THE coach-building arm of British car maker Bentley Motors, known as Bentley Mulliner, has revealed the all-new Bacalar at its home in Crewe, with the new vehicle instantly the rarest two-door Bentley of the modern era.
The ultimate expression of two-seat, open-air luxury, this definitive Grand Tourer spearheads a return to coach-building by Bentley Mulliner – the oldest coach-builder in the world.
Just 12 examples, all of which are already sold, of this striking, limited edition model are being created, guaranteeing rarity and exclusivity, and offering supreme luxury and breath-taking performance.
The Bacalar looks to the future of bespoke luxury motoring, and each model will be handcrafted in Bentley Mulliner’s workshop in Crewe, according to the individual customer’s personal tastes.
This exceptionally rare car is appropriately named after Laguna Bacalar in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, a lake renowned for its breath-taking natural beauty, continuing Bentley’s strategy of naming cars after remarkable landmarks.
Brought to life by Bentley Mulliner, reviving its specialisation in providing rare coach-built cars to only a few discerning customers, the roofless Barchetta design features highly muscular coachwork, embracing a myriad of options and materials.
Bentley Mulliner has an illustrious history and can proudly trace its roots back to the 1500s, when the company’s original focus was customising luxurious, horse-drawn carriages.
The remarkable Bacalar is therefore the culmination of almost 500 years of expertise and heritage in the art of vehicle design.
“The Bentley Mulliner Bacalar is our ultimate expression of an open-top, luxury grand tourer, and of the immense capabilities of our team in Crewe,” Bentley Motors chairman and CEO Adrian Hallmark said.
“In Bacalar, we have created a fully bespoke Bentley, orientated towards a two seat open top experience, and carrying a number of the forward thinking elements of future luxury, first heralded in our EXP100GT as part of our Centenary celebrations last year.”
A masterpiece of craftsmanship, the Bacalar is a seamless fusion of materials with an intelligent curation of technology. It draws on design DNA from the beautifully sculpted, award-winning EXP 100 GT.
A statement of purpose for the future, the Bacalar now propels Bentley into a new century of the extraordinary, as the design team has envisaged the most dynamically sculpted model to date.
The dramatic, tapered cowls at the rear hark back to the Barchetta sports cars of old, whilst underlining the promise of a dynamic, driver-focused adventure in a cosseting, cocooned environment.
Pure in line and execution, the distinctive, wraparound cockpit flows from a new, steeply angled centre console seamlessly into the dashboard and doors. These then wrap rearwards towards the semi-enclosed luggage compartment behind the two seats.
Sustainable, ethically-sourced materials previewed in the EXP 100 GT concept car last year have now become reality in the Bacalar – just eight months after first being showcased.
These include paint containing ash from rice husks, which provides a sustainable way of delivering a rich metallic finish, natural British wool and 5,000-year-old Riverwood sourced from the ancient Fenlands of East Anglia.
The Bacalar features an enhanced version of Bentley’s peerless 6.0-litre, W12 TSI engine. The most advanced 12-cylinder engine in the world, it produces 478kW of power and 900Nm of torque.
An advanced active all-wheel drive system varies the torque split between the front and rear wheels. It allows the Bacalar to use rear-wheel drive as much as possible during normal driving for optimum efficiency and dynamic performance.
The drive train is at the heart of the Bacalar, creating the ultimate open-air, two-seat luxury Grand Tourer available in the world today. All examples of the exquisite Bentley Mulliner Bacalar have already been allocated to customers from around the world.
