V FORCE
At first sight, these might seem an incongruous pairing: the precision weaponry that was early ’90s German automotive technology and the blunderbuss of what was effectively an updated Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.
To the monied buyer of top-end executive saloon cars with image firmly uppermost in mind though, the two were positioned closer than you might have thought. The other candidates on your high-flier’s shopping list would have included the Mercedes S-Class but even in range-topping 560 guise it was hardly sporting, while Jaguar could offer you a supercharger but until 1998 was limited to just the six cylinders. Bentley and BMW however, paired a sporting appeal with a big four-door body and the attraction of unlikely pace.
The turbocharged Bentley and the V12 BMW also overlapped in the showrooms for the best part of a decade, the BMW evolving from E32 to E38 generation and the Bentley evolving well, not a great deal.
