Britain makes the world’s best luxury cars: we got there early, as we did with the Industrial Revolution, which is why our infrastructure is fraying, though our cars aren’t. You can argue about Rolls-Royce vs Bentley, and both be right, though the late Queen chose a Bentley for the state limousine and a Jaguar Land Rover for the state hearse in Royal Claret. (It was little discussed, for reasons of taste, but it was a very beautiful hearse. The claret was right.) Perhaps a Rolls-Royce is too elitist though; with minimal specification, it could be made to look like a crown.
Here is the Bentley Flying Spur Mulliner: the Bentley saloon, a GT with four doors. You can take a 4.0 litre V8 or a 6.0 litre W12 engine, but electrification is coming: this is the 2.9 litre V6 hybrid, a step on that road. Bentley salespeople say that within ten years most of the super-rich will be under 40 and a third of those will be female, and they want electric cars. Bentley’s Crewe factory was certified carbon neutral in 2019. By 2026 all Bentley cars will be hybrid or electric, and they will be zero emissions by 2030.
So, if you want a Bentley petrol car, buy it now. I suggest the Continental GT Mulliner with 6.0 litre W12 engine (0-60 mph in 3.5 seconds, top speed 208 mph), or the Flying Spur if you want adults in the back, or the Bentayga if you want to go up mountains and along riverbeds like credulous people in car adverts, who seem surprised that the world is free of other cars, and other people, so what are they fleeing?
I used to think that electrification would ruin luxury cars. I’m sure a Spectator critic said the same thing about horses. If I search the 1930 archive, they will be tutting over the Blower Bentley, and saying horses are better. But we learnt to build cars with souls, or the appearance of them at least: a mirror. A Ferrari, for instance, is absolutely an Italian man. Something beautiful will come. It always does.
Luxury saloons have a peculiar tension, singular to them: to drive or be driven? I would love to drive the state limousine, which is based on the Bentley Arnage, and drive it badly: it has a customised sculpture of St George slaying a dragon on the car hood and is worth £10 million. It is back heavy: it looks like the car Max Bialystock shouted at in The Producers, taking it as a symbol of the success that eluded him: ‘That’s it, baby, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’ Today people prefer to drive their own car – even the rich can feel trapped – and the shape of the car has changed to mirror this. It has more balance.
The Flying Spur Mulliner is beautiful, with a finesse that is, for me, in my ratty yet too dependable VW Fox (it will not die, I have tried to kill it for the scrap value) decorated with dog hair and dog sick, barely to be imagined. It is a Mulliner, the customised Bentley division, though not customised for me, which is for the best. I would match it to a blue and pink floral side plate. My husband says it would look awful, like a mechanical shrub. It is customised for someone with taste. It is painted in a grey called Breeze. The cabin is tri-tone in Portland and Damson leather with a light blue accent. Car customisation has its own language. You must learn it. It is first impenetrable, then mesmerising. Customising your own Bentley is a journey you may not return from. You may not want to. This is a world of tweed-trimmed door inserts, stone veneers, personalised treadplate plaques and golden organ stops.
The Flying Spur Mulliner is fretted with leather and wood and stitching; it is sublimely comfortable; people stare at it. But the finish is the least of it: some hotel rooms can move. The top speed is 177mph and it will get you from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds, which is insane from a hybrid that weighs more than two tonnes. And people are buying this. Bentley had its best year in 2022 and puts this down to customisation. You will pay a lot for something you are emotionally invested in. Nothing cheers a brittle heart like £250,000 car; and if it looks like a side plate you love, all the better.
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