Bespoke orders made up more than half of Bentley’s 13,560 new car sales last year, up almost double (43%) on 2022 to 7500.
The British luxury brand classes personalised cars as those with anything added from its Mulliner division (such as paint colours, finishes, alloy wheels etc), deviating from its 46 billion standard configurations.
Its total annual sales dropped for the first time since 2020, but 2023 was still the third best year in its history, after 2021 (14,659) and 2022 (15,174).
Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark said this showed that “the luxury market was not immune from the challenging market conditions”, especially in the second half of the year.
Issues centered on component shortages and the cost of living crisis in key markets around the world, especially in the UK (1218 sales, down 18%) and China (3006, down 18%).
Growth was seen in the Asia Pacific region (2123, up 5%) and the Middle East, India and Africa (989 combined, up 2%).
Top-end variants – which achieve the widest profit margins – filled 70% of Bentley's order books, up from 30% in 2022. The most popular included the Azure, S and Speed models.
The Bentley Bentayga remained Crewe's most popular product, with 6006 examples sold, for 44% of total sales; and the flagship Bentley Bentayga Extended Wheelbase made up more than a third of the company’s SUV orders in its first full year on sale.
There was, however, still high appeal for the brand’s hallmark sportier models, with the Bentley Continental GT coupé and Bentley Continental GTC convertible accounting for nearly a third of sales (4232) and the Bentley Flying Spur saloon taking a quarter (3413).
On 2024, Hallmark said: “We remain cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, with a continued robust global demand by market and model, high levels of interest in our hybrid models and with more to follow this year.”
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