Bentley: Athletic body causes a ripple

It takes 420 hours just to craft the body of the new Bentley Mulsanne. Photo / Supplied

Bentley unveiled its Arnage replacement and the car's new "Mulsanne" nameplate in California last week.

Initial comments from the Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance reveal were favourable. So Bentley's head of exterior design was ebullient when the Herald on Sunday interviewed him at the British factory just two days later. Brazilian Raul Pires took me around a pre-production model as he explained what motivated his rapidly growing design team.

They faced a challenge with this car, to drag Bentley's flagship into the modern world. No exterior panel carries over - and only the mirrors are shared (with the Continental Supersports).

Bentley says this Mulsanne is entirely new. The longer wheelbase was dictated by the American market, its tall population demanding a more spacious cabin.

To accommodate the additional length yet obtain a Bentley's classic proportions - with a short front overhang, long wheelbase and extended rear overhang - meant stretching the car. The Mulsanne is 150mm longer than the 5.4m Arnage, and the same height, though at first it looks lower. That's an optical illusion created by the sharply defined horizontal waistline and streaks of chrome, but it's a compelling one. Indeed the whole design is compelling.

Pires started by re-examining Bentley's design history. Two elements had survived the 90 years - the traditional grille, and the circular lights. Pires particularly admired the R-Type, the second-series of postwar Bentleys built from 1952. He approved the 45-degree angle of its two lights, the fact they're suspended within a single piece of metal, and framed between that grille and the creased shoulder. "We want to follow our heritage, but progress and make a design looking forward," he says.

Thus the new, LED and Xenon lights are bracketed by sharp lines that flow back along the waist, curving over the haunches then swinging down and forward again.

Those lines delineate a complex series of concave and convex curves that define this huge car. Pires likens the effect to an athlete's body, with skin rippling smoothly over muscle and stretched across bone.

Creating these panels wasn't easy. A conventional press could not achieve the required effect, and the warmed aluminium was literally sucked on to the form using a vacuum, in a process that Pires says was developed in-house.

As was the technology to allow keyless entry with solid metal door handles, the latter - with the traditional knurled backs - necessary to the flagship persona. "Opening this door is almost like walking into a manor house - the door is the welcome," Pires says.

He's also proud of the flowing metal from windscreen base, over the roof, sweeping down the C-pillars to the bulging haunches that underline the car's powerful rear-drive persona. It's a huge sheet with no joins - or is it?

"It's several pieces, but all brazed together by hand," Pires says. "This is the sort of thing you can explore with a lower volume and the sort of culture we have here."

For Pires can discuss the imperatives of his design with the men who will build it. If they can solve the construction difficulties, his vision will reach reality. "As a designer I am always pushing, you always look forward, you are always challenging," he says.

Challenging this build certainly is - it takes 420 hours just to craft each body, and that's before Bentley starts on the chassis, the cabin or the newly developed 6.75-litre V8 engine.

Bentley is fielding "expressions of interest", with the NZ order book opening in January 2010 for delivery by the end of the year.