Bentley to Officially Debut Mulsanne Flagship

Technically speaking, Bentley already unveiled its Arnage successor at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, but the regal British automaker was tight-lipped about any specifics.

Details of the new Mulsanne will be unveiled tomorrow (September 15th) at the Frankfurt Auto Show, where we expect to learn about the impressive fuel-economy improvements Bentley has made with this new model. About all we do know is that the Mulsanne, much like the Arnage, is powered by a 6.75-liter V8. The engine has been reworked almost entirely, however, and we expect this model to be able to run on ethanol as well as gasoline. And of course, the engine’s power output will increase as well.

The design is certainly impressive with a massive front grille with huge circle headlights and lots of chrome.

As for the car’s name, it comes from the same place as the Arnage - France’s famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, Circuit de la Sarthe race track. On that track the Mulsanne straight is actually two straights, which have been divided up with a chicane so as to limit the overall speed that race cars can achieve. Modern racers have to slow from over 200 mph to 65 mph to run the chicane, before taking to the second-half of the straight.

Bentley's new ultra luxury Mulsanne sells for 500k at Gooding and Company Auction

There's a new top uber luxury saloon on the horizon and it is the Bentley Mulsanne. This new Bentley was revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance.

Where does the name come from? The name Mulsanne comes from the company's founder W.O. Bentley's crowning achievement in the 1930's : the 8 liter.

From Bentley:

Introducing the Bentley Mulsanne at Pebble Beach, where Bentley was the featured marque, Dr. Franz-Josef Paefgen, Chairman and Chief Executive of Bentley Motors, said:

"The challenge we set our engineers was to create a new grand Bentley that would stand as the pinnacle of British luxury motoring, offering the world's most exclusive driving experience. They have responded to this challenge with real passion and the result is a luxury grand tourer that sets new standards in terms of comfort, effortless performance and hand-crafted refinement - the very qualities for which Bentley is renowned."

"The challenge we set our engineers was to create a new grand Bentley that would stand as the pinnacle of British luxury motoring, offering the world's most exclusive driving experience. They have responded to this challenge with real passion and the result is a luxury grand tourer that sets new standards in terms of comfort, effortless performance and hand-crafted refinement - the very qualities for which Bentley is renowned."

About the video:

The very first Bentley Mulsanne was sold at the Gooding and Company auction at Pebble Beach for $500,000.

[Video Source:Youtube]

Spy Photos: Upcoming Grand Bentley Caught Testing

Now that more than a few people care about Bentley, mostly due to the phenomenal success of the Continental GT, the company has been hard at work on a new flagship sedan to replace the ancient Arnage.

Known only as the "Grand Bentley" up until this point, the new four-door will attempt to pull back some market share from the over-the-top Rolls-Royce Phantom. To assure plenty of attention, Bentley has gone with a pair of monster, gatling-gun type headlights that give it a very distinctive look up front.

Early spy photos posted by CAR magazine appeared to show a prototype in a Bentley plant and these latest shots confirm its identity. With its official world debut only weeks away, it won't be long until we get to see the final product.

2010 Bentley Continental Supersports First Drive

Getting to know the 2010 Bentley Continental Supersports is like discovering your rather crusty family lawyer spends his spare time slugging it out as a bare-knuckle boxer.

After all, this is Bentley, a brand that conjures up images of wood and leather, recollections of traditional craftsmen wearing white coats with pencils in the top pocket.

Instead the Bentley Continental Supersports will scare you witless.

From the Bentley Skunkworks
If you mash the aluminum throttle pedal of the 2010 Bentley Continental Supersports to the floor, what happens next is unlike any other car, let alone any other Bentley. It's not just the searing thrust coming from the 621-horsepower, twin-turbo 6.0-liter W12 engine, for there are other ultrahigh-performance cars that will also cannon you to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. What makes the Continental Supersports unique is the incongruity of sitting within 2.5 tons of leather-lined British steel and then being fired at the horizon like an artillery shell.

The Supersports started life as one of those deliciously mad, out-of-hours, unofficial projects by a few obsessive Bentley engineers for whom there is no such concept as too fast or too powerful. And because Bentley has a small but noisy constituency of customers who feel the same way, it wasn't long before the undercover operation became part of the product plan.

It's appropriate that this new variation of the Continental GT has been dubbed "Supersports." It's meant to recall a two-passenger Bentley introduced in 1925, a lightweight, two-passenger derivative of the classic 3.0-liter Speed that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1924. The Supersports incorporated some racing hardware and became the first production Bentley capable of reaching 100 mph.

The Continental Supersports is supposed to be just like this. Only it goes 204 mph. It's the Extreme Bentley.