The Bentley Mulliner Bacalar Is a Uniquely Styled $1.9 Million Topless Beauty

This will probably tell you everything you need to know about the 2021 Bentley Mulliner Bacalar: The wood on the dash is 5,000 years old. The Bacalar is of the most exclusive and expensive cars to be launched this year; only 12 will be made, each priced at just over $1.9 million (before options and taxes). This is a Bentley for the person who has everything—a moon rock paperweight, a Romain Jerome Steampunk watch, one of John Lennon’s guitars, and someone who thinks a Pagani Huayra Roadster BC is perhaps just a bit too loud and gaudy.

The Bacalar is essentially a Bentley Continental GT Convertible with a unique exterior and interior hand-crafted by Bentley Mulliner, the company’s storied coachbuilding division. Mechanically, not much has been changed. The W-12 under the Bacalar’s pricey hood has been tweaked to deliver 650 hp and 667 lb-ft of torque—increases of 24 hp and 3 lb-ft over the regular Conti GT engine. And the rear track has been widened 0.8 inch to give the car a more muscular stance. But that’s about it.

And, truth be told, that won’t bother a single Bacalar customer. The 12-cylinder Conti GT Convertible’s oily bits will deliver all the effortless 200-mph performance and refined dynamics they’ll ever need. What’s important about the Bacalar is the driveway theater; the stories behind the extraordinary attention to detail lavished on everything you can see and touch.

Though a roofless barchetta, the Bacalar shares its design DNA with the Bentley EXP 100 GT coupe concept revealed in July 2019 to celebrate Bentley’s 100^th anniversary. The forms and details have been toned down, and made less exaggerated, but the essential EXP 100 GT design language remains. Up front is a similarly dramatic interpretation of the Bentley grille, unique oval headlights with light bars that extend into the front fender, and a front splitter that looks as if supported by buttresses under the lights that extend outwards to the front corners of the car. At the rear, the unique taillights sit in a deeply notched vee section above a fascia designed to visually enhance the car’s width. The Bacalar rolls on bespoke 22-inch alloy wheels.

The only exterior components the Bacalar shares with the Continental GT Convertible are the door handles because they contain the hardware for the keyless entry system. The rear clamshell and top deck are aluminum, and the doors and fenders are made from carbon fiber. Mulliner, which traces its origins to a saddlery business founded in the 1500s, became a coachbuilder in the 1760s. It has been a part of Bentley since 1959, using both traditional hand-crafting methods and state-of-the-moment techniques such as 3D-printing to create the Bacalar’s arresting exterior.

Although its essential hardware and switchgear are shared with the Continental GT, a form line that stretches forward along the doors, across the lower edge of the dash, and back along a revised center console, gives the Bacalar interior a totally different aesthetic. Detail changes include a unique knurled pattern on the air vents, and a unique quilt pattern on the seats that, according to Bentley, requires precisely 148,199 stitches per seat to complete. Making the Bacalar a two-seater with no roof (engineering a special soft top for just 12 cars would have been prohibitively expensive) freed up space behind the seats for two specially designed bags by Italian luxury luggage maker Schedoni.

Mentioning sustainability and ethical sourcing in the same press release as a $1.9 million car with a 650-hp, 12-cylinder engine and no roof sounds a bit like greenwash for one-percenters with private jets. Nevertheless, Bentley says the paint on the Bacalar features a pigment made from rice husk ash, using a process that turns it into 90 percent pure silicon dioxide platelets, which are then coated in iron oxide, and that this could reduce landfill waste. That 5,000-year-old wood? It’s from naturally fallen trees that have been preserved in peat bogs, lakes, and rivers in the Fenlands of East Anglia, England, and has been carefully air dried.

With wealthy customers increasingly willing to spend more than $1 million on a special automobile, coach-built luxury cars—common in the 1920s and ‘30s—are making a comeback in the 21^st century. Lamborghini and Bugatti have each made small numbers of cars with unique bodywork in the past few years, as has Rolls-Royce. The Bacalar—the name is taken from a region in Mexico famous for its strikingly clear blue and turquoise waters—showcases Bentley’s intention to move into the area with its storied Mulliner brand.

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This article was first featured at https://ift.tt/38mheyS on March 3, 2020 at 10:11PM by Angus MacKenzie