BENTLEY MULSANNE SPEED
Can anything weighing 2610kg ever be sporting? Well, 1100Nm of torque gives the Speed a fighting chance
IIT ALWAYS FEELS wrong to hustle a Bentley, even when it’s fitted with the most potent version of the company’s legendary six-and-three-quarterlitre twin-turbocharged V8. There’s something not quite right about asking 2610kg of aluminium, timber, bovine skin, shag-pile carpet and a champagne fridge neatly installed between its two rear seats to adopt the attitude of a McLaren. It’s just not the done thing.
Clearly Bentley feels differently or it wouldn’t go to the trouble of spending 400 hours building each Mulsanne Speed. That includes 5800 individual welds and 37 hours spent stitching the interior trim together. Oh, and the ten-and-a-half hours set aside to bolt together its fabulously fearsome engine.
The bald stats are 530bhp and – rather more tellingly – 1100Nm, delivered via an eight-speed ZF auto gearbox that’s been recalibrated from the standard Mulsanne’s settings to better optimise the engine’s output. There’s even an ‘S’ mode for the shift speeds. With almost three tons to propel, every little helps.
Further enhancements include new active engine mounts and uprated suspension bushes to accompany Bentley’s Drive Dynamics Control and Continuous Damping Control systems. The former manages throttle, suspension and steering maps; the latter controls the car’s air suspension to allow it to switch from chauffeur levels of comfort to a lower, more aerodynamically efficient setting at higher speeds.
A Mulsanne Speed is not for those wishing to keep a low profile. It’s vast. There are flats on London’s rental market with a smaller square footage (and this is the short-wheelbase model; the Extended Wheelbase adds a further 250mm of real estate).
Since last year’s revamp, everything is bigger on the new Mulsanne: the grille is wider by 80mm, the front bumper by 53mm, the rear by 26mm. But the ride height here is lower. With the Speed’s darkened chrome 21-inch wheels, it’s a bit of beast – a monster truck, to recall Ettore Bugatti’s suggestion that WO Bentley’s finest were the fastest trucks in the world.
Inside, there’s a new touchscreen infotainment system to bring the big Bentley gracefully into the 21st century on the tech front. If you tick the right boxes, Crewe will even provide a couple of iPads in the rear picnic tables, a Naim stereo, TVs for the rear passengers and a Wi-Fi hotspot. That money, though, will also buy you an S1 Elise with enough change to repair a head gasket failure.
Use the Mulsanne Speed like a regular car (say, sub-two-tons and around two crore cheaper) and you might be left wondering: ‘What am I paying for?’ It’s very quiet; the refinement levels are off the scale and the effort required to do anything barely registers. Drive with anyone in the rear seats and you can’t help but think they are having the greater Bentley experience. Then you overcome your British self-reserve, twist the knurled DDC control to Sport and hold on.
At 1750rpm the 6.75-litre has already reached peak torque and maintains it to around 3000rpm, then there’s a bit of a drop off before full power arrives at 4000rpm. At no time do you feel the need for more thrust. And where the steering was a bit rudderless in comfort or ‘Bentley’ mode, it loses wooliness and gains some precision; enough, in fact, to allow you to exploit that monstrous V8. The ride quality even remains intact when you select the firmer damper setting to control the beautifully crafted body.
The Bentley Mulsanne Speed, then: great to be driven in and better to drive when you ask it to swap its Loakes for a pair of Onitsuka Tigers. ⌧ Stuart Gallagher (@stuartg917)
Overcome your self-reserve, twist the knurled DCC control to Sport and hold on