Bentley Motors has unveiled a new ‘Bentley Wings’ emblem – the first step of a design and brand revolution at the British marque. The new ‘Winged B’ is just the fifth iteration in Bentley’s 106 year history and will be previewed with the reveal of a future vision concept car on 8th July, coinciding with the opening of a new Design Studio at its headquarters in Crewe, England.
The original ‘Winged B’ design was created by F. Gordon Crosby in 1919. Developments followed in 1931, the 1990s and 2002, but the new 2025 design is the biggest change to the instantly-recognisable mark in more than a century of history.
Created in-house by Bentley’s own design team under the watchful eye of Director of Design Robin Page, the new Winged B is the first step of the next chapter for the Bentley brand and its DNA. Crafted with confidence, care and creativity, the new emblem is symbolic of an exciting future for Bentley.
The new emblem has been revealed on the front of an as-yet unseen new future vision concept car, which in turn heralds the start of a new era of Bentley design language. The design of the new Winged B was led by Robin Page, supported by a small and dedicated internal team. Initially, a competition was run, allowing the entire design team to submit concepts and sketches.
The final design chosen was proposed by Young Nam, a member of the Interior Design team, and that concept was then developed and detailed into the final version. The mission in designing the new emblem was to capture some of the beautiful details from the previous designs – for example, the diamond pattern of the inner wings and the B ‘centre jewel’ - but create a more modern and progressive design.
The shape of the new wings themselves are sharper and more dramatic than the outgoing version – more reminiscent of the angled wings of a Peregrine Falcon than the previous softer shapes.
The lower feathers underneath the B have been removed entirely, for a visually-cleaner shape. The centre of the wings retains the B centre jewel, but redesigned in such a way that the device can stand alone and be used as a graphic without the wings. The jewel has been redesigned to capture the high-quality details seen in luxury watch design, including a bevelled glass edge and chamfered metal surround, with a 3D depth of the “B” below the surface.
Bentley’s Director of Design, Robin Page, comments: “If a luxury brand is the product of the stories it has created, then its emblem is its signature. In more than a century of history, this is only the fourth evolution of Bentley’s iconic Winged B, and redesigning it was a formidable task for which we’ve taken great care. In an era of ever-increasing complexity and fidelity from digitalisation, an exercise of simplification and refinement is a modern necessity – and so the new emblem is cleaner, sharper and more impactful than its predecessor. The new Winged B – and the concept car that introduces it – both symbolise a powerful, exciting future for this company and its exceptional, handcrafted products.”
The elements of the Bentley iconography have always been the same – a prominent B at the heart of the design, flanked by a pair of feathered wings. When W.O. Bentley started his car company in 1919, he needed an emblem that summed up his quest to push the boundaries of performance.
He turned to his friend F. Gordon Crosby, the most famous motoring artist of the prewar years, who brought distant motor races and continental tours to life for readers of The Autocar. Crosby created the original Winged B – with the ‘B’ of Bentley inside a pair of wings chosen to represent the exhilaration of motion – and perhaps also a reference to W.O.
Bentley’s background as a designer of engines for fighter planes in the First World War. Crosby gave each wing a different number of feathers to make it completely unique – and stay one step ahead of fraudulent imitations.
When Bentley passed into the ownership of Rolls Royce in 1931, a new emblem was created. This second iteration was symmetrical, with 10 straightened feathers each side, flanking a simpler B in a plain black oval. This version is the longest-standing example in the company’s history, in use until the emblem’s third revision in circa 1996 – when, as a nod to Crosby the central ‘B’ was revised to echo the original, the emblem became more ornate and more pronounced curvature returned to the wings.
Following the purchase of Bentley by the Volkswagen Group in 1998, the emblem was redesigned again in preparation for the first Continental GT, launched in 2002. For the new era of Bentley ushered in by the Continental GT – a car that took annual production from 1,000 cars to 10,000 – a new Winged B was created. This honoured the 1919 original by reverting to an asymmetric design, with 10 feathers to the left an 11 to the right. This Winged B has been in use ever since as the main identity of Bentley.
Bentley’s 2025 Winged B will have two debuts this week. First, it will be officially unveiled at Bentley’s campus in Crewe, England on Monday 7th July, as part of the opening of Bentley’s new, state-of-the-art Design Studio. This three-storey development has been created within the original headquarters building of the factory, first built in 1938. On Tuesday 8th July, the new concept car will be revealed, as the first Bentley model to wear the new wings.
www.bentleymedia.com
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