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Bentley Mulliner is the specialist personal commissioning department of Bentley Motors. Although newly launched, it can trace its ancestry back more than 200 years, and continues Bentley's fine reputation for hand craftsmanship and the individualisation of its cars.
Services include the building of unique one-off vehicles, such as the State Limousine recently built for The Queen to celebrate her Golden Jubilee, to the fitment of bespoke components, to building personalised cabins. Long wheelbase limousines and armoured vehicles are also a major part of its business.
'No other motor manufacturer can deliver the level of bespoke service provided by Bentley Motors,' says the director of Bentley Mulliner, John Killick. 'We not only do the vast majority of the work in-house at our Crewe factory, but we also do it to the highest quality levels expected by the worlds most affluent customers.'
There are 120 people employed by Mulliner. They include world-class coachbuilders, coach trimmers, cabinet makers, coppersmiths, sheet metal fabricators, electronics specialists and fitters, all employed in a dedicated workshop within Bentley Motors' Crewe factory. The workshop has its own wood mill and wood shop, its own trim shop to stitch and cut leather, its own steel fabrication area that can hand make body shells or modify existing ones, and a tool making area to make moulds for new components. Bentley Mulliner coachbuilders can craft the most luxurious cockpit imaginable, or make a mobile office capable of keeping a busy chief executive in touch with his or her business. Their goal is straightforward: to make the world's finest hand-crafted cars.
Almost no commission is too small, or too big, for Bentley Mulliner. A 'typical' job ranges from as little as £2,000 to as much as £300,000 - on top of the price of the standard production Bentley. About half of all Bentleys built now get Bentley Mulliner's treatment.
Mulliner - a history of coachbuilding since 1760
Mulliner can trace its coachbuilding ancestry back to 1760, when it won a contract to build coaches for the Royal Mail in Northampton. By 1900, Henry Jervis Mulliner moved the coachbuilding headquarters to Brook Street, Mayfair, in London, and began to service the growing business for 'horseless carriages'.
Mulliner's first job for Bentley Motors was in 1924, five years after Bentley was formed, when it bodied a car for the Olympia Show in London. The most famous Mulliner-bodied Bentley was probably the lovely 1952 R-Type Continental, at the time the fastest four-seater sports car in the world and one of the inspirations for Bentley's new Continental GT.
Mulliner was purchased by Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars in 1959, and merged with Park Ward to become Mulliner Park Ward in 1961, moving into new premises in west London. There, it built famous models such as the Rolls-Royce Phantom and two-door Corniche, before moving to Crewe into the old engineering experimental department in 1993. This year, following Bentley Motors' resurrection, Bentley Mulliner has been reborn with a wider brief and a growing workforce - now four times the level it was two years ago.
Bentley Mulliner Options (sometimes designed by the customers)
Customers are encouraged to take an active involvement in personally commissioning their Bentley, and can watch their vehicles being individualised. Says John Killick: 'One of our advantages over rivals is that we can involve our customers in a lot of the detail. We prefer really to involve him or her in the personalisation of their car.
We also listen to what the customer wants. It's like commissioning a new house and being the architect. We offer guidance and advice, and will also challenge the customer if we feel they are misguided in their choice.'
The most popular start point for a commission is fitting items from an extensive portfolio of Bentley Mulliner options. The choice may be as simple as fitting a gear knob hand carved from solid wood, or fitting a chrome radiator shell or hand embroidering the leather upholstery. DVD players, either using screens fitted into the rear headrests or fold down screens fitted into the roof, are also popular requests.
The list of fitted options is regularly supplemented as features gain popularity. 'One of Bentley's best American customers recently asked for a special stainless steel fuel filler flap for his car, complete with enamelled Bentley wings,' says Killick. 'We had never made one before, but happily took on the challenge and made one for his car. We all agreed, however, that this was a feature that had appeal, so it was added to our portfolio of options, and is now proving popular.'
Other popular Mulliner options include uprated in car entertainment (ICE) systems, enhanced satellite navigation, a bottle cooler fitted behind the centre rear armrest for champagne or wine, cocktail cabinets, divisions between driver and rear seat passengers, electric rear blinds, folding solid wood tables and curtains for added privacy. All are made, or fitted, by Bentley Mulliner craftsmen. The hand carved wooden gear knob takes Mulliner's woodworkers 12 hours to make. 'Even a standard hand-stitched leather steering wheel takes 18 hours to create,' points out Killick.
The curtains, silk on the inside and hardier cotton on the outside, take two weeks to hand make and two days to fit.
The most popular DVD or TV screen size is 6.5 inches fitted into rear headrests, but the 13 inch dropdown screen is increasingly popular. These are usually fitted with cordless infrared headphones.
One-Off Customer Requests
Customers are not limited to the Bentley Mulliner options portfolio. They can order anything they like - as long as it can be built, and it is legal.
Adds Trevor Gay, sales manager for Bentley Mulliner: 'We can certainly do more individualising than any other car maker. We have an 80-year history of personalising cars, and a long tradition of employing and teaching craftsmen. This heritage of hand craftsmanship has taught us a great deal and bred employees who are true craftsmen, able to do extraordinary things with their hands and their imaginations.'
The bespoke treatment could include unusual body and trim colours, Trevor Gay cites the most unusual as a clementine orange car with yellow piping and lime green leather upholstery. 'But there have been even more extreme suggestions that we declined. At the end of the day, it's our name on the car so we have to have the final say.'
Leather is easily the most popular upholstery material for Bentleys, but Bentley Mulliner is happy to consider other hides. Its craftsmen have trimmed cars in buffalo and ostrich skin. 'Our aim is to match the customers' needs with the appropriate materials, but in line with our ethical values, we would never countenance the use of endangered or unsustainable materials,' says Gay.
Personalised hi fi systems are also common. Some customers order computer game consoles, such as the Sony PlayStation.
Gay estimates that Bentley has built cars with about a dozen different types of timber trim, and is always willing to take on a new challenge. 'Sometimes customers come to us with a favourite tree in their back garden, and want their wood trim made from this tree. It's not cheap because if it is a new wood we need to do safety tests and durability tests, and also must ensure that it looks good when polished and lacquered. But if we can do it, and the wood is not too rare a species, then we will.'
Individual cabin designs are also frequently requested. To show its sheer capability, the Bentley Mulliner team built a very special car for the recent Paris Motor Show. It took four months to develop and build, and involved 10 Mulliner craftsmen. Project leader Phil Copestake, a veteran of bespoke engineering, says it was probably the most challenging job he had ever been given.
'Our design department gave us the drawings, but we had to interpret them, using our experience as craftsmen. This is quite typical.' Copestake personally selected seven blocks of North Yorkshire English oak, chosen for their shades and grain and character. These solid blocks were carved and matched with burr veneer to form one of the finest cabins ever seen in a Bentley. The carved solid wood was used in many areas of the cabin, including the door trim and the division rail between the front and rear occupants.
Other features of the Paris Show car were a 22-inch LCD entertainment screen, which drops down into the central partition, a 5.1 Dolby surround system and a rear bridge console with a cedar wood cigar humidor, glass cabinet and pop-up drinks bar containing decanters and tumblers. Instead of cup holders, there are champagne flute holders. There is a refrigerated bottle cooler, and fibre optic spot lighting in the rear compartment. The car also has a privacy rear window - a rear window design with a smaller aperture than the normal Bentley rear windscreen. Eighteen hides were used to trim the front and rear compartments.
A Bentley takes three weeks to trim in 'standard' leather upholstery. A bespoke interior typically takes another one to two weeks.
A handmade bespoke interior, similar to that offered in the Paris show car, takes 16 weeks to design, develop and hand build. 'There is six weeks of hand carving alone,' says Mr Copestake. Even the lacquering is hand sprayed and hand polished, as it is on all Bentleys.
Another recent commission came from a busy company chairman who approached Bentley Mulliner to create a mobile office. The tiny but powerful 1 GHz on-board PC is one of the smallest in the world, yet offers a 20 G-byte hard disk and 256 M-byte of RAM. It provides full mobile office capability, featuring internet, fax and email on the move. The keyboard is cordless infrared.
Another customer, a motor sport enthusiast, asked Bentley Mulliner to make a road-legal racing Bentley. The result was a unique Bentley based on the Continental T coupe. The front bumper, headlamp surround panels, sill and rear bumper were all restyled to give the car a leaner and lower appearance and sports vents were fitted to the front wings. The car was also redesigned as a two-seater vehicle - the normal Continental T is a four-seater. The result was a high-speed 170mph road racer.
Superstitions can also lead to unusual bespoke treatments. Says Richard Charlesworth, director of special customer commissions: 'One of our customers liked to touch wood before doing anything he thought was the least bit risky, such as driving. He asked us to think about this superstition and come up with a solution. We suggested making his Bentley's starter button out of wood. He thought it a brilliant solution.'
The Queen's Bentley
Bentley Mulliner's ability to personalise even includes offering true one-off cars, unique in their styling both inside and out. In the past 10 years, over 20 such cars have left their workshop. They have included sports cars, limousines and 4x4s, for clients around the world. The most recent uniquely styled car was the Bentley State Limousine, specially commissioned for The Queen in recognition of her Golden Jubilee.
The car was designed from scratch in conjunction with the Royal Household, and was funded by a British-based consortium of automotive manufacturing and service companies. The full-sized model of the car was taken to Windsor Castle for The Queen's personal approval.
As the car is used by The Queen for State duties, Her Majesty was keen for maximum visibility into and out of the rear cabin. The glasshouse design is unique and, to stop heat soak, laminated glass with a reflective coating between the layers was used. A tint of just 15 percent was allowed, barely noticeable to those inside or out. The tint on the roof panels is 40 percent. A large additional rear roof panel can be fitted over the rear section to provide privacy when required. Uprated air conditioning is also used.
The rear doors are back hinged and open to almost 90 degrees, allowing The Queen to face her audience as she exits the car and allows for easy ingress and egress. The doors also cut into the roof area, allowing The Queen to stand straight before stepping down to the ground. Another unusual feature was the perfectly flat floor, 50mm higher than a normal Bentley limousine. Steps are built into the rear sills to aid entry and exit.
The State Limousine was furnished with dark blue leather upholstery at the front but, in the cabin, The Queen chose pale grey 'West of England' cloth. The cabin itself has a very restrained design.
Extended Arnage Limousines
The Arnage, Bentley's four-door model, forms the basis for a range of extended long-wheelbase limousines, produced by Bentley Mulliner. Extending the body by 250mm allows for large format computer or entertainment screens, or for a division to separate rear passengers from the driver.
Extending the body by 450mm, and heightening the roof by 100mm, gives even more rear passenger space, and would typically be chosen for state occasions or formal ceremonies.
The longest Arnage limousine has a 728mm extension. This provides maximum comfort for two passengers, although occasional 'fold down' rear facing seats (which may double as footrests) could be fitted.
This format could also see the fitment of a home cinema-style entertainment system, audio surround sound rear sunroof or fixed moon roof. The Paris show car (see above) was built around a 728mm extended limousine.
To cope with the extra weight and length, Mulliner limousines get uprated brakes and suspension systems. Even the electronic stability control is recalibrated to ensure that it behaves perfectly in its revised environment. Performance from an extended limousine is still extraordinary. The Paris Show car 728mm limousine, for example, sprints from 0-100km/h in 9.0 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 200 km/h. The massive torque, or pulling power, of the 400bhp Bentley V8 engine is the key to its ability to disguise the heavy weight. It has maximum torque of 835 Nm, at only 2100rpm.
A limousine typically takes 16-20 weeks to hand assemble, from order to delivery.
Mulliner Protection
'We make armoured motor cars, not cars that have been armoured,' says Trevor Gay, sales manager of Bentley Mulliner.
It is a key difference. Many other armour-plated vehicles have armour added to a standard vehicle. This makes them needlessly heavy, often makes them look awkward, and affects the quality of the engineering and durability.
Bentley Mulliner builds much of the armour plating and energy absorbent materials into the body at the initial production stage. The suspension, brakes, traction control/stability programme are also specially designed to match the armoured body shell. As a consequence, the whole vehicle is more durable than an after-market conversion, with better performance, road behaviour and durability. The cars also look absolutely normal, as opposed to being overweight and bloated.
As with all Bentley Mulliner clients, those buying protected vehicles can have their cars personalised. This includes the fitment of personal safety options, including an oxygen supply system and exploding door hinge bolts that blast open doors allowing a quick exit. Driver and chauffeur training are also offered.
Bentley Mulliner armoured limousines are engineered to the very high 'B6' or VR6 world standard. This dictates that the car offers ballistic protection when fired on by a NATO 7.62mm self-loading rifle or Kalashnikov AK47. It also offers blast protection from two DM51 hand grenades detonating simultaneously above the roof, and the same grenades detonating simultaneously 150mm below the floor.
The protected limousines are all offered in 250mm, 450mm and 728mm extended wheelbase guises, and can be individually tailored to the owner's choice.
For full B6 protection, the typical cost is £200,000 - £300,000 on top of the normal car - but this depends on the degree of interior personalisation.
The Mulliner Experience
All Bentley Mulliner customers order their vehicles through Bentley dealerships, but are encouraged to come to the Mulliner workshop in Crewe to specify their vehicles. There, as they chat to sales staff over a coffee, they can choose one of the 34 Bentley colours, or specify their own. 'We have certainly had more than one princess who has given us a sample of their favourite nail polish and asked us to match it to the colour of their new car,' says sales manager Trevor Gay.
Hide samples, different woods and carpets are also demonstrated, as are Bentley Mulliner's portfolio of fitted options.
'Most European customers do end up coming to Crewe, to specify their cars,' says Trevor Gay. 'We not only take them into the Mulliner showroom to demonstrate what's available and see examples of recent cars we have made, but go into the workshops to see our craftsmen at work. Watching our cabinet makers manufacture a folding table or a drinks cabinet is to see someone demonstrating an increasingly rare skill. In fact, you won't see it anywhere else, outside of the top-end furniture makers. It's the same with metal fabrication or any other Mulliner function. It's a dying art elsewhere - but one that is preserved and blossoming at Bentley Mulliner.'
Customers get the chance to meet and talk to the craftsmen who will make their car, and are also encouraged to return to see their actual vehicle being hand-assembled. At any one time, about 20 cars are undergoing bespoke modifications in the workshop.
Those customers who can't come to Crewe are visited by a Mulliner representative in their home market. 'Sometimes it takes a customer 10 minutes to finalise their order,' says Trevor Gay. 'And sometimes it takes four years.'
Mulliner services clients around the world. In 2002, the USA is expected to be the biggest single market (30.1%), followed by Continental Europe (28.9%), Asia Pacific (11.7%) and the UK and Middle East (equal on 10.5%). China has been a particularly strong market in 2002, following the display of a Bentley Extended Limousine at this year's Beijing Motor Show.
Bentley's pre-eminence in the field of hand-made cars is partly due to the company's small production volumes. Says John Killick, director of Bentley Mulliner: 'This small volume gives us a natural flexibility. Also, the motor industry's natural instinct is to do the exact opposite: to build as many cars as possible with as few variations as possible. That is old-fashioned mass production common sense. But we don't work by these rules.'
Adds Trevor Gay, Bentley Mulliner sales manager: 'We're good at hand crafted cars because these skills are so long-standing at Bentley. We have people with years of experience in wood, leather and metal. Many have been working at Crewe for 30 years, or more. But we also have a vibrant apprentice programme to bring on young people. These young people have a great aptitude in modern electronics. They also understand where to source, and how to specify, the very latest in visual and audio entertainment and in office equipment. It is a marvellous mix of old and new skills, and it's what makes the service at Bentley Mulliner so very special.'
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