BENTLEY TURBO R
Simply massive was how Autocar summed up the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo in its first road test and that one phrase neatly sums up the entire vehicle: simple, massive… but with an almighty kick which back then hadn’t been found in a saloon of that size.
As most readers will be aware, the Mulsanne itself was simply a badge-ngineered version of the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit and a ‘could do better’ job at that: pedal rubbers and underbonnet componentry still bore the Rolls-Royce logo instead of the famous winged B, leaving even the wealthy buyers for these cars in no doubt that they had plumped for the Popular Plus of the Crewe range.
The Spirit and Mulsanne were based on Rolls-Royce’s ‘SZ’ platform which was closely derived from the older ‘SY’ platform underpinning the Silver Shadow launched in 1965 and it was this which had effectively limited Bentley to the status of sidekick.
Despite its prestige and brand appeal, Rolls-Royce the car maker in the early 1970s was in a financially precarious state, having been spun out as a separate entity following the collapse of its parent company. This relegated it to a tiny player with slender resources, competing in an arena with well-funded opponents like Daimler-Benz, BMW and even Cadillac.
This meant that a replacement for the Silver Shadow couldn’t be a clean-sheet design since resources didn’t stretch to the budgets required. Fortunately though, despite its ageing looks, the Silver Shadow had been a very modern design at launch and the so-called ‘SY’
