Who Owns Bentley?

Bentley is owned by Volkswagen. Companies House records Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft as the person with significant control of Bentley Motors Limited, holding 75% or more. The register also settles the most confused question in British motoring: the company that builds Bentleys at Crewe was called Rolls-Royce Motors Limited when it was incorporated in 1970, and did not take the Bentley name until 2002. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns the Bentley brand?

The company is BENTLEY MOTORS LIMITED (00992897), incorporated 28 October 1970 and registered at Pym’s Lane, Crewe — the factory it has occupied since the 1930s.

Its person with significant control is Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft of Germany, with ownership of 75% or more of shares and voting rights and the right to appoint or remove directors, notified 6 April 2016.

Bentley sits within the Volkswagen Group alongside Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and Škoda, and so ultimately under Porsche SE and the Porsche and Piëch families, as this site’s Porsche profile sets out.

Parent company and ultimate owner

Volkswagen AG holds Bentley directly rather than through Audi — unlike Lamborghini and Ducati, which sit under Audi. The chain above VW is the familiar one: Porsche SE holds around 53% of Volkswagen’s voting shares, the families control Porsche SE, and Lower Saxony holds around 20% of the votes with statutory blocking rights.

Bentley has no minority shareholder and is not listed. Volkswagen has at times been reported as considering a flotation or a repositioning of the brand; nothing has changed hands.

Brand owner vs operating company

Bentley Motors Limited owns the business and builds the cars at Crewe, where the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga are assembled. It employs several thousand people in Cheshire, which makes it one of the larger manufacturing employers in the north-west.

The Bentley trade marks sit within the Volkswagen group. UK dealerships are franchises owned by independent motor retail groups, not by Bentley.

When the ownership changed

The previous names on company 00992897 are the clearest record anywhere of the 1998 split, and the dates matter:

• ROLLS-ROYCE MOTORS LIMITED — 28 October 1970 to 26 September 1986
• ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR CARS LIMITED — to 23 July 1999
• ROLLS-ROYCE & BENTLEY MOTOR CARS LIMITED — to 12 September 2002

Read those alongside the history and the sequence is exact. The company was formed in 1970 when Rolls-Royce collapsed and the car business was separated from the aero engine company. Vickers bought it in 1980 and sold it in 1998, when Volkswagen won the auction — acquiring the Crewe factory, the workforce and the Bentley marque, but not the right to the Rolls-Royce name, which belonged to the aero engine company and was licensed to BMW.

So VW kept using “Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited” as the company name for another year, changed it to the dual name in July 1999, and dropped Rolls-Royce entirely on 12 September 2002 — months before BMW began building Rolls-Royces at Goodwood on 1 January 2003. The company name tracks the handover almost to the week.

The consequence is the fact most people get wrong: the historic Rolls-Royce car company is Bentley today. The entity that built Rolls-Royces until 2002 now builds Bentleys, and the company building Rolls-Royces now was newly incorporated in 1998. Both statements sound wrong and both are correct.

Related brands in the same group

Volkswagen Group owns Bentley, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Škoda, SEAT and Cupra, Ducati, and its commercial vehicle businesses.

Bentley’s closest relative commercially is Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, and they are now competitors under different owners — BMW’s, as this site’s Rolls-Royce page records. The two spent decades as one company and have been separate since 1998.

Bentley has no connection to Rolls-Royce Holdings plc, the listed aero engine maker, which is a separate company with no consumer brands.

Sources and verification

The company number, the 1970 incorporation, all three previous names with their exact dates and the Volkswagen AG PSC entry are from the Companies House register and can be checked directly.

The structure above Volkswagen is filed in Germany rather than here, so Porsche SE’s holding and Lower Saxony’s stake come from German market disclosures. The 1998 auction and the licensing arrangement over the Rolls-Royce name are matters of published history and contract rather than of any current filing. Companies House does not verify most filed information.