BENTLEY’S S1 CONTINENTAL The Continental name evokes high-speed travel over long distances in the lap of luxury.

Fittingly, that is exactly the experience that Bentley’s Continental models provided to the favored few during the 1950s.

The S1 Continental, introduced in 1955, featured the last of Bentley’s long-lived six-cylinder engines, which, being a Rolls-Royce design, was smooth and silent but also appropriately powerful.

An exceptionally rigid welded box-section chassis was mounted on a new front suspension that had a semi-trailing wishbone and repositioned rear springs, which improved handling and softened the ride, while a three-way safety braking setup enabled sure stops at the end of those high-speed journeys.

The rear suspension was electrically controlled, and it could be changed to “normal” or “hard” by a switch on the steering column.

While successive V-8-powered S2 and S3 Continentals were offered until well into the 1960s, many viewed the S1 as the model to have; it ...