Stylish pugnacity
Alan Judd
he Sun reported recently that someone called Jennifer (J-Lo) Lopez and her husband, Cris (sic) Judd — quite ordinary people sometimes adopt famous names — recently bought themselves a Bentley Azure each while window-shopping in Mayfair. If the alleged £500,000 bill was accurate, it was presumably the £247,925.00 (inc. VAT) Azure Mu!liner, an attractive two-door convertible. Coincidentally, this branch of the noble Judd family was in temporary possession of a £225.000 Bentley Continental R Muiliner, well away from the prying eyes of the media. Which was just as well.
This powerful two-door coupe is heir to earlier Continentals, particularly the 1950s R-Type, a curvaceous beauty. I've never driven the R-Type but sitting in one reminded me of the old adage (or am I coining it?) that one should never make one's dream incarnate. The seat could not be adjusted and in order to see ahead I had to force my chin on to my chest, like Gordon Brown listening to Blair in Parliament.
There's no danger of that with its modern successor, whose seats do everything except move easily in order to let people in and out of the back. Nor has it the beauty of its forebear, opting instead for a stylish pugnacity. This is power motoring, it tells you, from its understated mesh radiator grill, along its sculpted, muscular sides to its wide, squared-off rear. And power there is: that mighty Rolls Royce 6.75 V8 produces 420 bhp and 645 lbs ft of torque to shift 2'/2 tons from 0-60 mph in 5.8 seconds on to a top speed of 167 mph. 1 didn't achieve quite that between the gate-lodge and the family seat but I can say that at speeds above 100 mph she hugs the road most reassuringly, tempting you on and on. If you like driving, you'll love this.
Some see the interior as a successful match of traditional and contemporary, with Connolly hide, long bonnet view, silvered switches and clear, old-fashioned dials allied to a spartan fascia of dark turned aluminum and an aircraft-like console, with not a splinter of wood in sight. Others see it as an incoherent compromise, neither fish nor fowl. (In fact, the aluminum fascia echoes Bentley's early glory days on the racetrack.) Its lack of clutter grew on me. Not having too many controls is a great thing in a car these days, though Bentley should improve their steering-column stalks and install better windscreen washers. The big red starter button, slap in the middle of the dash, is a pleasing throwback. I almost looked for the starting handle.
In fact, this car lacks a number of the toys sported by its luxury-class competitors (if you can call them that when the most expensive is less than a third of the price) from Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar and Lexus. There's no Tiptronic gearbox, no keyless starting, no automatic windscreen wiping, no proximity warning signals, no satellite navigation or computer screen, no dipping wing-mirrors when you reverse, no electronic soft-closing of doors and boot-lid (in fact, no internal handle on the latter, so you're obliged to get your fingers muddy). Doubtless you can order some of these on personal commission, and doubtless Bentley are keen to keep costs down — relatively speaking — but it's also policy.
Bentley customers apparently don't want their Bentleys festooned with toys. They like driving them but can't be bothered with gadgetry. Anyway, they've already got the competition. Jack Barclay's of Berkeley Square — the world's largest Rolls and Bentley dealership — reckons most buyers have an average of seven cars, while at Bentley they'll tell you that there are about 7 million people in the world with liquid assets of a million or more. These are not customers who have to choose between cars; if they like it, they buy it.
Unusually among manufacturers, Bentley deliver test cars by unmarked lorry rather than send them on their own four wheels. I immediately took my gleaming blue Continental for a 20-mile get-to-knoweach-other potter (urban fuel consumption 10.1 mpg, extra urban 21.4, combined 15.1). My back had been playing up but the ample lumbar support felt satisfactory.
I enjoyed our potter. Driving a Bentley makes you feel you're one of the lucky 7 million, which is part of the attraction. Once you've felt it, you don't want to leave it for anything else. As it happened, leaving it at all was my problem. Thanks to my back I had become at one with the car, though not in the sense that motoring correspondents normally mean. Eventually, I rolled out and crawled away on all fours, under the approving gaze of the sheep.
It's not the image that I, or Bentley, had in mind for this write-up, but I'm sure J-Lo and Cris will exit their Bentleys bipedally. Meanwhile, medical advice is that my back will recover fully only when I slip into the new four-door Arnage they've promised me; though the treatment may take longer than the usual week's loan.
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