SPEEDSTERS
The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. Time for car companies to cash in with roofless efficiency
Bentley and Aston Martin join the other carmakers busy chopping roofs off cars and charging gazillions for them
“SPEEDSTERS ARE THE NEW FOURWHEELED, VERY-MUCH-NOT-WATERPROOFTO-500FT CHRONOGRAPHS”
Type “most expensive” into Google, leave the cursor blinking, and the two top suggestions it’ll offer are “car” and “wristwatch”. There’s always been an uncanny synergy between fast cars and timekeeping devices. Fundamentally, they only have one mundane purpose. And yet, the money – the intricacy – that can be lavished on either to seduce the world’s megawallets boggles the mind. Speedsters are the new four-wheeled, very-much-not-waterproof-to-500ft chronographs. Only 12 Bentley Mulliner Bacalars will ever exist. Each has been allocated, its buyer paying £1.5m plus taxes for the privilege. Aston Martin will produce 88 V12 Speedsters. Thirty-five were snapped up just off the back of Aston releasing an abstract design sketch. Even at £765,000 a pop – and a good chunk more change for the F-18 fighter-jet-inspired spec you see here – Aston Martin was confident, on the day of the car’s official reveal on 4 March 2020, that each and every one would be spoken for by the time you read this.
So, Bentley just banked a gross revenue of £18 million for what is underneath a lightly retuned, less capable Continental GTC, which normally retails for £176,000. Meanwhile, when Aston Martin closes what its vice president and chief designer Marek Reichman calls its “little black book of collectors”, it’ll have grossed at least £67 million off this single project, before costs.
It’s unfair to brand this rocket-propelled bathtub a stripped Vantage. It’s actually a combination of Vantage, DB11 and DBS underpinnings, plus some bespoke fixtures beneath the weaponsgrade bodywork. But Marek is happy to admit: “It’s plug-in and play, like Lego. It becomes the forerunner, potentially, for the biggest engine in the smallest wheelbase – think about the future applications for that.” New V12 Vantage, anyone?
Since both of these cars use retuned versions of their makers’ existing 12-cylinder, twin-turbo engines, standard gearboxes, revamped interior fittings and carbon-fibre panels which are cheaper to manufacture in daring low-volume shapes
than metal pressings, they’re a tidy little earner. In fact, they’re vital to the business plan.
Aston Martin intended to make two specials like this per year. It shifted 99 sets of four Zagato V12 specials last year. And the Bacalar is the launch pad for the return of Bentley’s coachbuilding Mulliner division which will do anything its engineering prowess – and the buyer’s budget – can cater to.
Normally, I’d start peppering you with the numbers, noting the Bacalar’s record-for-a-topless Bentley top speed nukes the windscreen-free Aston’s, and wonder aloud why Aston chose to bestow upon this “truly visceral driver’s car designed for our most enthusiastic customers” a 555lb ft anvil of torque, despite knowing it was too much twist for its seven-speed manual gearbox to handle. So, this ultimate extreme high-day/holiday Aston uses an incongruous eight-speed paddle-slusher. Weird.
But sod semantics: why speedsters? Why is this year’s must-have a roofless car with (yet) more power, a single-seater-inspired cockpit and a price pinched from a phone directory? Why has every supercar maker converged on this wafer-thin cul-de-sac of Nichetown? First, the official line from the Bacalar’s exterior designer, JP Gregory.
“These are collector’s pieces. People want to show off their collections, and have one of each.” However, he agrees that doesn’t necessarily mean being faithful to one marque. “It’s the zeitgeist among the super-rich right now.” A reaction to supercars having to grow up, get safer, cleaner, easier to drive – and acquire.
Reichman at Aston Martin is bullish that his car doesn’t follow the herd, but proves the naysayers who mocked the One-77 and Zagato halo specials wrong. “The clustering [of all these new speedsters] is unusual,” he says. “But we’re feeding the collectors and they’re looking for more and more extreme, personalised cars. This is a car for the collection that’ll be used once or twice a year.”
Mulliner describes its brief for the Bacalar as “To create the ultimate open-cockpit GT”, which seems like a paradox if you ask me – if I’m cruising to Nice, I’d like a roof, thanks. But at least it has a windscreen, even if there’s very deliberately no provision for even a get-me-home umbrella. It’s supplied with bespoke, fitted luggage. Is the Aston in danger of being too OTT? Marek defends his corner. “A speedster is even more impractical than a motorbike. But the sense of exposure, the thrill is incredible.”
But come on, will anyone ever really use a V12 Speedster to drive over anything more challenging than Goodwood’s manicured lawn? “Our collectors collect the finest things. The last thing they want is an impractical, good-looking car that doesn’t actually give them feedback and performance.”
“WHY IS THIS YEAR’S MUST-HAVE A ROOFLESS CAR WITH A PRICE PINCHED FROM A PHONE DIRECTORY?”
It sounds like the easiest job on Planet Supercar: flash a design sketch at One Percenters and wait for the bullion-loaded helicopters to arrive. Mulliner boss Tim Hannig protests it’s a nightmare balancing act, with individuals you really don’t want to upset.
“Everyone we say ‘no’ to, we then start working with on something else,” he tells me at the Bacalar’s reveal. “I hate to disappoint people.”
That then raises another question – how do, say, Mulliner, or Aston Martin’s tailored ‘Q’ brand, decide the allocation? Do they bias the cars to folks who won’t bubblewrap them in a vault? After all, Aston’s own Valkyrie project received 600 orders for 150 cars, and these are not clients used to being told no.
Marek says they don’t start being choosey with buyers who’ll actually put miles on the cars until they’re down to the final few remaining build slots. “Let’s face it – 80 per cent will just end up in collections, but the ones that do get driven have to deliver an exhilarating experience. They have to do what they say on the tin.”
Mulliner’s Tim Hannig is an Instagram inspiration quote-omatic. “I’m in the business of fulfilling dreams, not judging dreams. There are no limits to a fantasy.” Not the start of his TED talk, but his answer when I enquire at what point he’d walk away from a particularly tasteless project. This is the first Mulliner, but Bentley will need more of these Fabergé eggs if it’s to start turning a profit. Bentley made losses in 2017 and 2018 due to the crucial Chinese economy stalling and its unpreparedness for the latest emissions regulations. Head honchos at the VW mothership have demanded it turns a profit within two years, so Crewe’s taking a leaf out of the Ferrari and Lamborghini playbooks, seeding a bespoke skunkworks to build squillionaires their winged-B-wearing brainchildren. POA. Aston, of course, has only just been parachuted from financial oblivion by one-man F1 make-a-wish-foundation Lawrence Stroll.
So, why only 12 Bacalars? It may have wider tracks, new wheels, carbon-fibre front and rear wings, new lightclusters and a raised centre console, but, underneath, this is unashamedly a Conti, with the W12 tickled up to 650bhp. “It wouldn’t get signed off if we made any fewer,” explains Tim. “So we suggest the car to our more enthusiast clients, and then it’s first-come, first-served.” When you remember Ferrari is building 500 SP Monzas, which will be an entry ticket for applying to buy the next LaFerrari, you start to realise what a goldmine this idea can be – and how far the likes of Bentley and Aston have to go to plunder it to the max.
There’ll be some overlap, then. Speedsters are in vogue, and who’d been seen dead in Monte Carlo without a set? “We have a much broader remit than Bentley because Bentley does far fewer
“FOR THE 12 BACALARS, BENTLEY HAS CREATED AN EXCLUSIVE PATTERN OF SWITCHGEAR KNURLING”
specials,” says Marek. “If it’s got 12 customers for the Bentley, no doubt some of those will be buying a Speedster.”
I’m fascinated by that psychology – not just buying one wilfully unusable car, but three or four, for millions a pop. “We have a core of customers who want one, or two, of everything,” says Marek. “If you’ve been collecting Astons for 35 years you don’t want to miss the rarest. Some will say no, because they live where there’s rain every freakin’ day. In the case of Speedster, we get a younger customer: the future collectors. At under $1m, it’s actually much better value than some of our competitors.”
Shots fired. Just how much of a bargain the Speedster will seem when Aston – hypothetically – cranks out a V12 Vantage Roadster in the next decade is up to each owner. Bentley’s USP is the material attention to detail – the trim it will not fit to a more humble Premier League prima donna’s training chariot.
For the 12 Bacalars, it’s created an exclusive pattern of switchgear knurling. Each seat features 144,199 stitches in its unique quilting. And the veneer inset around the wrap-around cabin is 5,500-year-old riverwood from East Anglian peat bogs.
Aston Martin will categorically not swathe your Speedster in mummified tree. But it does feature “3D printed rubber”, which could presumably revolutionise birth control, and that carbon spar bisecting the seats makes it about as sociable as a drinks reception in Davos. Luxury is privacy, after all. So long as everyone is looking.
Bentley’s very secretive over what’s next with Mulliner. The Bacalar has succeeded, but it’s a toe in the water. Reichman is happier to pontificate on what Bezos and Zuck will demand next.
“Traditions will always exist,” he says. “Put a roof on a car, and someone is always going to ask ‘can you take the roof off?’ Take the roof off and someone will always ask ‘can you get rid of the windscreen?’ Maybe as driving gets more digital, our customers will want the analogue.”
Makes sense, I guess. Same thing happened to wristwatches.
“LUXURY IS PRIVACY, AFTER ALL. SO LONG AS EVERYONE IS LOOKING”