, Bentley Motors Ltd. produced their first automobile. It featured a motor designed by a former member of the Royal Flying Corps, and the ensuing line of cars became synonymous with understated luxury and precise attention to detail and craftsmanship.
The design for the EXP 10 Speed 6 concept car at the Geneva Motor Show is both a harbinger of things to come and a demonstration of the impact additive manufacturing will have on the future of how high performance sports and sedans will be built.
Based in Crewe, UK, the British manufacturer says 3D metal printing technology was used to fabricate a variety of the concept car’s functional parts.
“It could be a future model line, alongside the Continental GT and redefining the pinnacle of another market sector, and the styling of the EXP 10 Speed 6 could influence the expansion of the Bentley family,” says said Bentley chief Wolfgang Dürheimer. “This is not just a new sports car concept – but the potential Bentley sports car – a bold vision for a brand with a bold future.”
Bentley designers say they test a wide variety of materials and their properties to build nearly any part used on the iconic vehicle’s interior and exterior, and those tests have included wheel rims and tires, tail pipe trim and more.
What do you think of the EXP 10 Speed 6? Let us know in the Bentley Motors and AM forum thread on 3DPB.com.