Bentley Mulsanne review: even a private jet can’t beat this

If only all cars were as epic as the Bentley Mulsanne.

Bentley Mulsanne

When Sir David Attenborough tells us about an interesting male snail he’s found under a rock in Indonesia, he always says the snail in question likes to spend its afternoons sunbathing and its evenings having sex with other men snails. And I always think he’s being a bit judgmental. Because it might be only the snail his film crew found that does this.

Think about it. If an outer-space Attenborough came to Earth and made a documentary about humans for the folks back home, we’d be a bit miffed if he said we all had terrible hair and liked to kill our rivals with anti-aircraft guns. Because that’s Kim Jong-un, and not you or me. We are completely different.

This brings me neatly on to cars. According to the dictionary, a car is a road vehicle with four wheels, able to carry a small number of people. The new Suzuki Swift, then, is a car. And so is the new long-wheelbase Bentley Mulsanne. But that doesn’t mean they’re the same, because, ooh, they really aren’t.

What’s the Mulsanne like to drive? Not important, because someone else does that. Your job is to sit in the back, where there is so much legroom that even I could not touch the front seat with my feet. Not even if I flattened my ridiculously soft seat into what most airlines would call a bed. That’s how it feels back there: like being in one of those suites Emirates has at the front of an Airbus A380. In between the two rear seats in this options-heavy car is a fridge with a frosted glass door that slides down at the touch of a button to reveal two bottles of rosé and four glasses.

Further forwards, there’s a cubbyhole containing two fold-out tables, in case you don’t want to use the table that’s 4m in front of you on the back of the front seat. Then you’ve got about a million buttons. Some let you choose what sort of massage you’d like and what TV channel you’d like to watch. Some are used to close the curtains – which you’ll want to do if a tradie in the next lane is looking at you. And the others? Not sure. I didn’t dare press them in case I ejected my driver through the sunroof.

Now, electrical gadgets are all very well, but luxury can’t be measured by rheostats. It can’t really be measured at all, in fact. It’s a feeling. And it has to do with intangibles such as space, light and comfort. Again, the Bentley scores full marks. It doesn’t glide. You’re always aware that you’re in a car that is on a road, but you’re never really aware that the road was built and then maintained by people who just wanted to go to the pub. Let me put it this way: it’s just about as comfortable as it’s possible for a car to be.

It also feels strong. There’s a sense that you could have a head-on with an articulated lorry and, from the back seat, not know about it until you got a newsflash on your phone. Maybe this solidity, this sense of weight, is one of the reasons it rides so well: it simply irons out the bumps.

I was told by the man driving it that the size of the thing is a bit of a nuisance in supermarket car parks, but I can’t imagine this is an issue for a typical owner. The same goes for its fuel consumption. And its performance, which is considerable, I’m sure, but entirely irrelevant. The Mulsanne’s 6.75-litre V8, indeed, is one of the oldest units in production, basically unchanged since 1959. I’d love to tell you this is a bad thing, but since I never heard it or felt it, I actually think it isn’t a thing at all.

For a long journey, I’d take the Mulsanne against any competition. Even a private jet to the south of France. Yes, flying is faster – but you first have to get to a small airport and then sit in a room full of bores reading magazines packed with luxury watch ads until it’s time to get on your plane, where you drink champagne from a screwtop bottle and eat curled-up cheese sandwiches. Better to leave the day before and be driven there in this.

It’s a lovely place to sit, a lovely place to be, a lovely way to travel and a lovely piece of engineering hidden behind a lovely veneer of craftsmanship. If a space-alien documentary maker encountered the Mulsanne on a fact-finding mission to Earth, he would deduce that humans travel around in great comfort and almost total silence. If only he were right. If only all cars were this epic.

Bentley Mulsanne

Engine: 6.75-litre turbo-petrol V8 (377kW/1020Nm)

Average fuel: 15.0 litres per 100km

Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

Price: From $662,858 (for standard wheelbase)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars