Bentley's new showrooms sell the commission, not the car on the floor
At Jack Barclay, a bar now stands where Bentley's reception desk used to be
Bentley has shown its new global retail concept at Jack Barclay in London, the oldest Bentley retailer in the world and trading since 1927. The format drops the traditional line of cars in favour of a lounge, an atelier of leathers and veneers, and a configurator wired to an LED wall. It is due to spread across more than 220 retailers in over 60 markets, although Bentley has named no timetable.
Bentley's Atelier brings Crewe's leathers and veneers into the showroom
The centre of each new Bentley showroom is the Atelier, a space filled with physical leathers, veneers, finishes and colours drawn from the Crewe factory's palette. A 3D configurator connected to an LED wall lets a customer move from a sample in the hand to the finished car on screen. The cars themselves sit in gallery and lounge areas, and handover gets its own lit space with digital displays. Light, in Bentley's words, is treated as a fourth material.
More than 70 percent of Bentley buyers already order Mulliner options
Bentley's own figures explain why the showroom is changing. More than 70 percent of customers now specify some level of Mulliner bespoke content, from an embroidered emblem to a fully coachbuilt car. That mix held revenue at €2.6 billion in 2025, down just 1 percent, while deliveries fell 4.8 percent to 10,131 cars. Each car sold carries more of the margin, and most of that margin is chosen in a room like the new Atelier.
Bentley's deliveries fell 13.6 percent in H1 2026, behind Lamborghini
The volume picture has worsened this year. Volkswagen Group figures show Bentley delivering about 4,200 cars in the first half of 2026, against 4,900 a year earlier, a fall of 13.6 percent. Lamborghini delivered about 5,400 in the same period, and it had already outsold Bentley in 2025 with 10,747 cars. Spread over more than 220 retailers, last year's Bentley total works out at no more than 46 new cars each, fewer than one a week.
Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini built private studios, Bentley goes network-wide
Bentley's rivals moved first, but on a smaller scale. Rolls-Royce opened its first Private Office outside Goodwood in Dubai in July 2022 and has since added Shanghai, New York and Seoul, each a commissioning studio rather than a dealership. Lamborghini runs invitation-only Lounges with Ad Personam studios in New York and Tokyo. Porsche began its Destination Porsche architecture in 2019, with Dortmund and Hangzhou as the first complete sites. Bentley's format is modular, built to fit ordinary retailers rather than a few flagship addresses.
H.R. Owen's investment at Jack Barclay shows who pays for Bentley's format
The cost of the new format falls largely on the retailers. Jack Barclay is run by H.R. Owen, part of Vincent Tan's Berjaya Corporation, and Bentley's regional director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Richard Leopold, thanked Tan personally for the investment. That places the bill with the dealers while their volumes are falling, and it is the same network Bentley needs to sell the Torcal, its first electric car, which enters production at Crewe in early 2027.
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Bentley has read its own numbers correctly. A retailer that sells fewer than one new car a week gains little from a floor full of stock and a great deal from a room where a buyer spends an afternoon choosing veneers. When seven in ten customers already pay for Mulliner content, the Atelier is where the money is made, and moving it from Crewe into the showroom is the logical next step.
So far Bentley has named one site. The concept pays off if the Torcal launches into it, which means the main markets need their ateliers before the first cars leave Crewe in 2027. If most of Bentley's larger retailers have committed by then, despite lower volumes, the network will have shown it believes in the bespoke strategy as firmly as the factory does.
