Bentley has sold more cars in the UK already than it did in the whole of last year thanks to the introduction of the ‘baby’ £110,000 Continental GT four seat, sports coupe.
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Sales have pushed ahead of the 270 Bentleys sold in 2003 and Andy Watt, regional marketing communications director for the UK, Middle East and Asia Pacific markets, said the luxury maker plans 4,000 sales this year rising eventually to 9,000.
Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders figures show that Bentley sold 103 cars in the UK to the end of February compared with 31 at the same time last year.
Volkswagen, which now owns Bentley, has invested £217 million in Bentley since it bought the business in 1998 with £63 million of that spent at Crewe in new production facilities for the 12-cylinder Continental GT.
Currently Bentley employs 3,200 people at the Crewe headquarters and assembly plant with 850 people taken on in the past 18 months.
A second production shift was started in January this year in readiness for increased output of Arnage and GT models. Current production is running at 104 GT and 14 Arnage models a week. It takes 2.5 months to build each Arnage and 168 hours to build a Continental GT.
Orders placed now for the new £152,000 Arnage will be delivered in October but customers ordering the new Continental GT will not take delivery of their car until mid 2005.
Watt said that the Arnage currently takes 50% of the ‘high luxury’ sector of the world car market for cars costing more than £150,000.
Currently Bentley has 127 dealers worldwide and 16 in the UK. This will increase to 22 UK dealers this year with premises opening in Newcastle, Cardiff, Edinburgh, West London, Jersey and Kent.
