Picture the colour palette of a Bentley social gathering and you would be forgiven for imagining a world of tweed and restrained tones.
A sparkling red Continental GT Convertible with a rainbow pinstripe might seem like an interloper of the highest order. Yet that’s exactly what was driven in Manchester Pride’s bustling 2022 parade, more than 50 Bentley employees on its coat-tails, in a first for the 103-year-old car maker.
It's the brainchild of the company’s BeProud network, co-founded by Tom Dawes, an exterior engineer who has been with the company eight years. Bentley’s first physical appearance at a Pride festival was something he had been cooking up for a while.
He explained: “This all started about five years ago when me and colleague Adam White went to Manchester Pride and said ‘we’ve got to bring this to Bentley’.