Bentley Camargue: the Pininfarina two-door that was really a Rolls-Royce

The car recorded on this site as the Bentley Camargue was the Rolls-Royce Camargue, a two-door luxury saloon made by Rolls-Royce Motors from 1975 to 1986. It was designed by Paolo Martin at Pininfarina and was the first post-war production Rolls-Royce not styled in-house. No Bentley-badged version appears in the sources used here.

Bentley Camargue at a glance

The car appears in our Bentley section because the old site filed it there, but the sources describe it as a Rolls-Royce. This page is based on English Wikipedia only, so the facts were not cross-checked against a second source.

History of the Bentley Camargue

The Camargue was launched in 1975 as the Rolls-Royce flagship and was then the most expensive production car in the world. Its name comes from the coastal region of southern France. At the press debut Rolls-Royce highlighted an automatic split-level climate control system, the first of its kind, which the company said took eight years to develop. The recommended UK price in March 1975 was £29,250 including sales taxes, and rapid currency depreciation raised it sharply later in the decade.

The car shared its platform with the Rolls-Royce Corniche and Silver Shadow and used the same 6.75-litre V8 as the Silver Shadow, though slightly more powerful, with a General Motors Turbo-Hydramatic three-speed automatic. The first 65 Camargues used SU carburettors; the remaining carburetted cars used Solex units, and cars delivered to the United States had Bosch Jetronic fuel injection in the 1980s. The Camargue received the Silver Shadow II’s rack-and-pinion steering in February 1977 and the Silver Spirit’s independent rear suspension in 1979.

Design and dimensions

With a 3,048 mm wheelbase, the Camargue was the first Rolls-Royce designed to metric dimensions and the first to wear an inclined rather than a perfectly vertical grille, slanted at seven degrees. It was sold in very limited numbers in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and Asia, and several cars have since been converted into convertibles by after-market specialists.

Reception and place in the range

The Camargue divided opinion. It appeared in a 2010 Globe and Mail readers’ list of the ten worst cars and ranked 92nd in a 2008 Daily Telegraph poll of the hundred ugliest cars of all time, while the journalist James May called it “not ugly” and said it had presence. In a 2019 study Bernard L. King argued that the Camargue was an important statement car that proved Rolls-Royce Motors could bring new product to market after the near collapse of the aero-engine division. Its high price raised money for the company and acted as a halo model: American Rolls-Royce sales rose 42 percent in 1976, to 1,230 cars from 865, an increase the managing director David Plastow attributed to the awareness generated by the Camargue.

Design and features

• Pininfarina styling: the first post-war production Rolls-Royce designed outside the company, by Paolo Martin.
• Split-level climate control: an automatic system that let driver and passenger choose different temperatures, a first at the time.
• Metric dimensions: the first Rolls-Royce laid out in millimetres.
• Inclined grille: the famous Pantheon shape leaned back seven degrees for the first time.

Bentley Camargue versions

• Carburettor cars: the first 65 with SU carburettors, later cars with Solex units.
• US-specification cars: Bosch Jetronic fuel injection in the 1980s.
• Convertible conversions: open cars created by after-market customisers.
• 1977 and 1979 updates: Silver Shadow II steering and Silver Spirit rear suspension.

The Camargue belongs to the era when Bentleys and Rolls-Royces shared their engineering; see the Bentley Continental R and the Bentley Azure. More cars are in the Bentley collection.

Sources

• Rolls-Royce Camargue, English Wikipedia: design, engine, dimensions, reception