If you appreciate classic Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars but don't claim to be an expert, you may not notice anything special here. After all, we're looking at a drophead coupé version of the familiar Bentley S-series Standard Steel saloon – two doors rather than four, a folding roof, but otherwise very similar. So what's the secret?
For most of the S-series production run (1955-'59) there was no drophead version of the Standard Steel saloon. There was the Continental DHC, bodied by Park Ward in aluminium, of which 94 were built. Then there were other coachbuilt ‘specials’ offered by the likes of James Young, Graber and so on and mostly built on the standard chassis, while HJ Mulliner bodied 22 dropheads in their own allaluminium Style 7409. See page 42 for photos of these sometimes very similar cars. But as Rolls-Royce saw it, that still left a gap in the market – or at least a gap in the price lists.
You could have a Standard Steel saloon for £4669 including purchase tax, but a Continental in either coupé or drophead form was almost twice that. Shopping around for a chassis to be bodied at one of the independent coachbuilders wouldn't result in much of a saving, if any.the idea was about to be scrapped when HJ Mulliner got wind of the concept and asked if they could try it.
