“It’s not every day you get an opportunity like this,” says Frank-Steffen Walliser at the recent launch of the fourth-generation Bentley Continental GT Speed in the Swiss Alps. True, the newly appointed 55-year-old is in rare company—only a handful of individuals have helmed the British marque since its founding by W.O.
Bentley in 1919. Automotive leaders come in all shapes and sizes—some unabashedly charismatic, others militaristically tactical. At first blush, Walliser’s background seems anathema to how many people perceive the modern Bentley brand.
A 29-year veteran of Porsche AG , he began his career as an intern and quickly found his groove in all things motorsport. Porsche’s flagship 911 was in the final throes of air-cooled technology when Walliser came aboard in 1995; three years into his job, Bentley avoided extinction by being acquired by Volkswagen AG, later marking the brand’s rebirth with the reimagined Continental GT in 2003. Meanwhile, back at Porsche, Walliser’s engineering background and focus on internal-combustion technology led him to serve as general manager of Motorsport between 2003 and 2008, and shepherd the RS Spyder to success in the American Le Mans race series.
His street-car cred was further bolstered when he spearheaded the 918 Spyder project, thrusting the Stuttgart offering into the so-called holy trinity of supercars that included the hybrid-powered halos from Ferrari and McLaren. Walliser’s arrival at Bentley comes at a cr.
