WHEN THE CREW WENT TO CREWE

There’s no shortage of European automotive marques that will forever be linked with certain great towns and cities. The manufacturers in question may have expanded hugely over the decades, opening plants in other locations – and other countries – as part of their success, but their roots will always lie in one particular region. For Porsche it’s Stuttgart, for Ferrari it’s Maranello, and for Bentley it’s the north-east English town of Crewe, Cheshire, where the company’s historic factory has been hand-assembling some of the world’s finest cars for more than 75 years.

What started out in 1938 as a brand new facility for building Rolls-Royce aircraft engines then switched to car production with the launch eight years later of the Bentley MkVI – not just the inaugural car from the Crewe plant but also the first to be offered with ‘Standard Steel’ bodywork rather than being sold in rolling-chassis form to independent coachbuilders. And these days the same factory is still the centre of Bentley’s global activities, giving the company’s latest range a direct connection with its post-war classic models. So, when Rolls-Royce & Bentley Driver received an invitation to spend a day at Crewe, we couldn’t wait to head up the M6 and see for ourselves the many changes of recent years.

The choice of Crewe as a location for the new Rolls-Royce (and Bentley) factory made sense. It was a railway town, which meant good transport infrastructure and a ready supply of skilled labour. The site chosen comprised sixty acres of potato fields, part of what was known as Merrill’s Farm. It’s remarkable to think that the first Crewe-built Rolls-Royce Merlin aero-engine was rolling off the production line by the end of 1938, despite construction of the