BENTLEY CONTINENTAL

BENTLEY CONTINENTAL

So having written about what it’s like to drive, fuel and fix the Bentley over the past few months, I’m going to address an issue that some of you might feel has no place in a serious car website; some people buy a car like this because they like being looked at, while other who could easily afford a Bentley don’t buy one for exactly the same reason. But I suspect that most owners just take pleasure from the fact that other people seem to take pleasure in seeing your car. Reactions vary, of course. My dear old Dad was ten minutes into a lift to the airport before he finally noticed the lacquer and leather cabin he was being conveyed in and said ‘ooh, is this your new car, dear? A super cerebral Harvard Academic friend appeared not to notice at all in the two hours he spent in the passenger seat going to and from a restaurant. And your constant mild concern about other people’s reactions can make you do odd things.

BENTLEY ARNAGE

BENTLEY ARNAGE

While the credit crunch has decimated sales of the smaller, only mildly disgustingly expensive Phaeton based Bentley, demand for, the bigger, could buy HBOS for that Arnage and its spin offs, has remained buoyant. Buyers to be old money types, the sort who brought Bentleys when the Crewe firm was still owned by Rolls Royce. And they are rich enough not to be too worried about the odd bank collapsing. Perfect timing then for Bentley to release the new Arnage. Bigger, posher and even more expensive, the new range topping four door is aimed squarely at the Rolls Royce Phantom, which has had the market for uber-saloon sewn  up for the past five years. Boss Franz Josef Paefgen will take the wraps off the car at the 2008 Frankfurt motor show and the first cars should find homes early in 2010. Despite a pricetag of more than $200k, Bentley hopes 700 wealthy families will give an Arnage a home each year. Though it uses a modified version of the current car’s platform, the new Arnage will be 150mm longer in wheelbase, making it around 5500mm long.

2011 Bentley Mulsanne

2011 Bentley Mulsanne

The Bentley Mulsanne features a twin-turbocharged 6.75-liter V8 engine which produces 505-horsepower and 752 pounds-feet of torque. It is matched with ZF 8-speed automatic transmission with steering column mounted gearshift paddles. The computer-controlled adaptive air suspension with automatic ride height control includes manual driver adjustment for ride height and damper settings. Mulsanne has a luxurious handcrafted interior with large variety of custom trim options. There are about 100 paint-colors including unusual heritage colors, special satin and pearlescent finishes and duo-tone combinations. The standard model includes multimedia system with an 8-inch multimedia screen, 60 gb-hard disc drive, satellite navigation, full iPod and MP3 player compatibility, Bluetooth connectivity and a 2200-watt, 14 speaker Naim stereo systems are optional.

AUDI ALLROAD

AUDI ALLROAD

It’s the first trip the Audi was made for. Poland? Three tall blocks and a stack of ski and snowboard gear, so an estate with decent rear legroom was required. Destination? valD’Isere, so we needed a diesel automatic to chomp through miles with minimum effort, maximum efficiency. Four wheel drive and a bit more ride height were appealing; the long trip from the auto route up into the Alps is steep, with constant hairpins, and we tackled it at night, in a blizzard. Frankly, this sort of SUV lite is all the SUV the vast majority of us really need. There are still compromises of course; I don’t know if I could live with the rubbery steering, and while 32mpg and a range of well over 400 miles were reasonable on the way down, I knew that both figures would be better if the car was lower and didn’t have frictional losses of a four wheel drive system. But they’d have been substantially worse in a proper SUV, which would have been no better in the snow. Spending a long day in a car changes your priorities. Initially I loved the cabin build quality but found the layout austere.

POWER AND SPEED IS AWESOME AUDI RS6

POWER AND SPEED IS AWESOME  AUDI RS6

The lower slung, conventional looking RS6 is a more obvious track contender, but its outrageous 10 cylinder engine has a lumpen effect on the front end. Even Usain Bolt would lose a few tenths if he had to run with Phill Jupitus sitting on his shoulders. So the Audi, unsurprisingly, understeers on the track, through it says something about the most powerful Audi production engine ever (571bhp) that Fahad Majidi got the RS6  round in 1min 6.3sec-faster than Evo X, STi and all the hatches. The X6 (1min 10.4 sec) was slower, but still brushed off the pesky Astra and Focus—food for thought for the future encounters with hot hatch wielding yobbos (no, not you, Hammad…) at the lights. The road meanwhile reveals the Audi to be an intercontinental weapon, a sort of MIG fighter fitted with leather chains and a telly an ($800 extra). Like the MIG, it flies in a straight line with impossible urgency, it verse organized by Quattro and six-speed tiptronic ‘box, which is suited to gentle power inputs rather than the Cossack stamping technique favored by yours truly. Its appetite for the job is unstinting but, sorry to say, it’s an experience less emotional than stamp collecting. A chuckle free zone.

AUDI 100S COUPE

AUDI 100S COUPE

As a refined and luxurious coupe, the Audi 100s launched at the Geneva Motor Show in 1969, had few peers in the 2 liter class in the early 1970s. With a top speed of 112 mph (179 km/h) and doing 0-60 mph (96 km/h) in 10 seconds, the Mercedes designed , in line, 113 bhp, four cylinder engine canted over to give a lower bonnet line, packed a punch that was much heavier than its size would suggest. What’s more, the front drive handling was solidly predictable, and the brakes vented inboard disc at the front – superb. A svelte fast back with space for four (this was no cramped two plus two) and a big boot, critics at the time loved the car’s build quality and pace, praised its 30 mpg (9.5 liters/100 km) economy and compared the styling with that of the Aston Martin DBS. In fact, the body was identical to the sober Audi 100 saloon up to the widescreen, which was larger and more steeply ranked. The wheelbase was shortened by 5in. (12.5cm), but the 100S featured the same suspension and running gear, with wishbones at the front and a beam axle on trailing arms and torsion bars at the rear. The four speed manual gearbox, with closer ratios than the 100 saloon came as standard, with the option of three speed VW automatic transmission for those that wanted it.

AUDI 100 CD

AUDI 100 CD

Ferdinand Piech, Audi’s chief engineer (and a member of a Porsche owning family), was firmly of the view in the late 1970’s that the way forward for the Audi was an emphasis on new technology. It was this vision that helped create such cars for the firm as the 100 CD, and fuelled the Audi’s strength in the eighties and nineties. Shortly after the pioneering Quattro model, Audi launched the slippery 100 saloon, and introduced the term ‘Cd’ to the car buying public. The Cd (drag coefficient) is a measurement of just how aerodynamic a car is. The figure of 0.30 was thought to have been an impracticable aim for a mainstream car. However, the 100 wore the achievement on its sleeve a small ‘Cd 0.30’ sticker appeared in the car’s rear quarter light and could be spotted by the eagle eyed. Audi’s engineers spent thousands of hours in the wind tunnel to lesson the drag, and the upshot was a car that long, wide and barrel sided. However, the 100 also benefited from some fine detail engineering, including flush fitting windows, and this helped bolster its appeal. The slick body and high gearing meant the 100 was fine motorway cruiser and was capable of excellent fuel economy. Like all Audi’s, although the vehicle was front wheel drive, the engine was placed lengthways in the nose.

AUDI QUATTRO

AUDI QUATTRO

There aren’t many true landmark vehicles in the history of the car, but the Audi Quattro has a strong claim to be one of them. It introduced four wheel drive to road cars, and provided a way of harnessing very high levels of power to make high performance driving in all weathers and on all types of road more than enough excellent fists to make it a real contender for landmark vehicle status. The outcome of such innovation was a car that was both easier to drive and quicker point to point than a traditional supercar. It was also a huge success on the rally circuit. Not surprisingly, other manufactures could be seen making a very hasty and undignified rush to copy the format. The Quattro was based on the two door coupe version of the 80 saloon, and borrowed its transmission form the VW lltis military vehicle. Initially it was powered by a turbocharged 2.1 liter five cylinder engine, and divided the 200 bhp on tap equally between the front and rear wheels. Inside, the driver was provided information by the then futuristic digital instruments, adding a touch of science fiction innovation to the classically high standards of engineering and build quality that the ground breaking Quattro represented.

AUDI 80/90 SERIES

AUDI 80/90 SERIES

Audi’s growing reputation for technical innovation took a back seat with the launch, in 1986, of the Audi 80 and 90. The company decided to focus on how it was pushing back the frontiers of modern styling, build quality and safety, instead of concentrating on its already established reputation for being the world leader when it came to effective utilization of cutting edge developments in automobiles technology and engineering. The 80 (four cylinder) and 90 (five cylinder) were based on the floorpan of the old square shaped 80 and 90, so it was no real surprise when the handling of the two cars came in some very criticism from certain sectors of the motoring press. Pundits were also quick to point to the lack of luggage space. For both the 80 and 90, the boot was seen as very shallow for cars in their markets. The car’s excellent build quality and production detailing (the flush fit door handles, for instance) were supplemented by a fully galvanized bodyshell, the first production car to be effectively rustproof. The 80 and 90 also led on safety with the Pro-con Ten system, which used steel cables to pull the steering wheel away form the driver and tension the seatbelts in a head on collision. Both the 80 and 90 were available with the Quattro drivetrain, but it wasn’t until this was finally combined with 170 bhp 20V five cylinder engine in the 90 that the car began to gain real credibility as a serious driving machine.

AUDI RS2

AUDI RS2

AUDI A6

AUDI A6

By the mid 1990s, Ferdinand Piech had bounced his way from being the chief at Audi to his position as the boss of the truly giant VW Group. His technical genius saw him hatching a plan to build numerous VWs, Audis, Seats and Skodas the four brands in the company portfolio, using the maximum number of shared components. However, despite sharing these parts, the four brands still had to retain distinct identities, something that many doubted they would be able to accomplish. It wasn’t long before, once again, Ferdinand Piech proved his doubters in the VW Company, the industry as a whole, and in certain sections of the motoring press conclusively wrong. The 1997 A6 saw the flowering not only of Piech’s platform strategy, but an amazing rebirth of the genius of German industrial design, echoing and paying homage to all of its grand accomplishments earlier in the century. Under the skin, the A6 shared much with the new VW Passat, and although the suspension systems and floorpan were near identical, the engineering was subtle enough to allow slightly different wheelbases and tracks, sufficient flexibility to give the cars different driving characteristics. For the average buyer, though, it’s the styling both inside and out that gives a car its identity. The A6 was so distinctive that it was a real shock for a lot of people. Audi’s stylists, led by Peter Schreyer, had rediscovered the pre-war German industrial design school.

AUDI – TT MK1

AUDI – TT MK1

The term ‘iconic design’ is often misused, but the Audi TT does deserve the accolade. It first appeared as a concept design at the 1995 Frankfurt motor show, having been developed at the VW Group’s California studios. The simple, curved, styling theme was generally thought to have been influenced by pre war German engineering (especially the Auto Union D-Type race cars) and the ‘form follows function’ philosophy of the Banuhaus design school. Perhaps just as impressive was Audi’s achievements in bringing the three door TT to produce, especially as it was mostly based on the MK4 Golf platform. A two door cabrio with the cloth roof was the only other bodystyle produced. Inside, the interior design was just a fresh and simple, marked out by the four large, silver rimmed air vents. The drivetrains were also lifted from the Golf and Audi A3. The entry level engine was a 1.8 liter turbocharged unit in various states of tune from 180 bhp upwards. Top range models were equipped with the notably smooth and powerful 3.2 liter V6 engine. Both engines could be had with a part time four wheel drive system badged Quattro, although it differed from the system used in bigger Audis. Despite eight years of success, the TT almost fell at the first hurdle. Not long after the launch the car was involved in a number of high speed accidents, usually involving a loss of control on bends.