Bentley isn't about luxury alone. Personalization is extremely important as well, and the British automaker is much obliged to make customer wishes come true – for the right price, of course – with the help of the Mulliner bespoke division.
Because personalization options are very profitable in this particular business, the manufacturer from Crewe decided to expand the range of satin paint finishes to a grand total of 15 colors. Every car specified in a satin color is painted – by hand – at Bentley's Excellence Center for Bespoke Paint.
Not using robots also means that every paint job takes a helluva lot of time. Bentley claims that up to 55 hours are required. Each vehicle first arrives with the bodywork finished in a gloss paint color, only to be sanded, cleaned, masked, dusted, and cleaned again by hand. The next step is to apply a clear lacquer – yet again by hand – in two stages.
The finishing touch is the final inspection. Members of the Production Quality Team have to inspect each and every panels before giving the OK to ship, which is the kind of attention to detail that everyone and their dog expects from an ultra-luxury automaker with such a long, illustrious history.
Come 2025, the satin paints will be applied in a brand-new paint shop at Bentley's Dream Factory in Crewe. If you're curious about what prompted the Volkswagen Group to spend millions of euros on this facility, the answer is Mulliner. Last year, 75 percent of customers added Mulliner content to their vehicles. 75 percent of total deliveries in 2023 – namely 13,560 vehicles – results in a whopping 10,170 vehicles touched by the Mulliner division.
Photo: Bentley
All 15 satin finishes can be had on all models produced by the British company as of May 2024, including the limited-run Mulliner Batur Convertible. Said colors include Old English White, Anthracite, Arctica, Royal Ebony, Light Gray, Storm Gray, Extreme Silver, Sequin Blue, Topaz Blue, Cricket Ball, Candy Red, Orange Flame, Light Sapphire, Alpine Green, and – no surprises here – British Racing Green. But that's not all…
Bentley's online configurator may list said colors, but more well-to-do customers may choose a truly bespoke satin finish. Unfortunately, it's not clear how many *insert currency here* the completely individual satin paint job is. Bentley didn't offer any pricing info for the regular satin finishes either.
On a related note, Bentley is preparing to welcome a new chief executive officer on July 1. Former big kahuna Adrian Hallmark left Bentley in March 2024 to replace Amadeo Felisa at Aston Martin. His replacement is Frank-Steffen Walliser, who joined Porsche in 1995. Walliser's current role at Porsche is overall vehicle development boss.
Walliser will oversee Bentley's transition to an electrified lineup of vehicles with the imminent premiere of the V8-powered Bentley Continental GT Performance Hybrid. You can think of the plug-in hybrid setup as the replacement for the glorious W12 we all know and love, an engine that was discontinued in April 2024. It will be missed, for sure, but looking at the bigger picture, the plug-in hybrid twin-turbo V8 is more powerful, torquier, and more efficient as well. The highlight numbers are 782 ps (771 hp), a staggering 1,000 Nm (738 lb-ft), under 50 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer, and circa 80 kilometers (50 miles) of e-driving.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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