2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed: We Go Camping with a $400,000 Mega-Sedan

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Lest you leap to the conclusion that we’ve gone soft, joining up with some sort of New Gilded Age glamping caravan, understand that taking the 2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed camping was in no way premeditated. A site had been reserved at Silver Lake State Park long before this Sopwith Camel–hued limo arrived at Eisenhower Place. It was actually the flat, lacquer look of the green paint (a $5715 option that Bentley calls British Racing Green, although it isn’t) that convinced us this would be a good idea. The car would look stunning in the woods, we thought, and it did.

Pack It Up, Pack It In

Ours would still be a classic Michigan camping trip, with sleeping bags and inflatable air mattresses and tents and hot dogs and s’mores and a cooler full of beer. The only difference would be that the 6000-pound vehicle we’d be packing all our gear into would be sporting carbon-fiber interior trim and dual iPads for its rear-seat passengers (part of a $28,760 Entertainment Specification package). And it would cost a total of $397,732, including a $335,600 base price, $56,407 worth of options, $2725 for delivery, and a $3000 gas-guzzler tax.

We probably should have stuck with something more like a Chevy Suburban, which would have had a top speed a bit lower than the claimed 190 mph of the Speed but also would’ve been easier to pack. The first thing you notice when you lay eyes upon the Mulsanne’s shallow, nicely carpeted trunk—and try to do that spatial-estimation thing with the huge pile of stuff that you plan on bringing along—is that said trunk is ridiculously small, at least with respect to the rest of the 18-foot-long car. The EPA lists the Bentley’s cargo volume at 11 cubic feet. By comparison, an Audi A8 has 15 and a Cadillac XTS boasts an 18-cubic-foot cargo hold. But neither of those models has umbrellas (two of them, for $210) mounted in its boot.

Since we had not hired a team of elephants, or sherpas, or rented a U-Haul trailer, our cooler had to go in the back seat. It wouldn’t even fit in the empty trunk because it was too tall. Lots of other stuff got crammed in the back, too, and in the process of packing we noticed just how much the fantastic interior of the Mulsanne suffers from being kitted out with carbon-fiber trim rather than the customary wood. We would later explain our feelings on this issue by saying, “You wouldn’t go camping in a carbon-fiber forest,” a metaphor perhaps inspired by sitting around a late-night fire.

                      

 

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2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed: We Go Camping with a $400,000 Mega-Sedan
Hello Mother, Hello Father, Greetings from Camp Miles-Per-Hour.

AUG 2015 BY JEFF SABATINI MULTIPLE PHOTOGRAPHERS
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Lest you leap to the conclusion that we’ve gone soft, joining up with some sort of New Gilded Age glamping caravan, understand that taking the 2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed camping was in no way premeditated. A site had been reserved at Silver Lake State Park long before this Sopwith Camel–hued limo arrived at Eisenhower Place. It was actually the flat, lacquer look of the green paint (a $5715 option that Bentley calls British Racing Green, although it isn’t) that convinced us this would be a good idea. The car would look stunning in the woods, we thought, and it did.

Pack It Up, Pack It In

Ours would still be a classic Michigan camping trip, with sleeping bags and inflatable air mattresses and tents and hot dogs and s’mores and a cooler full of beer. The only difference would be that the 6000-pound vehicle we’d be packing all our gear into would be sporting carbon-fiber interior trim and dual iPads for its rear-seat passengers (part of a $28,760 Entertainment Specification package). And it would cost a total of $397,732, including a $335,600 base price, $56,407 worth of options, $2725 for delivery, and a $3000 gas-guzzler tax.

We probably should have stuck with something more like a Chevy Suburban, which would have had a top speed a bit lower than the claimed 190 mph of the Speed but also would’ve been easier to pack. The first thing you notice when you lay eyes upon the Mulsanne’s shallow, nicely carpeted trunk—and try to do that spatial-estimation thing with the huge pile of stuff that you plan on bringing along—is that said trunk is ridiculously small, at least with respect to the rest of the 18-foot-long car. The EPA lists the Bentley’s cargo volume at 11 cubic feet. By comparison, an Audi A8 has 15 and a Cadillac XTS boasts an 18-cubic-foot cargo hold. But neither of those models has umbrellas (two of them, for $210) mounted in its boot.

Since we had not hired a team of elephants, or sherpas, or rented a U-Haul trailer, our cooler had to go in the back seat. It wouldn’t even fit in the empty trunk because it was too tall. Lots of other stuff got crammed in the back, too, and in the process of packing we noticed just how much the fantastic interior of the Mulsanne suffers from being kitted out with carbon-fiber trim rather than the customary wood. We would later explain our feelings on this issue by saying, “You wouldn’t go camping in a carbon-fiber forest,” a metaphor perhaps inspired by sitting around a late-night fire.

VIEW 57 PHOTOS

After packing there was still plenty of room for one rear passenger to luxuriate, recline, and be chauffeured, even if that person hadn’t been a child, which that person was. One of the motorized tray tables with integrated iPads became stuck in the down position shortly after the Mulsanne had arrived at the office, so we decreed that the other tray was not to be lowered, lest it also break. This displeased the child, who spent the three-hour drive grumbling about all the Minecraft that was not being played and asking the age-old question, “Are we there yet?” To which the driver was able to respond, “No, but we’re making good time.”

The Bentley Mulsanne Speed will allow its adaptive cruise control, a $3895 option, to be set as high as 155 mph. We did not reach that irresponsible speed on the highway—not even close—although we did enjoy the way the big Bentley could storm up on gaggles of traffic, obliterating gaps between cars so quickly that left-lane dawdlers often got out of the way.

Quantifying Speed

When we later put the Speed through its paces at the test track, it ran the quarter-mile in 13.5 seconds at 105 mph and did zero to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds. The former is a tenth slower than the standard Mulsanne we tested, while the latter is a tenth quicker. So while the Speed is tuned to produce 25 extra horses, for a total of 530 horsepower, and an extra 59 lb-ft of torque, 811 lb-ft in all, those additional numbers seem not to move out of the realm of margin of error for the Mulsanne’s 6.8-liter twin-turbocharged V-8. As Bentley charges an extra $31,900 for the Speed over the standard Mulsanne, that amounts to $1276 per horsepower and $540.68 per lb-ft of torque.

This engine, of course, is still the venerable Bentley V-8 whose specific dimensions (but not design) date back to the Harold Macmillan administration, further developed this year with new cylinder heads. Bentley redesigned the combustion chamber and inlet port while repositioning the spark plug and fuel injector, changes which the company claims make the engine 13 percent more efficient on the European test cycle, thus extending the Mulsanne’s range by 50 miles. Its EPA rating, however, stays the same at 13 mpg combined. We saw 15 mpg in our highway-centric drive, compared with 12 when we tested the regular Mulsanne with the pre-update version of this engine.

                   

 

On the road, the Speed drives just as the Mulsanne ever has, big but not outsized, with handling that’s impressive for its dimensions. Our test car pulled the same 0.81 g’s on the skidpad as that last Mulsanne we tested, a number that when looked at in isolation undersells how much fun it is to wheel one of these freighters through some curves. The Bentley leans prodigiously even when its air suspension is in Sport mode, but it also absorbs crater-esque road imperfections without unsettling its balance. Its steering is excellent, telling you just enough about what its front tires are doing and allowing you to wield this bludgeon like a scalpel, which is important given its length and mass.

Camp Miles-Per-Hour

Upon arriving at the campsite, the Mulsanne Speed certainly attracted more attention than our neighbor’s Subaru Outback. Your average camper at Silver Lake State Park is more knowledgeable about cars than would be typical, as the Michigan Department of Natural Resources runs an off-road vehicle area here, where those so inclined can drive on the dunes between Silver Lake and Lake Michigan. So we were inundated with not only “What is that?” and “It costs how much?!” types of queries, but also technical questions. More than one glint-eyed onlooker wanted to know whether we were going to try the Speed out on the dunes, which we explained would be a bad idea, as unlike the rest of the Bentley range, the Mulsanne is rear-drive only.

While we were parked, the Speed served dutifully as the world’s most expensive and inefficient iPhone charger and also assisted in running our Handpresso in-car espresso maker. Firing up the big V-8 in the morning produced so little noise that those late sleepers in our party were not awakened, and after half an hour it was so quiet we had forgotten whether we’d left it idling. Unsurprising, really, as even blasting down the freeway driving home through the rain, the Speed’s serenity was matched only by that of our lazy weekend.