Bentley Java

If you go back and check, it looks surprisingly tough to design an attractive Bentley. Really: the company's back catalogue is cohesive like a box of Dubai chocolate left in the trunk of a Miami-baked Arnage.

Is a Bentley Le Mans-winning sporty, or uptown chic? Is it an authentic Travis Pastrana drift machine (via YouTube) or a daily driven conveyance fit for fictional showbiz icons like Deborah Vance? (Not really—she drove cars from Rolls-Royce.)

Perhaps Bentley, at its core, is all of those things. Perhaps the marque's questionable palate is best informed by the wishes of its taste-starved owners.

This would explain the hit-and-mostly-miss nature of its lineup, where a survivable brand identity is whichever one people will pay a premium for.

Bentley's up-for-anything-my-good-sir heritage would also explain how the BMW 5 Series-based Bentley Java concept convertible spawned a flotilla of Bentley Java convertibles, coupes, and wagons.

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The original Java concept wasn't just a styling exercise. Underneath, a BMW 5 Series platform, topped by a compact four-seat body designed by Bentley's Graham Hull in association with Roy Axe's Design Research Associates. Power for the concept came from a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V8. It was, essentially, Bentley's idea of something smaller and sportier, at a time when such a thing barely existed.

That all Javas began as BMWs is somewhat strange, odder still was how the deal went down. When Bentley showed the Java Concept at the 1994 Geneva Motor Show, the Sultan of Brunei stopped by the stand and was so taken by the marque's not-for-production car that he must have spent mere seconds thinking of a way to get one.

Solution? Don't get one Java. Buy 18 of them.

Six convertibles, six coupes, and six wagons.

And that, friends, is a foolproof way to a concept car into a production car: purchase the entire production run.