The Brooklands was designed to blend great performance and unbridled opulence and is created for an exclusive clientele. Only the VIPs of Bentley were qualified to buy one when new. The Brooklands marks Bentley’s return to the luxury coupe market and reaffirms its reputation as creator of the world’s most exclusive coupe. It is the ultimate Bentley: a stylish, four-seat, grand touring coupe with classic British proportions and muscular performance.
The sporty design is matched with a powerful engine: the legendary Crewe-built V8 (the most powerful engine Bentley has ever done at the time). As a hand-assembled car made in very small numbers, employing traditional coach-building techniques and craftsmanship skills in wood and leather, the Brooklands Coupé was the true successor to the discontinued Bentley Continental R and T. Production was limited to only 550 cars.
Powered by the last of the Crewe-Built 6.75-litre Bentley L Series twin-turbocharged OHV V8 engine producing 530 horsepower at 4,000 rpm and 774 lb⋅ft (1050 NM) of torque at 3,250 rpm. The engine was linked to a reinforced 6-speed ZF torque converter automatic, with a Tiptronic manual gear selection function. The performance of the 2.7 Tonnes Brooklands is simply astonishing with a 0-60 time of 5 seconds.
With only 550 units ever built, it's truly rare and destine to be a future classic
Bentley has a long history in the two-door luxury coupes market. The ‘50s had been dominated by the Park Ward Continental S1, and then the Continental R and T from the ‘90s became collectors’ classics. These three models had a major influence in the design and the character of the Brooklands, which got its name after the famous British race track where Bentley was a victor in the 1920s when Bentley was an icon of English motoring and had won four times the Le Mans.
The Bentley Brooklands is remarkably spacious cabin providing the ultimate in first-class travel for four adults at any speed. The low, fast roofline with dramatically raked front and rear screens and muscular lines give the Brooklands a distinctively sleek, sporting stance. Each Brooklands was hand-assembled, employing traditional coach-building techniques and the craftsmanship skills in wood veneer and leather hide for which Bentley is renowned. To ensure exclusivity, production was strictly limited to just 550 cars.
As the Brooklands was built in very limited volume, the designers were able to introduce unique features that necessitate specialist coach-building techniques. To further distinguished the exclusive character of Brooklands, Bentley used “Le Mans” front wing vents, a jeweled fuel filler cap, brushed aluminum ‘Bentley Brooklands’ treadplates and a dark-tinted steel Bentley matrix grille with optional Flying ‘B’ retractable radiator mascot. Brooklands also features unique underbonnet detailing with brushed aluminium ‘6 ¾ Liter Brooklands’ engine plaque. Embossed Bentley logos appear on the intercoolers. Each engine bears the signature of the team leader who oversaw its hand-built construction in the Crewe factory.
While entering the car, you will be amazed by the luxury inside. And you have to agree that Bentley really managed to accomplish their mission: they created a luxury coupe with a distinctly sporting character. The richness of the finest natural materials alongside with an extensive palette of hides, veneers, carpet tones and seat belt colors make from the Brooklands a leaving paradise.
With room for four persons, the Brooklands’ interior is a distinctly sporting atmosphere, complemented by design accents such as aluminium foot pedals and footrest. A new, single-piece, hide-trimmed roof lining flows uninterrupted from the front windscreen all the way to the rear of the car, mirroring the long, sleek profile of the elegant exterior.
The cabin headlining is made entirely from leather, making Bentley the only car manufacturer in the world to offer as standard a cabin entirely trimmed with leather hides. The entire headlining is tightened and finished by hand to achieve the desired quality of finish, a process that takes years of skilled practice to perfect.
The interior designers sought to offer the very highest levels of comfort and legroom, in true Bentley grand touring tradition, while the pillarless window design enhances the feeling of space.
Brooklands use the Arnage rear cabin structure; this is why Bentley’s engineers have created a vast rear seat area that is larger than any other coupe in the world. This allows four adults to be accommodated in supreme comfort. Individual rear seats with electrically operated sliding cushions, set further back than on the Azure, are separated by a new centre console, incorporating both storage and cup holders.
History
This is a true Bentley coupe, influenced by the classic models of the past — the Blue Train from 1930, the Embericos Bentley of '39, the Continental Mulliner of 1959 and Continental T of 1997. Yet it is not a sports car; this is a true Grand Tourer
Bentley Brooklands is the name of two distinct models made by Bentley Motors. The first Brooklands was a full-size luxury saloon, launched in 1992 to replace the Bentley Mulsanne and in turn succeeded by the Bentley Arnage in 1998. Bentley resurrected the nameplate in 2007 with the Brooklands Coupé, a 2-door, 4-seater hardtop coupé version of the Bentley Azure made between 2008 and 2011 in limited numbers. These cars were named after the Brooklands banked race track in Surrey, where Bentley obtained some of its greatest triumphs in the 1920s and 1930s.
Overall, 60 per cent of what is on the Azure is on the Brooklands. The 40 per cent of the Brooklands that is unique to the coupe consists mainly of the roof and rear skin, rear underbody, suspension and damper tunes, a rework of the 6.75-litre V8 to boost power and torque, and extensive reworking of the rear seats to guarantee the most luxurious and spacious rear accommodation of any coupe.
With a production run of only 550 spread over three years — a number predicated by how many cars the company can squeeze down an already full-capacity production line at Crewe — the opportunity to truly hand-build the cars in the traditional sense was too good to pass up.
Each Brooklands is unique. Every one of the 550 include a degree of Mulliner personalisation, whether something as simple as a special colour match or as complex as an interior trimmed in wood from a specific tree. Each car takes 600 hours to complete — an outrageous figure in a world where cost efficiency has seen other high-end makers popping cars off the line with increasing regularity.
It takes a month for the wood trim for each car to be prepared and cured, with the 10sqm of chosen veneer set on a solid wood substrata. There are 6000 hand-done spot welds on each body. Fifteen metres of copper-braised seams are hand-ground to be invisible under the paint.
On the road, the Brooklands delivers most of the things you expect from a Bentley. The interior is plush and lush, it is dominated by craftsmanship of old-world style. Polished pull-knobs and switch gear punctuate the wooden dash treatment, the dials are creamy, rich and prominent, and the knurling on the gear shifter is a work of art. Over 125 hours, the 16 hides in each full-leather interior are hand-stitched using 484.5m of thread and 43,507 stitches.
The Crewe-built V8 engine was launched in 1959 in the Bentley S2 saloon and since then it has continually evolved. The first V8 was very advanced for its time with an all-aluminium construction, a five-bearing crankshaft and a well-supported camshaft, producing nearly 200bhp and 400Nm of torque. The result was a light and supple powertrain that produced maximum torque at low engine speeds, the hallmark of every Bentley ever produced.
In 1969 Bentley increased its capacity grow to 6.75 litres, where it remains to this day, but by far the most significant change came in 1982, with the introduction of a turbocharger to create the near-300bhp Mulsanne Turbo, a car that transformed the image of Bentley. In 1999, the single turbo engine, by now featuring port injection and charge cooling, was installed in Arnage, with twin turbos arriving in 2002, developing up to 450bhp.
For the 2007 model Arnage, the V8 engine saw a step-change in performance and refinement which became the starting point for the new Bentley Brooklands. A re-profiled camshaft and new, low-inertia turbochargers, which operate with greater efficiency at lower engine speeds have resulted in reduced turbo lag, enhancing that prodigious wave of torque at any revs, the hallmark of a true Bentley. These changes extend the power potential of the V8 in the Arnage to 500bhp and 1000Nm of torque. For the Bentley Brooklands, further component optimisation and engine calibration ensure record power and torque levels from this hand-assembled engine.
Performance figures capture supercar performance from a luxury four-seater coupé. The Bentley Brooklands is capable of reaching 60mph in just 5.0 seconds (0-100km/h in 5.3 seconds), has a top speed of 184mph (296km/h) and with an enhanced chassis and brakes, provides the handling to match the awesome power.
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