Bentley’s Crewe headquarters has long held a certain mystique for anyone interested in British motoring, coachbuilding and old-world craft meeting modern engineering.
Now the brand is making part of that world easier to access, opening CW1 House to the public and adding hosted tours that take visitors deeper into Bentley’s heritage spaces.
At a glance
- Bentley has opened CW1 House at Crewe to public visitors during business hours.
- Paid guided tours include CW1 House and the adjacent Lineage exhibition, with heritage cars, motorsport artefacts and a hosted brand experience.
- Tours run on selected weekdays, must be booked in advance and start from £20 per person.
Inside CW1 House at the Home of Bentley
CW1 House sits next to Bentley’s factory in Crewe and acts as the marque’s front-of-house visitor space.
For the first time, members of the public can walk in during business hours, explore the displays and sit in a Bentley without needing to be an owner or customer.
The cars on show are not intended to be static museum pieces.
Bentley describes the display as constantly changing, mixing current models with recent heritage cars to give visitors a sense of where the brand is now and how it got there.
The space also includes the Bentley Boutique, where visitors can buy items from the brand’s merchandise range.
It’s a relatively accessible opening of a company that has usually kept its Crewe world closely tied to customers, collectors and invited guests.
Hosted tours add access to Bentley Lineage
The new paid tours go beyond a casual look around CW1 House.
Hosted by trained Bentley customer hosts, the experiences are designed for groups of up to 12 and begin with a barista coffee before moving through the cars and artefacts on display.
The tour then continues into Lineage, Bentley’s heritage exhibition next to CW1 House.
This area is especially interesting because it brings together important cars from Bentley’s Heritage Collection, including pre-1945 examples that are rarely seen by the wider public.
Lineage uses a digitally immersive presentation to trace Bentley’s story from 1919, setting the cars within the wider context of the company’s design, racing and manufacturing history.
Alongside the heritage cars, visitors can expect to see trophies and other material from Bentley’s motorsport past, a vital part of the brand’s identity rather than a decorative footnote.
Heritage cars, modern models and Mulliner surprises
One of the more appealing parts of the Crewe experience is the mix of eras.
CW1 House represents every model in Bentley’s current range, while Lineage brings in older machinery that shows how the company’s approach to performance luxury has evolved over more than a century.
Depending on the day, visitors may also encounter rare coachbuilt Bentleys from Mulliner, as well as examples of newer special models such as the Supersports.
That changing roster matters because it gives the experience a reason to be revisited rather than treated as a one-time showroom walk-through.
For Bentley enthusiasts, the value is in seeing factory-adjacent heritage cars in a setting tied directly to the place where the modern cars are built.
Booking, price and what comes next at Crewe
Guided tours are offered on selected weekdays and must be booked in advance.
Pricing starts from £20 per person, positioning the experience as an accessible entry point into a brand more often associated with private customer appointments.
The wider factory site is not currently open to members of the public, though Bentley plans to expand public access in a later phase.
The opening of CW1 House forms part of broader development work at Bentley’s historic Crewe home, which has also included new buildings on site such as the paintshop and The Mews, a private customer facility near the factory.
Wayne Bruce, Bentley’s Director of Visitor Experience and Heritage, described the move as a way to welcome a wider audience into the marque’s world of craftsmanship, innovation and luxury.
For visitors, the draw is simpler and more immediate.
This is a chance to see Bentley’s past and present in the place that still defines the brand, with enough access to feel meaningful and enough rarity to make the journey to Crewe worthwhile.
