BENTLEY MULSANNE

For automobiles, 11 years is a long showroom tenure. That’s how long Bentley’s last flagship sedan, the Arnage , was in business—uncomfortably close to twice the industry average. Every now and then, we all wake up in the same shirt we had on yesterday, but make a habit of wearing the same outfit two days in a row, and you’re going to lose some friends. The Arnage was losing friends rapidly—sales dropped from a high of 689 in 2005 to just 217 in 2009, although there’s a slight chance that the global financial situation was a factor, too.



For 2010, the folks in Crewe introduced the Mulsanne, an all-new dreadnought to replace the aging Arnage. It rides on a new platform exclusive to Bentley, although some suspension pieces are pillaged from Audi (the front control arms come from the A8, the rears from the A6 Avant). At 219.5 inches overall, the Mulsanne is about seven inches long­er than the Arnage and less than three inches shorter than a Chevrolet Suburban. Speaking of Suburbans, the Mulsanne’s 6036-pound curb weight just trails that of the last four-wheel-drive Suburban we tested. Bentley’s new flagship carries six more inches between its axles than the Arnage, which contributes to an appreciable boost in interior space.


Although it may not immediately appear so (Bentley V-8s have displaced 6.8 liters for the better part of Betty White’s career), the engine is all-new as well. While the pushrod valvetrain, the bore-center spacing, and the bore and stroke remain the same, the block, the heads, and the major internal parts are new. For the first time ever in a Bentley, the Mulsanne’s engine features cylinder deactivation. With a pair of Mitsubishi turbos squeezing a maximum of 16 psi into the manifold, the big eight grinds out 505 horsepower at 4200 rpm and, oh, 752 pound-feet of torque at just 1750. That’s only 13 pound-feet fewer than the ­diesel in a heavy-duty Chevy Silverado, peaking just 150 rpm later. The Mulsanne’s redline is a similarly ­diesel-low 4500 rpm. This sort of grunt could affect plate tectonics. Rope this thing to one bank of the Mariana Trench, and you could cinch it shut like a doctor suturing a lacerated thumb.


Based largely on its string of Le Mans 24-hours wins before and after the Great Depression obliterated the car business (plus one repeat victory in 2003), Bentley says it builds cars for drivers, a seemingly preposterous claim. It builds cars that are the size of  houses, as opulent as old English manors, and as expensive as the average suburban castle. Cars for drivers? Bah! Sounds like cars for residents. To test our theory, we decided to live in the Mulsanne for a weekend.


As cars go, the Mulsanne is better suited to living than most. The square footage inside is roughly what this $328,365 example’s price tag would buy in Manhattan, and the furnishings are supremely comfortable. Numerous 12-volt outlets scattered around the interior allow simultaneous operation of a TV, a grill, and a refrigerator, and the rear seating compartment boasts power shades on all windows. However, the Mulsanne’s heating system, reliant as it is on a twin-turbo V-8, is vastly less efficient than the heating systems of most homes. On the plus side, it’s highly doubtful your furnace could propel anything to a top speed of 187 mph.


On the list of tasks for which a Bentley is perfectly suited, accruing straight-line speed ranks right alongside the other important stuff; things like cultivating envy, sowing seeds of jealousy, and inspiring covetousness. Were one to be so crass as to drag-race a Mulsanne, his win light would illuminate in just 13.4 seconds as he whisked past at 105 mph. Along the way, 60 mph would have fallen in 4.9 seconds, 100 in 12 flat. Of course, effort is so déclassé. The most incredible thing about the Mulsanne’s engine—the “6 3/4-litre,” as it’s been known to the decimal-averse for decades, is backed by the ZF eight-speed auto currently found in the Audi A8 , the BMW 760Li and 5-series GT, the Rolls-Royce Ghost , and your underwear drawer—is how easily it catapults such tremendous mass. It’s like having world-champion strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski help you move your fridge—a monumental task for a mere mortal, in this case accomplished with no evident exertion. Credit the low redline for the lazy impression, as it has the ZF snatching the next gear just as the engine starts to sound like it might be trying. Instead, the soundtrack is a relaxed, low rumble; pure, unruffled snort.

This being a Bentley, the sensation of speed is limited to the surreal blurring of passing scenery. Close your eyes at 80 mph (only recommended for passengers), and you might honestly believe the vehicle is stationary. The only disruption in the driving experience is a mild tremor when four cylinders deactivate during cruising, but we only noticed this if the air and the radio were off and we were in the middle of a deep-breathing exercise. At the track, our test driver noted that the car was hands-off dead smooth at 170 mph and higher. The Mulsanne’s greatest feat, though, is cosseting the driver in this sort of serenity without entirely isolating him from the driving experience.


It filters out untoward road imperfections but not in the floaty  way that a Rolls-Royce does. The steering is not so boorish as to be quick, but it is extremely direct, precise, and even a little communicative. The wheel is the Mulsanne captain’s mole, secretly feeding him information—road textures, slip angles, and stock options—the rest of the car sugarcoats. Throw the Bentley most ungentlemanly into a turn, and the wheel weights up like the helm of a car weighing half as much—okay, maybe three-quarters as much. Thanks to near-50/50 weight distribution, the understeer to which the car defaults can quickly be balanced out, and if you feel like drifting your Bentley, the rear tires put up the meagerest of fights against the engine’s 752 pound-feet of torque. With its immense weight, the Mulsanne might have tilled a rut around our skidpad had it stuck for more than 0.81 g, and its 165-foot stopping distance had us expecting the pavement in front of the car to be crumpled like a rug shoved to one side of  the room.


Serenity as a car doesn’t necessarily translate to comfort as a home. The obvious bedroom is next to the pilothouse, but no car seat will ever be as comfortable as, you know, a bed. As a result of sleeping in the front seats, we ended up needing their massaging function, a $3000 option (that includes ventilation) for the fronts and outboard rears. You can’t hang out in your bedroom all the time, which makes the back seat the ideal living room. But, while it is comfortable and the seats do recline, they  won’t do so to a suitable angle for falling asleep while watching golf, which renders them insufficient. On the whole, the Mulsanne makes a piss-poor residence.


Its interior might not be great living quarters, but it is nearly unmatched in hedonism. The leather headliner might be the largest single piece of  leather we’ve ever seen in a car—so expansive that we half expected to find an udder hidden along an edge—but it is certainly not a lonely swath. Bentley says as many as 17 hides are used in a single Mulsanne interior, and they cover everything above ankle height. As expected, the environs are so opulent you feel like you ought to leave your shoes at the curb. We bought a welcome mat to place outside of our Mulsanne for just this purpose—well, and because welcome mats separate man from apes.




Soft and fragrant as the leather is, the real eye-catcher inside is the unbroken ring of  wood circling the cabin at its beltline. It looks as though a sapele tree has just finished a long soak in the tub, even wrapping behind the rear headrests at the leading edge of the guest bedroom—were we not living in the Mulsanne, we’d call this a parcel shelf. The wood is polished to a depth that invites snorkeling, and it looks to be made of full trunks instead of mere veneers. Walnut and piano black are no-cost options; the “sapelli pommele” is one of a half-dozen optional woods ($4630). Add the $1220 inlay and $2265 for the tables that fold out of the front seatbacks, and our car had more than $8000 in wood alone. Other highlights that swelled the price of the car tested here from a base of $291,295 to $328,365 include $345 for the roughly five-pound metal fuel cap, $2550 for the “radiator mascot” (perhaps you’ve heard of hood ornaments?), $3270 for adaptive cruise control, and $6315 for the two-piece 21-inch wheels. The biggest single investment was $7415 for the 20-speaker, 2200-watt Naim audio system.


As extravagant and comfortable as the Mulsanne is, its most impressive trait is its poise. The notion of  building a driver’s car the size and weight of a lavishly appointed Suburban is laughable, but Bentley has succeeded.  Just don’t try to live in it.

Reviews of cars like the Mulsanne inevitably include a comparison between the interior and an English drawing room or library. But, since our drawing rooms are either the less-posh American style or riddled with bullet holes from being used as quick-drawing rooms, we thought we’d see how much it would cost to upgrade Alterman’s 14 x 17-foot office to Mulsanne spec. The idea was to recreate the car’s interior as faithfully as possible but on the scale of Eddie’s lair.


We contacted Lauren Coburn, a Chicago-based interior designer familiar with this caliber of craftsmanship but whose customers usually have some means of paying that doesn’t depend on expense-report sleight of hand. She was nice enough not to toss out our sketch of Eddie’s floor plan and went to work. It looks like we’ll be putting in a lot of overtime.