Are Bentley Pontoons Made By Bentley Motors? Here's Who Owns The Boating Brand

For a company, there's really no brand recognition win greater than your name becoming synonymous with the product you manufacture. When you fire up a search engine, you're about to "Google it," whether you're actually using Google or not. Similarly, if somebody boasts about their Bentley, you'll probably go ahead and assume that they have a luxury car. But really, that's on them for not specifying that they actually meant a very different type of vehicle.

You don't have to be the biggest petrolhead in the room to have heard of Bentley Motors. A British brand that was founded by W.O. Bentley in 1919, it's grown to become an international heavyweight in the luxury vehicle sphere and is one of the United Kingdom's most prominent manufacturers. Some of the best Bentleys of all time include the R-Type Continental and the Speed Six, but one thing that Bentley Motors does not make is boats. That's the purview of Bentley Pontoons, a completely separate brand.

Bentley Motors created its first vehicle in London and is now headquartered in Crewe. Its nautical namesake, meanwhile, calls South Carolina's Lexington home. It's the operating name of Encore Boat Builders, which was purchased by Bentley Acquisition LLC in August 2017. Again, Bentley Motors does not make boats, but Bentley Pontoons does, and Lexington isn't just the location of the brand's headquarters but is also where its boats are manufactured.

All the biggest manufacturers strive to make their vehicles distinctly theirs. There's no mistaking a distinctive Bentley Motors car for another automobile for those familiar. Bentley Pontoons, though it's not at all related to the auto manufacturer, has that same outlook too. The boating brand's official website proudly declares, "We choose to make many of our own components, such as furniture, canvas work, tubes, and fence railing." In this way, owners can be certain that no other brand's vessels will look quite like theirs. Bentley Motors, meanwhile, is so dedicated to these sensibilities that it has a Crewe Genuine Parts Facility for cars dating back to 1955 forward. More than 60,000 parts are stored there, all told. The notion of an original Bentley clearly isn't lost on either brand.

What is an original Bentley Pontoon, though? Pontoon boats are unique types of vessels, just as catamarans are rather different in design from other ships on the sea. They're named for their pontoons, the tubes (at least two, but some have more) beneath the vessel's flat hull. This arrangement affords a lot of deck space, giving pontoon ships the advantage of versatility. Accordingly, the brand offers a range of different models to suit the needs of those shopping for such a vessel, including the Fish Series (optimized for keen anglers, unsurprisingly) and the Bolt, which is a sportier pontoon in the range that can hit higher speeds of around 40 mph. Accessories are also available for those needing to stock up on essential tools for their boats.