In top gear for Britain - and Bentley

The German chairman of an iconic marque tells Sean O'Grady why he's looking pleased

It is strange, interviewing a German about something so quintessentially British as Bentley. Yet here I found myself at the London Motor Show in the company of Dr Franz-Josef Paefgen, chairman and chief executive of Bentley Motors. VW owns the brand nowadays, but you will find few more enthusiastic Anglophiles than the Doktor, who has been running things since 2001.

He's happy with Bentley: "We are not far away from the point where we can say we have achieved most of what we wanted to achieve."

From being "undercapitalised" before the VW takeover, with "products on the way that were not right to secure the future of the brand", Bentley is profitable, working at capacity and its product-driven recovery can be "consolidated". Those new products, borrowing the best from VW and Audi, are impressive: the Continental GT coupé, Flying Spur saloon and now the GTC convertible plug a gap in the market between top Mercedes and BMWs but below Rolls-Royce, Ferrari and Maybach, at around the £100,000 to £150,000 mark.

Meanwhile the dear old Arnage and its new convertible Azure version cater for the plutocrats. Clever stuff.

But Britishness is vital , and no more Bentleys will be built in Germany after this year. (They made a few Continental Flying Spurs there). Car making returning to Britain? What a funny thing.

What's not so funny is the idea of a Bentley SUV. The speculation about it is "wrong": "We do not have the capacity to do more engineering work on a third car line and would not go elsewhere on the Continent to build one."

Paefgen is a little sniffy about the Porsche Cayenne SUV: "Paint a car black, put a strong engine in and show a lot of technology and it's accepted as a Porsche." Bentley, older and classier, is different. Intriguingly, he thinks a "shooting brake" or estate is a "much better idea". We may just have to wait, though.

So what is next? "We are already growing significantly in Russia and China, starting business in Korea, looking into India." However he is perturbed about events closer to home:

"I'm not going to criticise the Government, but overall, the attitude in this country to having everything moving into services is not the right approach.... Maybe a good idea is to move over into segments where you need more skilled people making more sophisticated products. We have no problem cost-wise or in finding the right people to do that"

Strange, isn't it, that a German businessman cares more about the state of manufacturing than our own Government.