Interview: Frank-Steffen Walliser

When earlier this year it was announced that Adrian Hallmark was leaving Bentley for Aston Martin, it’s fair to say the faces in Crewe were as etched with worry and concern as those in Gaydon were with ill-concealed delight.

Hallmark was regarded as a talismanic leader in the CW1 postal district and, with record sales, record profits and the transformation of the Pyms Lane campus into a state of the art manufacturing facility it was not hard to see why.

Also, no one in Crewe or at VW head office in Wolfsburg saw it coming. No time for succession planning at all, which is not how they like to do things there. But Bentley needed a new leader, and needed one fast. Which, as I was told by no small number of people, meant two things: his replacement would be in-house, and he or, somewhat less likely, she would be German. They were right on both counts.