Vaughan Freeman
Iconic Films
2 for 1 tickets to Singin' In The Rain, this coming Monday. Book now
Navigation - link to other main sections from here
From The Times
March 9, 2007
Bentley banking on Brooklands
Bentley rolled back the years to steal the limelight at the Geneva Motor Show this week by unveiling its new Brooklands two-door, four-seater coupé.
New it may be, but the car is classic, and evocative lines draw heavily on Bentley’s gorgeous coupés of the 1950s. Only 550 Brooklands cars will be built and despite such limited numbers, Bentley says this is the pinnacle of its range.
With a low roof line, a steeply raked front screen, pillarless doors and slanted rear end, it also features the most powerful V8 ever in a Bentley, the 6.75litre twin turbo engine putting out 530bhp and 1050Nm of torque. The Brooklands will sell for about £220,000 when it appears in the United Kingdom early next year.
While Bentley cars have traditionally drawn for their names on the marque’s many successes at the Le Mans 24-hour race, this time, the company says, it has chosen to honour victories at the Brooklands banked circuit, where Bentley won so many races between the wars.
Dr Franz-Josef Paefgen, the Bentley chairman, said: “The Brooklands is our flagship, the pinnacle of our brand, more important even than the Arnage. For Bentley, with our motor-sport pedigree at the old Brooklands circuit and at Le Mans, a two-door coupé is hugely important for us. It uses simple, elegant, clean lines, a very clear design language on a large scale. As soon as we saw the designs we knew we had to make this car happen.”
Not that the Brooklands is 100 per cent new. The front end and central console and front seats come from the Bentley Azure, and the chassis from the Arnage, although the distinctive sloped rear end is all new and the luxurious interior, of handcrafted woods and sumptuous leathers, is classic Bentley.
At the opposite end of the Geneva show hall, as far away as it is possible to get, sits Bentley’s former sister company, Rolls-Royce, showing off its dramatic Phantom Drophead Coupé, with two-door coupés a feature of this year’s Geneva show. Extras on the Coupé — such as the £20,000 wood decking and brushed steel bonnet — can easily cost two or three times what you need to spend on a brand new car.
But, like the Bentley, the Rolls-Royce is not like most other cars. The Drophead Coupé is priced from £305,000 and already sold out through 2008 — even though it does not go on sale until July — so the typical customer, if there is such a thing, clearly has no worries about extra cost as almost all those ordered have been specified with the wood deck.
Ian Robertson, the Rolls-Royce chairman, said that the company also plans to introduce a new “baby” car that will take sales from about the present 800 cars a year to closer to 1,500 by 2010, when it goes on sale.
The smaller car, bigger than a BMW 7 Series but smaller than a Phantom, will be a four-door saloon and will cost between £150,000 and £200,000 when it goes on sale in three years.
Who buys such cars? The 80,000 people worldwide, Rolls-Royce says, with disposable income in excess of $25 million (about £13 million).
Robertson said: “For us, the fastest-growing market by some way is China. Our most successful dealership there is now selling as many cars as our Beverly Hills dealership.”
BMW, meanwhile, unveiled its “concept” high-performance M3 two-door coupé, although The Times was told that the show car is almost identical to the car that will go on sale in the UK, priced at about £50,000, in November.
It is based on the present 3 Series coupé, but the M3 carries over only the boot lid, doors and headlights. Everything else has been tailored for the sporting M3, including the V8 engine tuned to have high-revving characteristics to boost performance.
Big air intakes on the car, a power bulge on the bonnet, shark-gill strakes along the front wings and 19-inch alloy sports wheels show the car’s intent. To save weight, the M3 uses an aluminium bonnet and a roof and side panels of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic.
From Audi comes another number, and yet another coupé, this time the new two-door A5, with the car due to go on sale in midsummer priced from £22,000 to £30,000. Audi hopes to sell about 8,000 A5s a year in the UK.
Again, this is a coupé that, while having only two doors, has four proper seats rather than two token rear seat offerings. The range includes a 1.8litre 170bhp direct injection petrol engine, and a 3.2litre 265bhp petrol, limited to a top speed of 155mph and with a 0-62mph time of 6.1 seconds.