Co ee with Adrian Hallmark
A fan of its heritage but focused on the future, Adrian Hallmark is leading Bentley into the biggest upheaval of its spectacularly unstable 100-year history
In the new Flying Spur with Bentley’s boss
His exploits in the Blower prove he’s not a suit, tie and spreadsheet car boss
The Bentley Boys loved the south of France. That band of wealthy bon viveurs, adventurers and racing drivers holidayed and partied there like there was no tomorrow. (There nearly wasn’t, several times.) Woolf Barnato, most successful of them all on the track, and a former chairman of Bentley, raced the Blue Train from Cannes to Calais in 1930. He wagered £200 that he could beat the train and set off from the Carlton Bar in Cannes in his Speed Six. He was so far ahead by the time he got to Calais, he continued to the Conservative Club in St James’s Street, London, arriving four minutes before the Blue Train reached Calais.
Adrian Hallmark, current boss of Bentley Motors, also likes the south of France. Many of his customers live there, and his family home is not far away. Named Chalet Birkin after his favourite Bentley Boy, Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin, it nestles in the Grand Massif and is perfect for his favourite sports, skiing, motocross riding and road cycling. Inside there is a vast painting of Birkin at Le Mans in 1930, commissioned by Hallmark.
So Bentley’s chairman and CEO reveres Birkin, but he also loves the car he helped to develop, the Blower. His exploits in the Blower are proof that Adrian Hallmark is not your typical suit, tie and spreadsheet car boss. Now, I’ve driven a Blower Bentley, and it’s without doubt the most physically demanding car I’ve ever piloted, from shoulder-heaving steering to meaty and dicult gearshift to leg-press-heavy clutch and brake. Yet Hallmark cheerfully drove the 1929 ex-Birkin car owned by Bentley from the UK to Brescia in Italy in 2001, competed in the Mille Miglia 1000-mile retro rally, and drove it back again. That’s about 3000 miles in a 90-year-old vintage racer. He says it was the best drive of his life, physical though it was.
‘I ran it in after we bought it and refurbished it, before driving it to Italy. My upper neck, tops of shoulders and backs of arms are still in recovery. My respect for those Bentley Boys who raced it is absolute.’ This year he was back behind the wheel of the Blower again at a trackday in Laguna Seca in California. He shows me a photo of him spinning it.
Today, we’re in Monte Carlo, surely the single place on Earth with the highest concentration of new Bentleys. On Casino Square, the world’s most exotic car park, I count more Bentleys than any other make of car (Mercedes, Porsche and Ferrari close behind). The tourists spend more time photographing the cars than the casino, the Hotel de Paris, or the view of the Med. Brightly coloured Lamborghinis and Ferraris also provide aural entertainment. A couple of lads in a pea-green Huracan Spyder, complete with same-shade brake calipers, rev the V10 close to its 8500 redline. Never mind that it is stuck in trac. That gets a cheer. Elsewhere supercars barp-barp ineffectually as they edge through the jams on the tight roads, caged thoroughbreds in this crazy town.
So Monte Carlo was an appropriate place for Bentley to launch the new Flying Spur. This is an astonishing leather- and wood-lined limo with pillow-soft rear head restraints and a built-in fridge between the rear seats. It weighs 2.4 tonnes, yet in the right mood on the right road it can sprint to 60mph from rest in 3.7 seconds and can do 207mph, the fastest saloon in the world. No car can combine luxury limo and fire-breathing sports saloon quite so emphatically as the 12-cylinder 626bhp Flying Spur.
We first drive it with Hallmark. It’s eerily quiet and simple to steer, helped by amazing four-wheel steering that enables it to pivot on its axis like a small hatch at low speed. It’s some contrast from the dear old Blower. Hallmark joined as chairman and CEO, from Jaguar Land Rover, in February 2018. It’s his second stint at Bentley. First time around he served as sales and marketing director, from 1999 to 2005, when he launched the Continental GT, the car that transformed Bentley. He says he became a ‘Bentley boy’ before that, in his previous role as managing director of Porsche in the UK. ‘I did a study on them while I worked at Porsche. I remember thinking they had massive potential: the history was so rich. But it wasn’t until I joined and we had the challenge of taking a brand that was 80 years old and sold 36,000 cars in those 80 years and now had to sell 10,000 cars a year. What is it in the DNA that could be transported into the future? What could fill the emotional gap that was definitely there? Everyone respected Bentley, but it was so niche. After that, I really got into it.
‘WO Bentley said that he didn’t know of any car maker that had achieved so much in its first 11 years. From a small stable in the back end of Marylebone to five Le Mans wins, a globally recognised brand, astonishing innovation and the myths and legends of probably the most charismatic bunch of racing drivers in history – well, it gets to you. I’m not obsessive about many things, but I’m obsessive about Bentley.’
Mind you, after 12 years – this was 1931 – Bentley went bankrupt. It ⊲
‘I have never, ever desired a saloon. But this is the best car I’ve ever been in’ ADRIAN HALLMARK
was bought by rival Rolls-Royce, the start of a roller-coaster ride lasting almost 70 years, during which the brand was debased into building badge-engineered Rolls-Royces. Yet it wasn’t all bad news. The comely R-Type Continental, often cited as Bentley’s finest car and almost certainly the most beautiful, was born during this period (in 1952) and so was the first Flying Spur saloon of 1957.
The rollercoaster didn’t end until VW bought Bentley in 1998, hiring Hallmark soon after. His task was to bring the new Continental GT to market and boost Bentley’s sales ten-fold. It almost single-handedly grew the luxury car market five-fold, and Bentley remains the world’s best-selling luxury car brand. There has rarely been a single vehicle that so comprehensively transformed a car maker and a market sector, as that original Continental GT did for Bentley and for luxury cars. Mind you, the rollercoaster may have sparked back into life. Hallmark’s first year in charge as CEO – 2018 – saw Bentley’s worst loss in 10 years under VW (£253 million), sales down 10 per cent and revenue down 14 per cent. Dark whisperings from senior VW shareholders, not least the Porsche and Piëch families, said Bentley’s performance was unacceptable.
‘It was tough when I rejoined, but honestly I’ve never had so much fun. There is nothing better than a crisis to clear the mind and bring people together. It simplifies choices. I enjoy crises. I just don’t want to create them.’
Hallmark promised his VW masters that he’d get Bentley profitable within two years and very probably within one. This year will be profitable, he says. The big issue in 2018 was trying to certify Bentleys for new emission regulations. ‘Fifty per cent of our cars in 50 per cent of our markets have not been legal for the past year and a half. Not just Europe. China and US too. So we couldn’t sell them. Now, they’re all switching on.’
The new Flying Spur uses the latest Crewe-built W12. A luxury saloon that weighs almost two and a half tonnes, does 19mpg and emits 337g of CO2 every kilometre sounds about as 21st century as the Flying Scotsman.
‘It’s the car for an era. Attitudes are now shifting way quicker than at any time in our lives. If we were setting out today to do a brand new W12, I’d seriously question that. We made the decision for this car seven or eight years ago. It’s fully compliant, it pumps out 40 or 50 per cent less CO2 than the original W12, and a lot of wealthy people want a car like this, not least here in Monte Carlo.’
Hallmark wants Bentley sales to grow from the 10,000 units a year it has consistently registered since the first Continental GT and Flying Spur were launched over a decade ago. ‘The number of people who can afford luxury cars globally is growing. Sales of luxury cars are growing. But we’ve been flat since 2006.’
He wants growth into the mid-teens, although he knows Bentley will never get anywhere near the global luxury market share it enjoyed after the Continental GT first went on sale – 66 per cent.
Electric cars are on the way. ‘Electric power suits our cars very well. It’s ⊲
quiet and effortless with instant torque. Our ambition is to have a fully electric car by 2025. But until the power density of batteries improves, plug-in hybrids are the only electrified solutions for big cars. Meanwhile, we’ll hybridise everything by 2023. That means plug-in hybrids as well as conventional engines on all models.
‘Our customers say, yes, overwhelmingly, bring it on. They’re happy to drive a 12-cylinder now but they want an electric car in the future as long as it has the same capability.’ Autonomous? ‘Forget it. I only buy a Bentley because I love driving my car. Yes, I may have a driver who drops me off for dinner somewhere, but I want to drive.’ Car sharing? ‘Over my dead body. However, the idea of accessing a Bentley when travelling, that appeals.’ Bentley on Demand in America already allows Bentley owners to borrow Bentleys when away from home via an app. ‘It’s like Facebook for millionaire friends.’
We drive from Monte Carlo to just south of Draguignan, nestling inland from the Riviera, partly on the Route Napoleon. It’s about 80 miles. We return mainly on the autoroute. Super performance and effortlessness are the key qualities of a Bentley, says Hallmark. It’s about floating along at speed but never feeling stressed.
The new Flying Spur borrows the platform and powertrain of the latest Continental GT, but is longer, heavier and has an all-new cockpit, apart from the upper dashboard. As we waft out of Monaco, on small, slow roads, the ride is cushion soft, the W12 purrs silently, and we’re sitting in a cabin full of soft fragrant hides, fluted seats, finely burnished woods and beautifully knurled brightwork. Even the insides of the door handles are knurled.
There are fine details, none more than the three-sided central rotating panel that flips from digital touchscreen to classic analogue dials to a plain wood veneer finish. The clever 48-volt electrically controlled suspension and big new air springs help give an astonishingly supple ride. The 2.4 tonnes of heft probably help too. It may not be quite as low-speed-refined as the double-the-money Rolls-Royce Phantom (£168,300 for the Spur, £360,000 for the Phantom). But it’s close.
On the autoroute the big Spur powers silently along. Rear touchscreens allow back-benchers to control virtually all car functions. You can even raise or lower the newly designed Flying B on the prow. And choose five different seat massage modes.
So far, so big-limo impressive. But when we pull off the wide high-speed two- and three-laners onto the fine driving roads that cross the Alpes-Maritimes, we see the flip side of the Flying Spur. Select ‘Sport’ – though the standard ‘Bentley’ settings for engine, ride and steering are pretty good – and suddenly your two-and-half tonnes of 209-inch-long Bentley strips out of its tuxedo into its tracksuit.
The 48-volt anti-roll system now prioritises flat handling, not supple ride, and you can thread the big beast through the hairpins and fast corners with surprising gusto. The engine roars as it nears its 6000rpm power peak, and the torque lets you punch hard out of the tight corners, the four-wheel drive pawing at the tarmac. There is surely no saloon that can mix sport and suppleness like this Bentley. Look around the cabin, and you can’t quite believe there is so much car behind you.
The new electric steering could be more feelsome, although the wheel itself is delightfully small-rimmed and sports orientated. Plus, you are aware of the mass over the nose. It’s a surprisingly nimble car. But it still feels like a heavy one. The lighter V8 version, on sale next year, will probably be the better driver’s choice.
Then Hallmark tells you, out of the blue, that he doesn’t like saloons. ‘I have never, ever desired a saloon,’ he says, emphatically. And pauses. You sense a ‘but’. Sure enough. ‘I borrowed a new Flying Spur to drive to the airport to pick-up Diess [Herbert Diess, chairman of Volkswagen] and I remember thinking, this drives just as well as my new Continental GT. Then Diess and I jumped in the back together and we’re sitting in this incredibly roomy car and it’s so quiet and comfortable. It’s more refined than a Mulsanne, it’s as quick and good to drive as a GT, it’s certainly better to drive than a Bentayga. It’s the best car I’ve ever been in.’
So the boss of Bentley says it’s Bentley’s best car. I agree. It’s been decades since we’ve been able to say that about a Bentley saloon.
Autonomous? ‘Forget it. I buy a Bentley because I love driving.’ Car sharing? ‘Over my dead body’