Autocar August 24, 2022

PITY THE POOR billionaires of the world as they face being tempted by some outlandish project cars. Take our news pages this week: Mr or Mrs Billionaire could easily drop nearly £9 million if they pay a visit to their local McLaren, Bugatti and Bentley dealers. Oh, and if the cars weren’t all sold out. Leaving aside how manufacturers distinguish themselves in this small pool (what’s one £3m car compared with another?), there’s an interesting sociological angle to all this. At one point, does it become a bit distasteful? Don’t get me wrong. No one wins in a race to the bottom and I’m fascinated by how these machines perform. The technological progress that car makers achieve is staggering. The Bugatti Veyron felt like a once-in-a-lifetime high-water mark yet here we are,…

“Powered by Bentley’s punchiest W12 ever, it will be the firm’s most potent road car yet” Bentley has launched a new, ultra-low-volume Mulliner coupé, the Batur, which previews how its future electric models will look. The launch of the limitedrun car also signals the end of production for the ubiquitous 6.0-litre Crewe-built W12 engine that has powered its cars for 20 years. The Batur, revealed this week in front of a 500-strong contingent of Bentley owners as part of Monterey Car Week in California, has been designed over the past year and will reach its first customer in mid-2023. It is a two-door fixedhead coupé based on the underpinnings of the latest, longer-wheelbase Continental GT launched in 2018 and is powered by the punchiest W12 ever, still under development but claimed to make at…

PITY THE POOR billionaires of the world as they face being tempted by some outlandish project cars. Take our news pages this week: Mr or Mrs Billionaire could easily drop nearly £9 million if they pay a visit to their local McLaren, Bugatti and Bentley dealers. Oh, and if the cars weren’t all sold out. Leaving aside how manufacturers distinguish themselves in this small pool (what’s one £3m car compared with another?), there’s an interesting sociological angle to all this. At one point, does it become a bit distasteful? Don’t get me wrong. No one wins in a race to the bottom and I’m fascinated by how these machines perform. The technological progress that car makers achieve is staggering. The Bugatti Veyron felt like a once-in-a-lifetime high-water mark yet here…

“Powered by Bentley’s punchiest W12 ever, it will be the firm’s most potent road car yet” Bentley has launched a new, ultra-low-volume Mulliner coupé, the Batur, which previews how its future electric models will look. The launch of the limitedrun car also signals the end of production for the ubiquitous 6.0-litre Crewe-built W12 engine that has powered its cars for 20 years. The Batur, revealed this week in front of a 500-strong contingent of Bentley owners as part of Monterey Car Week in California, has been designed over the past year and will reach its first customer in mid-2023. It is a two-door fixedhead coupé based on the underpinnings of the latest, longer-wheelbase Continental GT launched in 2018 and is powered by the punchiest W12 ever, still under development but…

Bentley’s Coventry-trained design chief, Andreas Mindt, whose back catalogue includes everything from the Volkswagen Golf and Bugatti EB110 to the Audi Q8 and E-tron GT, had an early dalliance with Bentley design soon after he joined the VW Group as a junior designer. “I was involved in designing the Bentley Hunaudières,” he says, “the mid-engined concept that was launched at the Geneva show in 2003. That was a big year for Bentley: the company launched that concept, won Le Mans and delivered Her Majesty the Queen’s Bentley limousine, which she still uses.” Mindt soon moved on to VW affairs from the Hunaudières, which proved to be nothing but a show car, but he believes several of its most noticeable elements – the round headlights and the individualistic rounded shape of its front…

Bentley’s Coventry-trained design chief, Andreas Mindt, whose back catalogue includes everything from the Volkswagen Golf and Bugatti EB110 to the Audi Q8 and E-tron GT, had an early dalliance with Bentley design soon after he joined the VW Group as a junior designer. “I was involved in designing the Bentley Hunaudières,” he says, “the mid-engined concept that was launched at the Geneva show in 2003. That was a big year for Bentley: the company launched that concept, won Le Mans and delivered Her Majesty the Queen’s Bentley limousine, which she still uses.” Mindt soon moved on to VW affairs from the Hunaudières, which proved to be nothing but a show car, but he believes several of its most noticeable elements – the round headlights and the individualistic rounded shape of…