Bentley has unveiled the New Benley Mulsanne at Pebble Beach - the so-called new 'Grand' Bentley
Well, we’ve waited long enough. We’ve suffered the tease of the new ‘Grand’ Bentley (which wasn’t as entertaining as the tease for the New Jaguar XJ). But finally Bentley has got round to revealing the new Bentley, and its name – The Bentley Mulsanne.
The Bentley Mulsanne has been revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this afternoon and, thankfully, it looks just how a big Bentley should. And it’s not just a butched up and enlarged version of the Flying Spur – although it 11″ longer than its ‘VW Bentley’ sibling – it is a metamorphosis of the Rolls Royce era legacy Bentley Arnage in to a super luxury saloon to compete headlong with its former siblings from Rolls Royce.
Up front the Bentley Mulsanne gets a treatment very reminiscent of the old Bentley Eight litre, with its big round headlights flanked by off-set smaller ones. But with daytime LEDs running round the circumference of the big headlights there is going to be no mistaking this 21st century Bentley for any other car.
The lines flow elegantly to the rear on an incredibly low-sitting car – on its all new chassis – to the rear where – at first glance – there seems to be a fair bit of ‘Continental’ going on. But there isn’t when you analyse it, but cleverly done to give a familiar Bentley feel.
Inside, Bentley tell us that the old-fashioned organ-stop dominated switchgear has gone to be replaced by modern switchgear and chrome accented dials. And of course the hides of a small herd of the finest bulls and the product of a small plantation for the acres of beautifully finished wood. But as Bentley haven’t given us inside pictures we’ll just have to take their word for it for now.
The Bentley Mulsanne will get its official reveal proper at Frankfurt next month. Until then, we’ll have to continue speculating on the power plant (gives us something to do) as Bentley are not revealing engine or other oily-spec until then.
All the Bentley blurb is in the Bentley Mulsanne Press Release.
Bentley Mulsanne 2010 / 2011 Photo Image Gallery
John B says
Surely they can do better than this?
Look at what Rolls Royce has done with the Phantom, or even the Ghost. Look at what Aston Martin has done with the DB9. Even what Land Rover has done with the Range Rover. That’s the standard. This falls way short: there are design students out there who could beat this.
This is a really poor reheat of existing Arnage, which itself was a reheat of the boxy turbo R. Bentley doesnt understand it needs to move on to keep credibility, like the aforementioned marques and now Jaguar too. This is an awful retro pastiche like the Jaguar S type.
The last well styled Bentley was the previous generation Continental R. It was taut and elegant.
The teaser shots were promising but the reality is a big disappointment. This is a flabby ’80’s American car with too much blingy jewelry and a retro cartoon nose. Even the Arnage was stylistically better. Fire the design team and hire the competition in to do something forward looking, modern and contemporary!