Genuine Bentley Parts for the UK Trade

Why a Bentley part is a date question before it is a parts question

Low-volume marques are assumed to be badly supported for parts, and on this one that assumption is backwards. Bentley runs its own dedicated parts operation, and the manufacturer describes its scale plainly: the site holds “more than 61,000 different parts, not only for Bentley models dating back to 1955 but also Crewe-built Rolls-Royce cars of a similar period”, it is large enough that “At a size of 150,000 sq ft, Orion Park is the same size as three football pitches”, parts arrive from “one of the 750 suppliers” and go through quality control before storage, and “Over 300 shipments leave here every day” — see the manufacturer's own heritage parts operation. What it supplies runs “From a washer to an entire car body”.

So the usual starting assumption on a Bentley request is that the part exists and has a number. What turns it into a sourcing job is that the manufacturer's provision is split by date and by model into separate systems that do not answer for each other. A workshop that queries the wrong one is told no by a system that was never going to hold the part, and that answer looks identical to a part being obsolete. Parts sourcing on this marque is mostly the work of establishing which system owns the car in your bay before anyone searches for availability.

The second difficulty is access rather than supply. The heritage catalogue is published openly, which is unusually helpful of a manufacturer, but it is a reference and quotation tool rather than a counter — and the transaction route it points at is the franchised network. For an independent bodyshop or restorer that is the friction, and it is the part of the job we take on.

Three systems, and the dates that decide which one holds your part

Everything below comes from the manufacturer's own published boundaries rather than from an interpretation of them. Identify which row your car sits in and most of the search strategy follows automatically.

The manufacturer states that its heritage site was “created to support independent specialists, owners and enthusiasts of Heritage Bentleys” “(1955-2009) and Crewe-built Rolls-Royce motor cars (1955-2002)”, and describes itself as “designed to support owners of both Heritage Bentley and Crewe-built Rolls-Royce models from 1955 – 2009”, with the bracketed carve-out “(excluding Bentley Continental and Continental Flying Spur models from 2003 onwards)” — see Bentley Heritage Parts.

The 2003 line is the one that catches workshops out. A Continental GT is now a car that reaches independent garages and bodyshops routinely, and it is old enough to feel like a heritage vehicle — but in parts terms it sits in the current system, not the heritage one.

What the heritage catalogue does, and what it will not do for an independent

Taken on its own terms the heritage catalogue is a serious piece of work. The manufacturer states that “Our site contains parts information for over 100,000 cars through 9,700 catalogue pages containing 67,000 unique part numbers”, that it publishes “electronic versions of our original parts catalogues” including “an array of component diagrams”, and that the technical material is divided into the eras 1955-1965, 1965-1980, 1980-1998 and 1998-2009. For identification on an older car that is a better starting point than most marques give you.

Its limits are stated just as plainly, and they are the reason a trade sourcing service exists alongside it. The manufacturer says “You cannot order parts directly from this site, it is not an e-commerce site”, that you “add to your quotation basket to request a quote from your chosen Authorised Bentley Retailer”, and in its frequently asked questions that “all business transactions must take place through the Authorised Bentley Repairer Network”, after which “all subsequent business transactions will then be between your selected dealer and yourself”.

We should be exact about what that means for us, because it would be easy to imply otherwise. REMCAM is not part of the Authorised Bentley Repairer Network and claims no appointment, approval or agency. Where a line is supplied only through that network, that is the route, and we tell you so rather than dressing it up. What we add is the work either side of it: confirming which of the systems holds the car, resolving the number and its supersessions, and running in parallel the searches the franchised route does not — other markets, marque specialists, genuine new-old stock and good used genuine parts. See hard-to-find parts and obsolete and discontinued parts for how those run in practice.

On quality the manufacturer's published position is useful to have in a file: “All Bentley and Crewe Genuine Parts are manufactured to the highest possible standards using the original drawings” and, “where possible, the same material specifications”. It also states that “All of our parts carry a full, comprehensive warranty”, without publishing a term — so confirm the warranty terms with whoever supplies the part rather than assuming a period. We tell you which category any quoted part falls into — new genuine, genuine new-old stock, good used genuine, or OEM or OES — before you commit, because a bodyshop file and an insurer both need that recorded. Our guide to genuine, OEM, OES and aftermarket parts sets out the categories.

Crewe Genuine Parts: the Rolls-Royce cars inside the Bentley system

This is the piece most workshops do not know, and it saves a wasted morning. The manufacturer states that “Crewe Genuine Parts is the brand name for all Crewe-built Rolls-Royce vehicles built from 1955 to 2002, and the parts that are now supported by Bentley Motors Limited”, “built to the original drawings and specifications”. For cars of that era, in other words, the boundary that matters is where the car was built, not which badge is on the bonnet.

The practical consequences are straightforward. A Crewe-built Rolls-Royce of that period is, in catalogue terms, a Bentley parts enquiry — so tell us the actual car rather than assuming we need a different specialist for it. The provision also has an end date: 2002 for Rolls-Royce against 2009 for Bentley, so a later Rolls-Royce falls outside this system altogether and has to be searched elsewhere. And because the two marques were supplied from the same Crewe operation across that period, a part that draws a blank under one name is worth re-checking under the other before anyone concludes it has gone.

Send the chassis number or VIN and say plainly which marque the car is and which year it was built. On the 1955-2002 overlap that single line decides which catalogue we open, and opening the wrong one produces a confident, wrong answer.

For whole-vehicle project work across either marque, see classic and vintage car parts and restoration parts, which cover how we handle a long parts list over the life of a build rather than one urgent item.

Chassis number, VIN, and why a bespoke car has no derivable parts list

Bentley describes its current cars as handcrafted and bespoke — the manufacturer's own wording is that its people “design, engineer and handcraft five bespoke models” — and its personalisation division advertises “one of the 100+ exterior paint colours offered today” before any bespoke matching, four coloured carbon fibre tints, and veneer finishes running to “well over 100 available shades”. That is excellent for an owner and unhelpful for anyone trying to work out a part number from a model name and a year.

• Chassis number or VIN first. On the older cars the chassis number is what the original catalogues are organised around; on modern cars the VIN resolves the build. Either way, the number on the car beats any description of it.
• Build date, not registration date. Running changes land by production date. A car registered after a change can have been built before it and takes the earlier parts.
• Which era the car sits in. The heritage material is divided into 1955-1965, 1965-1980, 1980-1998 and 1998-2009, and a car near a boundary needs its exact build date rather than its decade.
• Specification, not model. Paint, hide, veneer, brightwork and fittings were chosen individually. Send the codes read off the car and a photograph of the material; a colour name from a brochure is not a specification.
• Coachbuilt and modified bodies. Older cars left the factory as a chassis for a body that was not always standard, and a long ownership history adds more. The correct part is the one that fits what is actually on the car.
• Handedness. Manufacturers define left and right from the driver's seat and diagrams are not always consistent with estimating systems. A photograph of the part in position settles it.
• Supersessions. A number from an old diagram, an old box or an old invoice may be several revisions behind the current one. We follow the chain forward and tell you what replaced what.

If you are not sure where to find the VIN or what a registration record actually reveals, our guide on finding car parts by VIN or registration walks through it, including why the V5C is worth having to hand before you send a request.

The current range, and the 2003 line that catches workshops out

Bentley's published facts and figures state that the company is “Located in Crewe, England and owned by the Volkswagen Group since 1998”, that “The Bentley Motors factory is a fully integrated site” where “all aspects of car production from Design, Engineering, Manufacture, Quality, and Sales & Marketing take place in Crewe”, and that it “employs around 4,000 people at its Pyms Lane headquarters in Crewe, Cheshire”. The five models it names — Continental GT, Continental GT Convertible, Flying Spur, Bentayga and Bentayga EWB — are the current parts network's territory.

The earliest Continental GTs are now well past twenty years old, out of franchised servicing and into independent garages, specialists and accident repair centres. They feel like modern classics and they get talked about as heritage cars, but the manufacturer's own carve-out puts Continental and Continental Flying Spur models from 2003 onwards outside the heritage catalogue. Searching the heritage system for one of them is a dead end that reads exactly like an obsolete part. We check the right system first, which on this marque is half the job.

Bodywork, paint and trim

Most Bentley bodyshop requests are ordinary panel sourcing done precisely: panels and bumper assemblies, lamps, glazing, mirrors, brightwork, and the fixings and carriers behind them. The marque-specific risk is paint and trim. With more than a hundred standard exterior colours before any bespoke work, and interior combinations specified car by car, the code has to be read from the vehicle — never inferred from the model, the year or a colour name. Send the codes and a photograph of the material, and say whether the car has been resprayed or retrimmed at any point. See genuine body panels for how we work those lines from an estimate, and mechanical components for the driveline and under-bonnet side of the same job.

Repair methods and structural work

We do not publish repair procedures and we do not infer them. Where a repair needs the manufacturer's documented method — permitted repair options for a section, the materials involved, joining methods and consumables, replace-only components and the checks required afterwards — we source the method for the vehicle and the repair area you describe. See manufacturer repair methods. On structural work it is worth requesting the method and the parts in the same enquiry so the estimate reflects any replace-only items before the car is stripped, and bodyshop support covers how that runs alongside courtesy vehicles and recovery for a car that will be with you for a while.

Pre-1955 Bentleys and long restorations

Vintage Bentleys sit outside everything described above. The manufacturer's heritage provision begins at 1955, and the heritage site directs pre-1955 enquiries to a separate specialist rather than covering them itself. For a restorer that is a different kind of search from the outset: marque and model specialists, the owners' club network, genuine new-old stock, good used genuine parts, and remanufacture to original drawings where nothing else survives. We say which of those a quoted part is, every time, because on a car of that age the category changes the value of the finished vehicle as well as the cost of the job.

Age also brings registration rules into the conversation, and they are better settled before an order than after. GOV.UK's guidance on historic vehicles states that the MOT exemption applies where “the vehicle was built or first registered more than 40 years ago” and “no ‘substantial changes’ have been made to the vehicle”, giving as its example of a substantial change “replacing the chassis, body, axles or engine to change the way the vehicle works”. On a long restoration that distinction decides whether you are sourcing the component the car carries now or the one it originally left the works with. We are not advising on a vehicle's registration status — that sits between the keeper and DVLA, whose public vehicle information service shows the basic record a registration holds — but tell us which version you want and we search for that one rather than quoting both and leaving the question open.

Imports, market specification and landed cost

A genuine part number is issued once by the manufacturer and used worldwide; what differs between markets is stock and specification. Bentleys move between markets more than most cars do, so before we search we confirm what the car in front of you actually is rather than what the model name suggests. Lighting is the item that most often decides whether a part is usable at all: DVSA's MOT inspection manual records that “It's acceptable for masks or converter kits to be fitted to right hand dip headlamps” “to temporarily alter the lamp for use in the UK by removing the beam ‘kick-up’ to the right” — see section 4: lamps, reflectors and electrical equipment. For a car going back to a customer the correct left-dipping lamp is almost always the right answer, and that is what we source unless you tell us otherwise.

Where a part comes from outside the UK it is an import, so duty and import VAT belong in the quotation rather than arriving afterwards as a surprise. Rates depend on the commodity code and origin of the specific item and HMRC's Trade Tariff is the authority; we quote the landed figure for the actual source rather than an overseas shelf price. The wider position on bringing parts in is on our international parts sourcing page.

When the part exists and the route does not

Three situations send a Bentley parts request to us, and on this marque two of the three are about access rather than scarcity.

• The number is live but the route is closed to you. The part is catalogued and supplied, but only through a network an independent workshop is not inside. This is the most common Bentley case and the one that produces the most wasted phone calls. See genuine OEM parts sourcing.
• No stock and no date. The line is current, UK stock is gone and the date keeps moving. On a low-volume marque a single national back order can hold a car for a long time, and the same number is often sitting elsewhere. See back-ordered parts.
• Genuinely withdrawn. Lines are retired, and on the older cars some were made in small numbers to begin with. Here the honest answer may be new-old stock, a good used genuine part or remanufacture to the original drawing — each described as exactly what it is. See obsolete and discontinued parts, and for the step-by-step method how to source hard-to-find car parts.

Prestige work of this kind sits alongside the rest of our specialist sourcing — see prestige, performance and supercar parts for the wider picture, and European and German car parts where a car's components were sourced from mainland European suppliers.

How a Bentley parts request works

1. Send the registration, VIN or chassis number, a description of the part and, where you have them, a part number, a heritage catalogue reference, an estimate line or a photograph. Tell us the year and whether the car is a Bentley or a Crewe-built Rolls-Royce.
2. We establish which system the car belongs to — current network, heritage catalogue, Crewe Genuine Parts or pre-1955 — then confirm the correct part number for its build, including supersessions and specification-dependent variants.
3. We search that system first, then the markets that still hold the number, then marque specialists and, if you have told us it is acceptable, genuine new-old stock and good used genuine parts.
4. You receive availability, the category of part, where it is coming from, the price and the lead time for that specific source — including, where the only route is the franchised network, a plain statement that this is the route.
5. On approval we order, handle the import where the part comes from outside the UK, and arrange delivery to your workshop.

Independent, and trade only

REMCAM Automotive Ltd is an independent parts-sourcing specialist and is not affiliated with, approved by or an authorised agent of any vehicle manufacturer. We are not a member of the Authorised Bentley Repairer Network. Manufacturer and model names are used to identify the vehicles we source parts for, and references to the manufacturer's heritage catalogue, to Crewe Genuine Parts and to the retailer network describe publicly published arrangements — they are not a claim to be part of them. Being independent is the point of the service here: we are not confined to one franchise's parts system, so a single search can run across the manufacturer's own provision, other markets, marque specialists and the new-old-stock trade.

We supply the trade only — garages, bodyshops, accident repair centres, restoration specialists, marque specialists and fleet workshops. Private owners should ask the business carrying out the work to send the request, which also means the part is identified against the car in front of the technician. Send the details through Request a Part.

Common Bentley parts requests

The requests that reach us for this marque repeat often enough to be worth listing, and recognising which pattern a job falls into usually decides where the search starts.

• Continental GT and Flying Spur accident repair parts. The largest category by volume, and the one most often sent to the wrong system because the car feels older than its parts provision treats it. Lamps, bumper assemblies, carriers, glazing and the sensor content behind them all come from the VIN rather than from the estimate's description.
• Brightwork, grilles, badges and chrome fittings on the heritage cars. Frequently the longest-lead item on a restoration, and the one where new-old stock and good used genuine parts do most of the work. Condition matters as much as availability here, so we describe it rather than just confirming a part exists.
• Interior hide, veneer and trim in a specific combination. Rarely resolvable from a model name, because the combination was chosen for that car. Send the codes read off the vehicle and a photograph of the material and the grain.
• Suspension, braking and driveline components across both eras. Ordinary mechanical sourcing done precisely. The pitfall is a car part way through a restoration that no longer carries the components it left the factory with.
• Crewe-built Rolls-Royce parts arriving as a Rolls-Royce enquiry. Handled in the Bentley system for cars built between 1955 and 2002. Tell us the marque and the year and this stops being a complication.
• Parts for a car that has already been quoted as unobtainable elsewhere. Worth re-testing on this marque. A no from the current network says nothing about the heritage catalogue, and a no from the heritage catalogue says nothing about the markets, specialists and new-old-stock trade outside it.

What slows a Bentley parts search down

When one of these orders goes wrong, the cause is usually on a short list — and every item on it is avoidable at the request stage.

• A model name and a year instead of a chassis number or VIN. On a marque where specification was chosen car by car, that narrows a search to a family of numbers rather than to one, and it is the commonest reason a part arrives and does not fit.
• Not saying whether the car is a Bentley or a Crewe-built Rolls-Royce. The two share a parts operation for 1955 to 2002 but not a catalogue entry. Guessing wastes the first exchange.
• Treating a 2003-on Continental as a heritage car. It is excluded from the heritage catalogue by the manufacturer's own carve-out. Searching there returns nothing, which is easily misread as the part being obsolete.
• A paint or trim colour given by name rather than by code. With more than a hundred standard exterior colours before any bespoke work, a name is not an identification. The code is on the car.
• An undocumented previous repair or restoration. Rebodied, retrimmed and re-engineered cars are common at the older end of this parc, and the correct part is the one that fits what is fitted now. A photograph answers in seconds what a specification sheet cannot.
• Accepting an old no as final. The current network, the heritage catalogue and the routes outside both are separate searches, and a line written off against one of them may still be live on another.

None of this needs solving before you contact us. Send what you have, and if something is missing we will tell you which detail we need and why it changes the answer.