BENTLEY Mulsanne Review

The cabin of a Mercedes S-Class, for instance, may offer more functions, but when it comes to the feeling of luxury, the Mulsanne simply levitates over it. The materials and the design used here are enough to convince you.

It's this atmosphere that makes you feel you have your own city when you're on an urban journey. The size of the Mulsanne does bring problems inside the city, but you do get used to this eventually.

By the way, you really can't complain about the width in this car. You'll make a fool of yourself in front of Bentley Continental drivers, whose cars are even wider, albeit not by much. The Rolls Royce Ghost does win the parking competition, since it's fitted with a bird eye view module, whereas the Mulsanne lacks such a feature.

The presence of the Bentley Mulsanne means that this thing makes a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta look childish on the boulevard.

Nonetheless, the driver doesn't have to wear too much of a burden. Bentley's obsession with effortless performance means that the slightest touch of the throttle brings enough torque to spin the city the other way around. Morning commuters beware.

We didn't want to mention the torque figure from the very beginning as this can be a bit frightening. The 752 lb-ft (1,020 Nm) arriving at 1,800 rpm make everything else seem irrelevant. 505 HP (512 PS) peak power included.

These figures arrive from a 6.75-liter V8. But then again, they always have. Bentley introduced the six and three quarters V8 together with Rolls-Royce back in the 1950s, when the latter owned the company. Last time we wrote about such a long-lived engine, we were talking about Lamborghini's V12, but that's just been replaced by the Aventador's all-new twelve-cylinder unit.

Bentley also considered other engine options, but they chose to re-engineer their twin-turbocharged 6,752cc V8 instead. The unit now features variable cam phasing. In fact, just like Audi and Bentley's all new 4.0 twin-turbo V8 on the Continental, the Mulsanne's 6¾-liter V8 comes with variable displacement. Enjoy pronouncing the resulting displacement.

Under light loads, the unit can turn into a V4. Again, like in the V8 Continentals, there's no dashboard light to signal this - Bentley determined that customers wouldn't find this appropriate. You would definitely need one to spot the engine halving process, such is the refinement with which this takes place.